Towards a single definition of armed conflict in international humanitarian law: A critique of internationalized armed conflict

International humanitarian law applies different rules depending on whether an armed conflict is international or internal in nature.Commentators agree that the distinction is "arbitrary," 1 "undesirable," 2 "difficult to justify," 3 and that it "frustrates the humanitarian purpose of the law of war in most of the instances in which war now occurs". 4 The views are not new.In 1948 the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) presented a report recommending that the Geneva Conventions apply the full extent of international humanitarian law "[i]n all cases of armed conflict which are not of an international character, especially cases of civil war, colonial conflicts, or wars of religion, which may occur in the territory of one or more of the High Contracting Parties". 5 In 1971, it submitted a draft to a Conference of Government Experts recommending a further proposition that was intended to make the whole body of international humanitarian law applicable to a civil war if foreign troops intervened. 6 The ICRC put forward a more subtle proposal along the same lines the following year. 7 Finally, in 1978 the Norwegian delegation of experts to the same Conference proposed that the two categories of armed conflict be dropped in favour of a single law for all kinds of armed conflict, again without success. 8Somewhat surprisingly, calls for a unified body of international humanitarian law have since died out, even though "the manifold expressions of dissatisfaction with the dichotomy between international and internal armed conflicts" 9 persist.