Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks: Operationalizing the Law of Armed Conflict in New Warfare

Gone are the days of soldiers facing each other across large battlefields, tanks shelling tanks, and fighter jets engaging in dogfights. War, or armed conflict, to use a more precise legal term, now takes place everywhere in cities, refugee camps and other historically non-military areas and involves or affects nearly everyone in the area. These changes have a powerful impact on the conduct of hostilities. The law of armed conflict (LOAC), also known as the laws of war or international humanitarian law (IHL),1 was developed and codified in times of more traditional state-state conflicts. It must now adapt to these new and more complicated conflicts, which we call new warfare.