Based on that precedent, the Convention should have excluded from its application the situations of armed conflict, as defined in the Article 1, paragraph 4 of Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. These are the situations in which people are fighting against colonial domination and alien occupation, and against racist regimes, in the exercise of their right of self-determination. The deletion of Article 19.2 had been proposed. It could not be accepted as drafted. In its present formulation, it sanctified State terrorism.
State terrorism is the most ignoble form of terrorism.
They also denounced the brutalization of peoples kept under foreign occupation as the gravest form of terrorism. We believe, therefore, that terrorist activities of the military forces of the State cannot be excluded from the scope of this Convention. Article 19.2 stipulates that the activities undertaken by military forces of a State in connection with their official duties would be governed by other rules of International Law and not by this Convention. This would make any type of activity by the armed forces immune from the application of this Convention, even if such activity amounts to terrorism. We believe that only those activities of the armed forces can be immune from the scope of this convention which are undertaken pursuant to Chapters VII and VIII of the Charter of the United Nations.