ABSTRACT
Cedric Ryngaert starts from the finding that treaties on international humanitarian law – the Geneva Conventions and their Protocols in particular – contain binding obligations for non-state armed groups. In his chapter, he examines how such groups can be bound by such treaties if they are not formal parties to the treaty. He concludes that the legitimacy of the binding character of the treaties for non-state actors is bolstered when states secure the consent of non-state actors to be bound by the treaties through various formal and informal mechanisms.
