International Humanitarian Law

International humanitarian law is currently the fashionable term used by the United Nations (UN), the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), in order to stress both the humanitarian purpose of this law and the convergence / synthesis between laws of war and international human rights law.

Rules of engagement are operational and tactical level internal military directives that define the conditions and manners under which armed forces of a country, down to a single soldier level, will engage and employ armed force in the course of combat activity.

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 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).

International Humanitarian Law (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,

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. 

The term peace agreement will settle the political and / or legal dispute itself, between belligerent parties.

IHL treaties are generally divided into two: Hague Law, rules on how hostilities to be conducted, and Geneva Law, rules governing the treatment of victims of war.

The original Hague Law and much of Geneva Law are regarded as reflecting customary law.

Modern laws of warfare first occurred in the 18th century and developed from this century onwards with
the modernization of warfare itself.

Ottoman Empire became a party to the 1864 Geneva Convention on 5 July 1865, and it ratified the 1899 Conventions on 12 June 1907.

Along with the impact of World War II, the Geneva Conventions also tried to response to the issues arising from the Spanish Civil War, in which both combatants and civilians had been brutally treated (Crowe and Weston-Scheuber, 2013: 35). A common provision for all the four Conventions dealing with non-international armed conflicts which has become known as “Common Article 3” was adopted. This was the first time an international instrument regulated the conduct of internal armed conflicts.

In terms of IHL, strategic situations can be divided into five categories as peace, armed conflict, neutrality, occupation, and collective security (peace support) operations.

Armed conflicts are international or non-international strategic situations, in which, at least one side of a conflict uses armed force to achieve its political goals.

International armed conflicts are armed conflicts between two or more States. The lawfulness of the beginning of the conflict (legitimacy aspect of resorting to the use of force) does not affect the application of IHL. It would still apply to all parties involved in the conflict. The mere fact that there is
an armed conflict is enough for IHL to be applied. No declaration of war is required International armed conflicts include armed conflicts in which peoples are fighting against colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist régimes in the exercise of their right of self-determination.

Non-international armed conflicts are protracted armed confrontations between governmental armed forces and the forces of one or more-armed groups, or between such groups operating on the territory of a State.

The term 'insurgency2 can be defined as the military operations of non-State armed groups.

Neutrality refers to the status of a State that is outside of an international armed conflict. This includes not helping the combatants of the belligerent States. Use of force by a neutral State to prevent or stop the violations of its territory by belligerents does not affect its neutral status.

The term 'Reprisals' can be defined as otherwise illegal measures taken in response to prior illegal measures of the adverse party, and which are intended to cause the adverse party to cease its illegal activities and comply with the law.

Sweden and Switzerland acted as a Protected Power in World War II, and Brazil and Switzerland
performed such a role in the Falklands conflict (between UK and Argentina).