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The law of war is the component of international law that regulates the conditions for initiating war ( jus ad bellum) and the conduct of hostilities ( jus in bello ). Laws of war define sovereignty and nationhood, states and territories, occupation, and other critical terms of law.
International humanitarian law (IHL), also referred to as the laws of armed conflict, is the law that regulates the conduct of war (jus in bello). It is a branch of international law that seeks to limit the effects of armed conflict by protecting persons who are not participating in hostilities and by restricting and regulating the means and methods of warfare available to combatants.
The original document in single pages, 1864 [1] The Geneva Conventions are international humanitarian laws consisting of four treaties and three additional protocols that establish international legal standards for humanitarian treatment in war. The singular term Geneva Convention colloquially denotes the agreements of 1949, negotiated in the ...
Definition. Jus ad bellum is sometimes considered a part of the laws of war, but the term "laws of war" is more often considered to refer only to jus in bello, which, as noted above, concerns whether a war is conducted justly, or lawfully (regardless of whether the initiation of hostilities was just).
Property law. The right of conquest was historically a right of ownership to land after immediate possession via force of arms. It was recognized as a principle of international law that gradually deteriorated in significance until its proscription in the aftermath of World War II following the concept of crimes against peace introduced in the ...
Occupation and the laws of war. A dominant principle that guided combatants through much of history was "to the victory belong the spoils". Emer de Vattel, in The Law of Nations (1758), presented an early codification of the distinction between annexation of territory and military occupation, the latter being regarded as temporary, due to the natural right of states to their "continued existence".
Reprisal. A reprisal is a limited and deliberate violation of international law to punish another sovereign state that has already broken them. [1] [2] Since the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions (AP 1), reprisals in the laws of war are extremely limited, [3] as they commonly breach the rights of non-combatants .
Historically the law of armed conflict only applied to sovereign states. Non-international conflicts were governed by the domestic law of the State concerned. Under the current terms of the Rome Statute the use of human shields is defined as a war crime only in the context of an international armed conflict.