Non-International Armed Conflicts in International Law

NIACs and IACs

Every armed conflict is either international or non-international in character (see infra 70). Non-international armed conflicts (NIACs) – often called internal armed conflicts or, in the past, civil wars – are an older phenomenon than the modern nation-State. The Roman Republic was subverted and ultimately destroyed by enervating civil strife. The late Roman Empire was shaken to its foundations by near-constant bruising fights between rivals who wished to assume the purple. The Islamic Caliphate went through the turmoil of fitna; and in the long history of the Chinese Empire regimes and dynasties often succumbed to aggressive warlords. Throughout medieval and early modern Europe, internal conflicts between barons and kings, interspersed by many a jacquerie and fronde, were commonplace. In a multitude of countries the animosities and fervour of such ruptures (exemplified by the War of the Roses in England) fed them for long periods of time. In the contemporary era, NIACs like the American Civil War (1861–5) or the Spanish Civil War (1936–9) left scars of self-inflicted wounds not healed for generations.

In the past half-century alone, NIACs led to genocide and appalling massacres in Cambodia, Congo, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. In the same (post-colonial) period, abundant losses of life and tangible damage to property were caused by incessant ordeals of NIACs (meeting the preconditions set out in Chapter 2) in scores of other countries all over the globe. Some of these NIACs were (or are) exceptionally brutal; others were (or are) less harsh. Some are still in progress; others are definitely over; and still others are in danger of re-eruption. Then, there are places of unrest and confrontation (not listed here) that are teetering on the brink of a NIAC.