ABSTRACT
Since the end of the Cold War, and with the proliferation of noninternational armed conflicts, the challenge of regulating activities of nonstate actors (including multinational corporations, nonstate armed groups, groups designated as terrorist, and private military and security companies) has become more pronounced given the fact that international humanitarian law and international human rights law were created by states and designed in the first instance to regulate state behavior. Increased internal armed conflicts involve an increased number of nonstate actors, resulting in an increased number of actors who may be protected differently than state actors and present distinct challenges for the imposition of responsibility for crimes. The challenge is made all the more complex by the diversity of actors which might broadly be characterized as nonstate actors and of the patchwork of domestic and international law which may apply to them. For the purposes of this chapter, we treat actors as falling into several categories: nonstate armed groups, and the related category of terrorist groups; multinational corporations, and private military and security companies. While the groups are diverse, they also share some commonalities: there are often questions as to whether and how international humanitarian law obligations and protections may apply to them, the nature of their human rights obligations, and what types of international crimes for which either groups or individual members may be considered responsible. The shared questions arise from the distinction in international humanitarian law between international and non-international armed conflicts, which entails differential obligations and protections depending upon the type of conflict and the role of the combatant, and is grounded in the state-centric nature of international law and the desire which states have not to treat nonstate actors as equivalents. States, after all, are traditionally the primary subjects of international law, the bearers of rights and responsibilities.
