Countering Terrorist Attacks on Critical Infrastructure of a Country in International Law

Terrorism has taken different forms over time; however, the international legal community fails to keep up with these modern forms of terrorism and always falls a few steps behind. Since the critical infrastructure includes the most essential services for life in a country, attacks on this infrastructure cause widespread and sometimes irreversible damage so that the targeted state will have to comply with the demands of terrorist groups. Although there are important documents regarding counterterrorism in airlines, marine navigation, nuclear power, and hostage holding in the international law, the literature evidently lacks a fundamental document regarding countermeasures to terrorist attacks on the critical infrastructure of a country to cover both cyberattacks and physical attacks. Hence, in addition to addressing the problem of critical infrastructure and counterterrorism documents, this paper seeks to answer the main question: what international law rules over countermeasures to physical terrorist attacks on the critical infrastructure of a country? For this purpose, a descriptive-analytical technique was employed with the desk method. According to the results, there is a legal gap in the international law in response to physical terrorist attacks on the critical infrastructure of countries. Finally, it is recommended that an international convention be formulated and approved to counter such terrorist attacks.