The Issues Of Non-State Armed Groups In International Humanitarian Law

Most of today’s armed conflicts are non-international or mixed nature conflicts whichare characterized by one or more non-state armed groups (NSAGs) participation. We mustconsider the factors that problems arising from the non-state armed groups to respectinternational humanitarian law. First, non-state armed groups comparing with the rulinggovernment, resources and power disparities in non-international armed conflicts.Asymmetry of the power making disadvantaged party reluctant to be constrained by thesame ways and means of warfare to the other party. Further, the asymmetry allows thedisadvantaged party to be forced to use illegal means and methods of warfare to remedydisadvantages from military and economic they faced. If the non-state armed groups donot have enough power to support to be compliance with international humanitarian law,then the asymmetry will lead to violations and destruction of the rules. In addition, there isclear differences between the non-state armed groups and the regular army, mostlynon-state armed groups compose by militia lack of military training, and there is no stricthierarchy relationships and effective management and control structure inside theorganization, which is tantamount to such off reins of the horse because of little internaldiscipline or other social controls imposed to them to comply. Finally, none of the non-State armed groups bear responsibilities for violations of consciousness. The reasonsmentioned above lead non-state armed groups voluntarily comply with internationalhumanitarian law to become a fluke luxury.So, if we want to regulate the conducts of hostilities by non-State armed groups, orto make them comply with international humanitarian law, we must break somedifficulties. First is to break the state monopoly behavior in this area, namely theinterpretation of IHL, such as how to recognize the identity of the armed groups and whatis an armed conflict. What’s more, we must change the model from the existing post-judgment (such as the International criminal justice claims)(i.e. when armed conflictoccurs) to a timely announcement manner, and related parties on conflict must accept thesupervision of the international community whether compliance with the law or not.Second, how can we make international humanitarian law be applicable to non-statearmed groups. These two aspects are related to national sovereignty, and it is difficult tofind ways to bypass the sovereignty away. Third, how can non-state armed groups tocomply IHL. My paper is based on responses to these challenges and dilemmas departure, the firstis to introduce the definition and practices of international non-state armed groups, andthen address the impact of classification of non-state armed groups and armed conflict inpractice, then is to analyze the difficulties of compliance of international humanitarian lawin armed conflict because of the classification of non-state armed groups. In the end, theauthor points the paths of solutions to these problems.