Date of Award

2017

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Hicks, Barbara

Area of Concentration

Political Science

Abstract

Scholars have spent the past few decades extensively assimilating the law of noninternational armed conflict to that of other pertinent bodies of law, particularly the law of international armed conflict and customary international law. Despite its impressive development in the past two decades, there are definite limits to how far the law of noninternational armed conflict can be assimilated through an approach of analogy to the law of international armed conflict. In an international armed conflict, the states engaged in combat are afforded the same rights and guarantees, as well as given the same legal obligations, under the laws of war. In non-international conflicts, both the armed forces of the state and the armed forces of the non-state group are obliged to follow the same legal obligations under the rules of war; however, only the armed forces of the state are granted the rights and protections afforded to combatants. Any person engaged in combat who does not belong to the armed forces of the state is liable for prosecution at the domestic level for their mere participation in the conflict. Yet, in certain large-scale conflicts, armed opposition groups have been perceived as bearing a tacit or de facto status of legitimacy to the degree that they followed the laws of war. This study utilizes a case-oriented approach, that relies on qualitative comparative analysis to examine the relationship between the degree of recognition states confer on armed opposition groups and the subsequent compliance of such groups to international law. The six cases of armed conflict studied are: the Bosnian-Serb Rebellion, the Eighth Colombian War, the Second Liberian War, the Second Somalian War, the Nepal Maoist Insurgency, and the Turkey-PKK War. Across all cases, armed opposition groups were more willing to explicitly commit themselves to abide by the rules and principles of international humanitarian law when they were able to perceive its potential benefits. Although all of the non-state armed groups’ commitments included significant IHL obligations, the extent to which each commitment was adopted was dependent on the degree of recognition the non-state armed group in question was granted. In addition, conferring recognition on non-state armed groups appeared to have a much more substantial influence on their behavior when international organizations were present to report and monitor each group’s legal compliance. In order for IHL to both better ensure the protection of civilians, and encourage the belligerents of armed opposition groups to comply with their legal obligations, the law of non-international armed conflict needs to evolve to be compatible with the nature of modern warfare. This study suggests that a significant step toward that evolution may be setting up norms of recognition for nonstate actors in conflict that embed them in the obligations and guarantees of existing international law.

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