34 INTERNATIONAL LEGAL PROTECTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN ARMED CONFLICT The concurrent applicability of international human rights and humanitarian law depends on the objective legal conditions required for the corresponding legal norms to apply. In this particular case of the relationship between international human rights law and international humanitarian law, it is the existence of an armed conflict that will trigger the application of the latter and, thus, of the complementary application of international human rights and international humanitarian protections. The following sections will discuss the different types of conflict as defined in conventional and customary international law and will also analyse the challenges posed by certain uses of force that do not reach the threshold of an armed conflict. 1. International armed conflict Article 2 common to the Geneva Conventions states that “[i]n addition to the provisions which shall be implemented in peacetime, the present Convention shall apply to all cases of declared war or of any other armed conflict which may arise between two or more of the High Contracting Parties, even if the state of war is not recognized by one of them. The Convention shall also apply to all cases of partial or total occupation of the territory of a High Contracting Party, even if the said occupation meets with no armed resistance.” Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions extends the situations covered by common article 2, stating that the situations to which the Protocol applies “include armed conflicts in which peoples are fighting against colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist regimes in the exercise of their right of self-determination” (art. 1.4). While the Geneva Conventions and Protocol I indicate the type of situations to which they will apply, they do not provide a clear definition of “armed conflict”. The existence of an armed conflict is a precondition for the application of international humanitarian law, but the existing body of rules is not clear about the elements necessary to determine that a situation between two States has reached the threshold of an armed conflict. Indeed, common article 2 limits the scope of the Geneva Conventions to