The Protection of Civilians in New Wars: Return to the Old Law of Nations or Exit from Contemporary International Humanitarian Law?

Abstract

In this paper, the development of alternative regulatory tools (codes of conduct, monitoring mechanisms, etc.) dealing with the protection of civilians during armed conflicts is scrutinized in the context of “new wars”. The paper analyses the connections between these alternative regulatory tools and classical international humanitarian law (IHL) instruments. The paper suggests that the profusion of alternative regulatory tools can help to disseminate classical IHL norms and to adapt them to contemporary warfare. The paper also envisages the possibility of a new “lex armorum” emerging from these new regulatory tools and challenging classical IHL.

Note: Downloadable document is in French.

Keywords: warfare regulation, codes of conduct, international humanitarian law, new wars, new lex armorum, international law