ULUSLARARASI KAMU HUKUKU II - Deneme Sınavı - 11

1864 Geneva Convention adopted the emblem of the Red Cross as a neutral protective sign for hospitals and those assisting the wounded and sick on the battlefield.

Such other principle is distinction, which refers to an obligation to make a distinction between combatants and non-combatants, military objectives (targets) and civilian objects during an armed conflict.

It is easy to confuse liberation conflicts with insurgency, civil war, and other secessionist activities. To be recognized a liberation conflict according to the Article 1 of Additional Protocol I, the armed struggle must be based on the exercise of the people’s right of self-determination. Also, such an armed struggle must be directed against colonial domination, alien occupation or racist regimes.

As Additional Protocol I lays down, only combatants have the right to participate directly in hostilities.

There is no treaty prohibiting the use of nuclear weapons. In its well-known advisory opinion, the ICJ stated that there is no customary rule prohibiting the use of nuclear weapons.

The contemporary definition of war crimes appears in the Article 8 of the Rome Statute. This definition covers both international and non- international armed conflicts.

It should be law of war

It should be use of particular prohibited methods of warfare

It should be ceasefire

Genava convention 5 is not one of them

American Civil War is an example of this

Non armed conflicts is not one of them

Armed conflicts

It should be Non-international armed conflicts

It shoudl be belligrent

It shoudl be neutrality

The law of war reflects the military perspective and is the old-fashioned one since the term armed conflict has now replaced war.

The law of armed conflict, however, is a better term since this term covers both the restriction of warfare (military aspect) and the protection of those who are not involved in actual hostilities and those are involved, e.g. combatants (humanitarian aspect). Along with the entry into force of the United Nations Charter and the prohibition on the use of force, war and other concepts related to it was replaced with different expressions such as dispute, situation, use of force, and aggression.

IHL is a specific body of law from the law governing the legitimacy aspects of use of force. IHL stipulates rules to be applied in conduct of hostilities in times of armed conflict (jus in bello: law in war). Rules regarding legitimacy aspect of resorting to the use of force itself are known as operational law (jus ad bellum: law on war).

IHL aims at prohibiting:

• Summary executions of civilians and military personnel,

• Ethnic cleansing and forcible displacement,

• Mistreatment of detained prisoners of war,

• Indiscriminate use of force against civilians and civilian objects,

• Attacks on medical, religious and humanitarian relief services and personnel, 28 International Humanitarian Law

• Looting and other destruction of civilian property with no military purpose,

• Terrorizing and starving the civilian population,

• Use of human shields against a pending attack,

• The use of particular prohibited methods of warfare

Ceasefire (armistice) is the pausing or ending of combat operations by mutual agreement between belligerent parties (Parry and Barker, 2009: 44). On the other hand, a peace agreement will settle the political and / or legal dispute itself, between belligerent parties.

The Martens clause aims to offer protection to victims of armed conflicts even when there is no applicable rule of IHL. It is an important principle of IHL which was formulated by the Russian international law professor Friedrich von Martens and first adopted at the First Hague Peace Conference of 1899. It has since been reformulated and incorporated in numerous international instruments (Melzer, 2016: 24).