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Compliance with International Humanitarian Law by Non-State Armed Groups: How Can It Be Improved?

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Book cover Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law Volume 19, 2016

Part of the book series: Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law ((YIHL,volume 19))

Abstract

How can compliance of non-state armed groups with international humanitarian law (IHL) be improved? In answering this question, this chapter presents a political science perspective and approach to achieve three goals. First, the author discusses the current state of our understanding about the compliant behavior of non-state armed groups in contemporary security. Second, existing legal tools and policy instruments are outlined, with an eye toward enhancing IHL compliance by armed groups. Third and finally, the author provides conjectures regarding the conditions under which some policies might work better than others. This examination of rebel groups and IHL non-compliance calls for more systematic policy evaluation in future research for the improvements of compliance mechanisms to better attain the goals of IHL.

The author is an associate professor of political science at Texas A&M University in the United States of America. Her research fields are international relations and international law and her work has appeared in journals such as International Organization, British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and Conflict Management and Peace Science. She is the author of Compliant Rebels: Rebel Groups and International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Her book won the Chadwick Alger Book Prize, the best book in the field of international organization annually awarded by the International Studies Association.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Dunoff and Pollack 2013 for interdisciplinary effort between political science and law.

  2. 2.

    This definition is consistent with other definitions of compliance: See for example the definition of compliance given by Raustiala and Slaughter 2002, p. 539: “a state of conformity or identity between an actor’s behavior and a specified rule.”

  3. 3.

    Henckaerts and Doswald-Beck 2005.

  4. 4.

    Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts, opened for signature 8 June 1977, 1125 UNTS 609 (entered into force 7 December 1978).

  5. 5.

    Krieger 2013, p. 10; also see Sivakumaran 2012a.

  6. 6.

    Clapham 2015; Alston and Goodman 2012; Clapham 2006.

  7. 7.

    Scheffer 2012 specifically notes the connection among three bodies of law.

  8. 8.

    Armed opposition groups are commonly called rebel groups. See Sivakumaran 2012a for the definitional issues of non-international armed conflicts, where hostilities occur between state and non-state actors or between two or more non-state actors.

  9. 9.

    According to the global terrorism database (GTD) administered by the University of Maryland, about half of the terrorist groups are armed opposition groups. But the present chapter will not include terrorist groups that have global aims (e.g. al-Qaeda) because the wars they wage are not non-international armed conflicts. See Duffy 2005 on the overlap between international law on terror and IHL. I also want to note the difference/similarity between rebel groups and terrorist groups. Rebel groups in civil conflicts are defined based on their goals of opposing existing national governments, while terrorist organizations are identified by their tactics to create fear and intimidation, but there are overlapping in the boundaries of rebel groups and terrorist organizations. See Fortna 2015 for instance. According to this definition, ISIS is a rebel group against the Syrian government but also a terrorist group that employs terror tactics. So, this group will be applicable within the definition given in this chapter.

  10. 10.

    In fact, some vigilantes or paramilitaries exercise violence on the side of government or work with the government (e.g. “Rangers” within Pakistani army; Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) in Colombia).

  11. 11.

    See Tyler 2006 for the blend of sociology, psychology and political science.

  12. 12.

    Narang 2015.

  13. 13.

    Martinovic 2016.

  14. 14.

    Drumbl 2012; Jo 2015 for the spatial and temporal patterns of IHL violations by armed groups in the issues of child soldiering, civilian killing, as well as in the issue of detention.

  15. 15.

    Eck and Hultman 2007.

  16. 16.

    Jo 2015, pp. 156–158.

  17. 17.

    Ibid.

  18. 18.

    Jo and Thomson 2014.

  19. 19.

    For the reasons as to why armed groups violate IHL, see Bangerter 2011.

  20. 20.

    Humphreys and Weinstein 2006.

  21. 21.

    Cunningham et al. 2012.

  22. 22.

    Crawford 2015.

  23. 23.

    Jo 2015, pp. 59–60.

  24. 24.

    IRIN news (2011) Moves to end use child soldiers, but problem persists. http://www.irinnews.org/feature/2011/04/08/moves-end-use-child-soldiers-problem-persists. Accessed 28 March 2017.

  25. 25.

    Salehyan et al. 2014.

  26. 26.

    IRIN news (2011) Moves to end use child soldiers, but problem persists. http://www.irinnews.org/feature/2011/04/08/moves-end-use-child-soldiers-problem-persists. Accessed 28 March 2017.

  27. 27.

    Jo 2015.

  28. 28.

    For extant literature, see Gillard 2016; Krieger 2015; Hofmann and Schneckener 2011; Bellal and Casey-Maslen 2011; Ryngaert and Van de Meulebroucke 2011; Sassòli 2010 and Sassòli 2007.

  29. 29.

    The consultative process initiated by the ICRC and the Swiss Government since 2011 is one such effort, to consider the fact-finding commission, periodic reporting, inter alia. See International Committee of the Red Cross and Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs 2015.

  30. 30.

    Particularly, the area of environmental governance and trade governance as well as disarmament treaties. See Dorn and Scott 2000.

  31. 31.

    Bellal 2015.

  32. 32.

    Roberts and Sivakumaran 2012.

  33. 33.

    Sivakumaran 2012b.

  34. 34.

    Recalling Franck’s thesis on the connection between legitimacy of law and compliance, see Franck 1990.

  35. 35.

    MacLeod et al. 2016.

  36. 36.

    Ratner 2011, p. 459; Bangerter 2015.

  37. 37.

    Supreme Court of the United States, Holder v Humanitarian Law Project, 21 June 2010, 561 U.S. 1 (2010), 130 S.Ct. 2705.

  38. 38.

    International Council on Human Rights Policy 2000. Organizational discipline is one of the key components for preventing civilian victimization; see Weinstein 2007.

  39. 39.

    The General Order No. 1 is titled “An order promulgating a code of conduct regulating the affairs of the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces prescribing its powers, duties, and functions, and other related purposes” and the General Order No. 2 was titled “An order amending Articles 34 and 36 of the Code of conduct of the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces and for other purposes.” See more in Bangerter 2011.

  40. 40.

    Risse and Sikkink 1999, p. 5.

  41. 41.

    Cohen 2016.

  42. 42.

    Sivakumaran 2009.

  43. 43.

    Blair and Kalamanovitz 2016.

  44. 44.

    At least among states, these naming and shaming strategies have been shown to be effective. See Krain 2012.

  45. 45.

    See more in Klostermann 2015.

  46. 46.

    See the work of 1267 Committee for example in sanctioning non-state armed groups.

  47. 47.

    See Charron 2011.

  48. 48.

    Hultman and Peksen 2015.

  49. 49.

    For general systematic evidence related to ICC deterrence, see Jo and Simmons 2016; Jo et al. 2017. For a skeptical view, see Cronin-Furman 2013.

  50. 50.

    It is well known that the foremost aims of military interventions are geo-political. See Regan 2010.

  51. 51.

    Lake 2016.

  52. 52.

    Aslam 2010 finds this pattern in the post-cold war U.S. interventions.

  53. 53.

    See Morrow 2007 for evidence.

  54. 54.

    Gleditsch et al. 2016. On the civilian killing issue, see Fazal 2013.

  55. 55.

    Its public awareness campaign is “Fighter Not Killer” (www.fighternotkiller.org).

  56. 56.

    Kaplan 2013.

  57. 57.

    One exception is Mills 2015.

  58. 58.

    Consider the work of mobile gender courts in DRC as explained by Lake 2014. Also, innovations by peacekeeping operations in DRC as described in Tull 2015.

  59. 59.

    Mampilly 2015 records the Naxalites in India who viewed international organizations as competitors to local governance.

  60. 60.

    Middle East Research Institute (MERI) 2016; Jo 2015, pp. 160–164.

  61. 61.

    International Crisis Group 2010.

  62. 62.

    See Sechser and Fuhrman 2013, p. 173.

  63. 63.

    Lake 2014.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Professor Heike Krieger for motivating this study and Professor Christophe Paulussen for helpful suggestions. I also wish to thank Yvette Isidori, Margaret McIntyre, and John Niehaus for research assistance. Part of this research effort was supported by the National Science Foundation (SES #1260218). The findings and recommendations in this chapter are those of the author and do not represent the views of the funding agency.

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  1. Department of Political Science, Texas A&M University, 2010 Allen Building 4348 TAMU, College Station, TX, 77843, USA

    Hyeran Jo

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  1. Criminal Law Section, Section Military Law, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Terry D. Gill

  2. Melbourne Law School, Carlton, Victoria, Australia

    Tim McCormack

  3. School of Law, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom

    Robin Geiß

  4. Department of Law/Public Law, Free University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Heike Krieger

  5. Research Department, T.M.C. Asser Instituut, The Hague, The Netherlands

    Christophe Paulussen

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Jo, H. (2018). Compliance with International Humanitarian Law by Non-State Armed Groups: How Can It Be Improved?. In: Gill, T., McCormack, T., Geiß, R., Krieger, H., Paulussen, C. (eds) Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law Volume 19, 2016. Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law, vol 19. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-213-2_3

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