CYIL vol. 11 (2020)

CYIL 11 (2020) THE CLASSIFICATION OF ARMED CONFLICTS – INTERNATIONALIZED, … notion of armed conflict under Article 2(1) [Geneva Convention] requires the hostile resort to armed force involving two or more States. ” [highlighting added] 12 2.2 Non-international armed conflict The common Article 3 of the Geneva conventions implicitly defines an NIAC as an “ armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties .” Additional Protocol II to the Geneva Conventions (APII) adds one particular type of NIAC (its definition does not cover every possible NIAC) definition when it states that it applies to: all armed conflicts which are not covered by Article 1 [of Protocol I] and which take place in the territory of a High Contracting Party between its armed forces and dissident armed forces or other organized armed groups which, under responsible command, exercise such control over a part of its territory as to enable them to carry out sustained and concerted military operations and to implement this Protocol. 13 The Tadić judgment proposed the most known definition of NIAC, took over the territorial scope and claimed that an NIAC is a “ protracted armed violence between governmental authorities and organized armed groups or between such groups within a State. ” As it is clear from the difference between the general definition in Tadić and Article 1 APII, the latter only covers those NIACs in which the group controls part of the state’s territory, that is when the group formally fulfils this particular requirement of the definition of insurgents. While Article 1 APII indeed covers a type of NIAC, this requirement is not general for all NIACs. 14 The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) proposed an alternative definition which essentially takes over the Tadić criteria and adds an additional APII definition which does not cause the other types of NIAC to lose their status, it just regulates the applicable law, i.e. the APII. 15 As we can see from the definitions of both an IAC and NIAC, they both contain a territorial principle (a conflict is non-international if it takes place within territory of only one state) and a personal principle (a conflict is international if it involves use of armed force between two or more states). However, there are questions still open. For example, what about an armed conflict between a state and an armed group (or armed groups) taking place in several state territories simultaneously? Some of the controversial questions may be answered by the possibility of internationalization of a conflict. An internal armed conflict may become an internationalized armed conflict when any party to the conflict becomes supported by another state, for example when de iure organs of another state directly take part in hostilities within a particular conflict, or when a non-state actor fighting against a government becomes a de facto organ of another state/ 12 ICRC, Commentary to common article 2 of the Geneva Conventions, available at URL https://ihl-databases. icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/Comment.xsp?action=openDocument&documentId=1A35EE65211A18AEC12581 150044243A#44_B, para. 241. 13 Article 1 APII. 14 ONDŘEJ, J., ŠTURMA, P., BÍLKOVÁ, V. JÍLEK, D. Mezinárodní humanitární právo [International Humanitarian Law] . 1st ed., Prague: C.H.Beck, 2010. ISBN: 978-80-7400-185-7, p. 48. 15 ICRC, Violence and the Use of Force, available at https://shop.icrc.org/violence-and-the-use-of-force-pdf-en, pp. 26-27.

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