Right of Victims of Terrorism to Compensation Against the Principle of Jurisdictional Immunity of Foreign State

Background: Terrorist attacks in various parts of the world have resulted in thousands of victims, injuries and property losses. It is acknowledged that several of these attacks were likely sponsored or facilitated by state actors or committed by movements supported by governments. In light of this, it has become necessary for the international community to adopt a multilateral and comprehensive international agreement to combat terrorism and mitigate its effects—particularly following the adoption of the Pact for the Future by the United Nations General Assembly at its seventy-ninth session. Action 23 of the Pact, in Paragraph (c), calls for “revitalising efforts towards the conclusion of a comprehensive convention on international terrorism.”1 Methods: This study employed a deductive approach by examining and analysing various domestic judgements from the United States, the UK, Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, Canada, Italy, Ukraine, Poland, Greece, China and India, as well as scholarly commentary by authors and jurists. It also involved reviewing relevant international agreements and exploring the possibility of integrating provisions from both foreign state immunity frameworks and international judicial cooperation agreements. The aim was to address the problem of protecting states from liability for supporting terrorism while proposing an effective legal formula to enable victims of terrorism to obtain compensation. The anti-terrorism exceptions incorporated into the state immunity acts of the United States and Canada were also examined. Results and conclusions: The study concludes that state immunity is a well-established principle in both written and customary international law and has gained acceptance by various national judicial systems. However, both national and international jurisprudence and courts have shown hesitation to adopt an anti-terrorism exception, as such an adoption would entail a violation of the international rule of immunity and could lead to discriminatory treatment between states, despite the inherent fairness of holding terrorist-supporting states accountable.