The Pseudo Legal Personality of Non-state Armed Groups in International Law

Abstract

The notion of the ‘Law of nations’ was generally understood to be ‘a body of rules and principles which are binding upon states in their relations with one another’. By 1949, when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) rendered its opinion in the Reparations for Injuries Suffered in the Employment of the United Nations case, it became clear that such a traditional conception of ‘the law of nations’ had become antiquated. Thus began the shift from a definition of ‘the law of nations’, that was limited to states as subjects of the law, to what we call now ‘international law’, which extends recognition of legal personality to entities other than states. International law scholarship and practice suggest that this extension of legal personality is very limited, and includes only international organisations, and in very exceptional circumstances, non-state organisations, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross.