Journal of Conflict and Security Law Advance Access originally published online on March 27, 2009
Journal of Conflict and Security Law 2008 13(3):393-400; doi:10.1093/jcsl/krp007
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Defining Armed Conflict
* Robert and Marion Short Chair in Law, University of Notre Dame and Chair of the International Law Association Committee on the Use of Force.
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Abstract |
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Within hours of the 9/11 attacks in the United States, President George W. Bush declared ‘a global war on terrorism’. Experts around the world assumed this declaration was a rallying cry, a rhetorical device to galvanise the nation to serious action. By November 2001, however, the evidence began to mount that the President was ordering actions that could only be lawful in a de jure armed conflict: targeting to kill without warning, indefinite detention without trial and search and seizure on the high seas without consent. It was difficult to criticise these actions on the basis of international law, however, given that international law contained no widely accepted definition of armed conflict. By May 2005, the International Law Association (ILA) determined that there was a pressing need for a report on the meaning of armed conflict supported by international law. The Use of Force Committee presented its Initial Report on the Meaning of Armed Conflict in International Law at the Rio de Janeiro biennial meeting of the ILA in August 2008. The Report concludes that all armed conflicts have as a minimum of two necessary characteristics: (1) the presence of organized groups that are (2) engaged in intense armed fighting. The Report indicates that while the United States has been engaged in an armed conflict in Afghanistan and in Iraq since 9/11, the US has not been engaged in a global armed conflict. The Initial Report will be expanded for presentation in final form in 2010 at The Hague biennial meeting.