Non-international armed conflict is often, mistakenly, treated as a residual regime. The icc shows a tendency to classify situations as non-international armed conflicts without considering whether the situation concerned may instead (or at the same time) qualify as an international armed conflict. A comprehensive overview of the way these institutions treated the material scope of application of ihl shows that the ad hoc tribunals tended to avoid classification as either international or non-international armed conflict, and merely found that a generic ‘armed conflict’ existed at the relevant time.
This means, according to our analysis, that war crimes could already have taken place before March 2022’ explains Dr Chiara Redealli.This article analyses how international criminal courts and tribunals have pronounced on the contextual elements of their respective war crimes provisions. What has changed, since February 2022, is the intensity of the violence and its impact on the civilian population. Indeed, according to IHL criteria, there have been an IAC between Russia and Ukraine and two NIACs in Ukraine since 2014. ‘Russia’s invasion of Ukraine did not change our classification of the armed conflicts in the region. Europe is also the theatre of an international armed conflict (IAC) between Ukraine and Russia, and of two non-international armed conflicts (NIACs) in Ukraine opposing governmental forces with the self-proclaimed ‘People’s Republics’ of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine.
The following military occupations constitute the majority of armed conflicts that are taking place in Europe, four out of seven conflicts: Russia is currently occupying Crimea (Ukraine), Transdniestria (Moldova), as well as South Ossetia and Abkhazia (Georgia), while Armenia is occupying parts of Nagorno Karabakh (Azerbaijan).
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