Concept of armed conflict and the „war on terror“

The article analyses the relationship of the terrorist acts to the armed conflict. The armed conflict is the threshold of application of the international humanitarian law, therefore it is analyzed when the fight against terrorism is to be executed according to the rules of international humanitarian law, and when the law of peace (i.e. the rules of the protection of human rights) is applied. The main criteria for distinguishing a situation of an armed conflict are the intensity of the situation and the organisation of the groups taking part in the conflict. The same criteria apply in the case of terrorist acts – i.e. fight against terrorism reaches the scale of an armed conflict when it is intense and the parties taking part in the conflict are sufficiently organised to be considered a party to an armed conflict