6 - Belligerent Reprisals in Non-international Armed Conflict

Summary

Chapter 6 inquires into the legality and purposes of belligerent reprisals in non-international armed conflict. At the outset, it delves into the travaux préparatoires of Additional Protocol II to the 1949 Geneva Conventions to overcome the paucity of black-letter provisions on belligerent reprisals in this type of conflicts and identify relevant practice indicating which reprisals are prohibited (and which are permissible). Then, it looks into the work of several fact-finding commissions, mandated investigations and expert bodies addressing situations of non-international armed conflict (including those in Myanmar, South Sudan, Yemen and Syria) to gauge their formalization of the mechanism. The re-instatement of reciprocity in the functioning of belligerent reprisals emerges clearly from the purpose of evening out the legal and substantive imbalance brought about by enemy breaches. This analysis results in a novel understanding of belligerent reprisals as a tool concerned with the overall equilibrium in the legal relationship between parties to the conflict and aimed at remedying their inequality of status.