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Abstract
International terrorism is one of the most significant threats to peace and security in the 21st century, so to combat, remove or neutralize it is a very valuable question for the whole community. The legal question whether the right of self‐defence includes response to terrorist acts and moreover, whether a terrorist act amounts to an “armed attack” defined in article 51 of the Charter is an issue of wide discussion among states and scholars. Self-defence has long been understood as an inherent right of a State when it is militarily attacked by another State. It has generally been regarded as a right applicable only in an inter-State armed conflict. It is to be admitted that there were self-defence claims against terrorist attacks in the past. In the 1980s and 90s the United States and Israel had in a number of situations used force against States which allegedly sponsored terrorism and were mostly condemned by the international community.[1] After September 11, however, there have been attempts to reinterpret the meaning of ‘armed attack’ under Article 51 of the UN Charter to include attacks by terrorists - non-State actors - and thus rendering the use of force against terrorists, or against a State that harbours terrorists, a lawful exercise of self defence.[2] It has been argued that certain resolutions of the Security Council authoritatively pronounced that a terrorist attack could be equated to an ‘armed attack’ within the meaning of Article 51.[3] Again there have also been arguments that for a State to be responsible for terrorist attacks, higher threshold of attribution is not required and mere harbouring of terrorists may trigger the use of force in self-defence by the victim State against the harbouring State.[4]
[1] In 1982, for example, Israel invoked a right of self-defence to justify an incursion deep into Lebanon for purposes of eliminating the ability of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to conduct the alleged terrorist actions in northern Israel, but that justification met with criticism from both the Security Council (See S.C. Res. 508/ 1982) and the General Assembly (See G.A. Res. ES 7/9 – 1982). In 1985, when Israeli planes bombed PLO Headquarters in Tunisia as a response to the alleged PLO terrorist attacks, the Security Council condemned the action by a vote of 14 to zero (the United States abstained)(See S.C. Res. 573 (1985).
[2] Davis Brown, Use of Force against Terrorism after September 11: State Responsibility, Self-Defence and Other Responses, 11CARDOZO. J. INT’L & COMP. L., at 28 (2003).
[3] Christopher Greenwood, International Law and the Pre-emptive Use of Force: Afghanistan, Al-Qaida, and Iraq, 4 SAN DIEGO INT’L L.J. 7, at 17 (2003).
[4] See for example, Anne-Marie Slaughter and William Burke-White, An International Constitutional Moment, 43 HARV. INT’L L.J., 1, at 20 (2002).