Boundaries of the Battlefield: A Critical Look at the Legal Paradigms and Rules in Countering Terrorism

Abstract

On 10 and 11 January 2013, the T.M.C. Asser Institute and the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism—The Hague (ICCT), in cooperation with the International Humanitarian and Criminal Law Platform, the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, the Municipality of The Hague and the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs organised a two-day symposium entitled The Boundaries of the Battlefield: A Critical Look at the Legal Paradigms and Rules in Countering Terrorism. During the symposium, twenty-seven top panellists and moderators from academia, civil society, governments, the military and multilateral organisations discussed the contours of various approaches states take against non-state actors with the goal of countering terrorism. Specifically, the symposium addressed issues related to uses of force and how these may affect and define the geographic and temporal scope and limitations of the laws of armed conflict in relation to counter-terrorism. Besides this main theme, which operates within the armed conflict paradigm, the symposium also discussed and assessed the law-enforcement paradigm. Specifically, this paper elaborates on a number of key questions raised during the conference; these relate to the temporal and geographical limitations of armed conflict, the interplay between international humanitarian law and international human rights law, as well as the use of drones, the law enforcement approach to counter-terrorism and the possible need for a new framework for countering terrorism. © 2013, T.M.C. Asser Instituut and the Authors. All rights reserved.