The Challenges Of Asymmetric Warfare Enhancing Compliance With International Humanitarian Law By Organized Armed Groups

All armed conflicts, whether international or non-international, are characterized by some sort of asymmetry. Disparities between parties to armed hostilities have always been an issue as a matter of fact, although not necessarily addressed by International Humanitarian Law (IHL) as a matter of law. IHL remains a stranger to such situations, for it is based on its equal applicability to all parties of a conflict. Nonetheless, contemporary conflicts have shown that the said equality may no longer be the rule, but rather the exception. This refers in particular to non-international armed conflicts where parties are inherently asymmetrical and the weaker ones tend to act in straightforward violation of universally hailed rules in order to engage their technologically advanced and more resourceful enemy. Accordingly, the ways in which asymmetric actors behave during armed conflicts challenge IHL’s basic foundations, and the fact that civilians still endure the burden of hostilities, as their primary victims, underpins the necessity for further efforts in the attempt to promote respect for IHL. This work assesses diverse alternatives to respond to these brutal forms of asymmetric confrontations, with a view on those mechanisms which best address the causes why non-state actors deny not only complying with IHL from a legal perspective but also contemplating policy-making considerations.

An internationally-recognized authority on constitutional law, national security law, and counterterrorism, William C. Banks believes changing patterns of global conflict are forcing a reexamination of the traditional laws of war. The Hague Rules, the customary laws of war, and the post-1949 law of armed conflict no longer account for nonstate groups waging prolonged campaigns of terrorism—or even more conventional insurgent attacks. Recognizing that many of today's conflicts are low-intensity, asymmetrical wars fought between disparate military forces, Banks's collection analyzes nonstate armed groups and irregular forces (such as terrorist and insurgent groups, paramilitaries, child soldiers, civilians participating in hostilities, and private military firms) and their challenge to international humanitarian law. Both he and his contributors believe gaps in the laws of war leave modern battlefields largely unregulated, and they fear state parties suffer without guidelines for responding to terrorists and their asymmetrical tactics, such as the targeting of civilians. These gaps also embolden weaker, nonstate combatants to exploit forbidden strategies and violate the laws of war. Attuned to the contested nature of post-9/11 security and policy, this collection juxtaposes diverse perspectives on existing laws and their application in contemporary conflict. It sets forth a legal definition of new wars, describes the status of new actors, charts the evolution of the twenty-first-century battlefield, and balances humanitarian priorities with military necessity. While the contributors contest each other, they ultimately reestablish the legitimacy of a long-standing legal corpus, and they rehumanize an environment in which the most vulnerable targets, civilian populations, are themselves becoming weapons against conventional power.

This title describes how the practice and evolution of warfare have turned international humanitarian law into an enigmatic law that is complex to understand, interpret, and enforce. It identifies the challenges that advocates of international humanitarian law face, which range from genocide, asymmetrical warfare, and terrorism to rape as a weapon. The author demonstrates that this branch of international law is in constant evolution.

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In Counterinsurgency Law, William Banks and several distinguished contributors explore from an interdisciplinary legal and policy perspective the multiple challenges that counterinsurgency operations pose today to the rule of law - international, humanitarian, human rights, criminal, and domestic. Addressing the considerable challenges for the future of armed conflict, each contributor in the book explores the premise that in COIN operations, international humanitarian law, human rights law, international law more generally, and domestic national security laws do not provide adequate legal and policy coverage and guidance for multiple reasons, many of which are explored in this book. A second shared premise is that these problems are not only challenges for the law in post-9/11 security environments-but matters of policy with implications for the international community and for global security more generally.

Scientific Essay from the year 2015 in the subject Law - European and International Law, Intellectual Properties, , language: English, abstract: Asymmetric warfare has been a hallmark of many armed conflicts of the 21st century. Written from the perspective of international law, this article asks whether the deliberate use of widespread and systematic violations of the laws of war as a strategy and / or tactic of war by some (state and non-state) actors places the ability of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) to protect civilians in wartime at risk.

Topics as diverse as the evolving spectrum of conflict, innovations in weaponry, automated and autonomous attack, the depersonalisation of warfare, detention operations, the influence of modern media and the application of human rights law to the conduct of hostilities are examined in this book to see to what extent existing legal norms are challenged. The book takes each topic in turn, explains relevant provisions of contemporary law and analyses exactly where the legal problem lies. The analysis then develops the theme, examining for example the implications of current rules as to deception operations for certain applications of cyber warfare. The text is written in an accessible style, and demonstrates the continuing relevance of established rules and the importance of compliance with them. Useful for academics, military, governments, ministries of defence, ministries of foreign affairs, libraries, diplomats, think tanks, policy units, NGOs, and all others with an interest in law of armed conflict issues such as journalists and students.

Ten years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2011, Rethinking the Law of Armed Conflict in an Age of Terrorism, edited by Christopher Ford and Amichai Cohen, brings together a range of interdisciplinary experts to examine the problematic encounter between international law and challenges presented by conflicts between developed states and non-state actors, such as international terrorist groups. Through examinations of the counter-terrorist experiences of the United States, Israel, and Colombia--coupled with legal and historical analyses of trends in international humanitarian law--the authors place post-9/11 practice in the context of the international legal community's broader struggle over the substantive content of international rules constraining state behavior in irregular wars and explore trends in the development of these rules. From the beginning of international efforts to rewrite the laws of armed conflict in the 1970s, the legal rules to govern irregular conflicts of the "state-on-nonstate" variety have been contested terrain. Particularly in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, policymakers, lawyers, and scholars have debated the merits, relevance, and applicability of what are said to be competing "war" and "law enforcement" paradigms of legal constraint--and even the degree to which international law can be said to apply to counter-terrorist conflicts at all. Ford & Cohen's volume puts such debates in historical and analytical context, and offers readers an insight into where the law has been headed in the fraught years since September 2001. The contributors provide the reader with differing perspectives upon these questions, but together their analyses make clear that law-governed restraint remains a cardinal value in counter-terrorist war, even as the law stands revealed as being much more contested and indeterminate than many accounts would have it. Rethinking the Law of Armed Conflict in an Age of Terrorism provides an important conceptual framework through which to view the development of the law as the policy and legal communities move into the second decade of the "global war on terrorism."

The third edition of this work sets out a comprehensive and analytical manual of international humanitarian law, accompanied by case analysis and extensive explanatory commentary by a team of distinguished and internationally renowned experts.