The law of armed conflict otherwise referred to as international humanitarian law, traditionally evolved to regulate conventional military conflicts between sovereign states’ regular armies that operated in sparsely populated areas under similar principles using similar means of warfare. Today, it seems that at a glance, this law is inadequate to regulate seemingly indefinite asymmetric warfare conducted between regular armies and irregular, sub-state militias. The rise of transnational asymmetric conflict coupled with new technologies of warfare prompted a debate on the applicability of international humanitarian law and other contemporary laws of armed conflict on such conflicts. This work evaluates the nature and character of this atypical warfare and the response offered by the international humanitarian law. The work concludes that actors in this conflict have a duty to observe the principles of international humanitarian law as this law covers action perpetrated by parties to this conflict.

Author Name: Hagler Okorie

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Keywords: asymmetric, transnational, international humanitarian law, armed conflict, distinction, nonstate actors, Geneva Conventions, Additional Protocols.

ISSN: 2581-5148

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