E/CN.4/2006/120 page 9 Working Group and the Special Rapporteur will elaborate, to the extent permitted by the constraints of this report, the ongoing detention of the Guantánamo Bay detainees as “enemy combatants” does in fact constitute arbitrary deprivation of the right to personal liberty. 21. Because detention “without charges or access to counsel for the duration of hostilities” amounts to a radical departure from established principles of human rights law, it is particularly important to distinguish between the detainees captured by the United States in the course of an armed conflict and those captured under circumstances that did not involve an armed conflict. In this context, it is to be noted that the global struggle against international terrorism does not, as such, constitute an armed conflict for the purposes of the applicability of international humanitarian law.20 B. Detainees captured in the course of an armed conflict 22. The Third Geneva Convention provides that where, in the context of “cases of declared war or of any other armed conflict which may arise between two or more of the High Contracting Parties” (art. 2 (1)), a person “having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy” may be detained as a prisoner of war until the end of the hostilities. The Fourth Geneva Convention allows a party to the conflict to detain (“intern”) civilians because they constitute a threat to the security of the Party or intend to harm it (arts. 68, 78 and 79), or for the purposes of prosecution on war crimes charges (art. 70). Once the international armed conflict has come to an end, prisoners of war and internees must be released,21 although prisoners of war and civilian internees against whom criminal proceedings for an indictable offence are pending may be detained until the end of such proceedings.22 As the rationale for the detention of combatants not enjoying prisoner of war status is to prevent them from taking up arms against the detaining power again, the same rule should be applied to them. In other words, non-privileged belligerents must be released or charged once the international armed conflict is over. 23. The indefinite detention of prisoners of war and civilian internees for purposes of continued interrogation is inconsistent with the provisions of the Geneva Conventions.23 Information obtained from reliable sources and the interviews conducted by the special procedures mandate holders with former Guantánamo Bay detainees confirm, however, that the objective of the ongoing detention is not primarily to prevent combatants from taking up arms against the United States again, but to obtain information and gather intelligence on the Al-Qaida network. 24. The Chairperson of the Working Group and the Special Rapporteur note that, while United States Armed Forces continue to be engaged in combat operations in Afghanistan as well as in other countries, they are not currently engaged in an international armed conflict between two Parties to the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions. In the ongoing non-international armed conflicts involving United States forces, the lex specialis authorizing detention without respect for the guarantees set forth in article 9 of ICCPR therefore can no longer serve as a basis for that detention.