ABSTRACT
States have generally been inclined to regulate the conduct of international armed conflict but disinclined with regard to non-international armed conflict based on the imperatives of safeguarding tenets of sovereignty – domestic supremacy and freedom from external interference. This has played an important role in limiting law of armed conflict (LOAC)1 compliance and enforcement. Internally, states have domestic supremacy which encompasses a traditional monopoly on use of force. On this aspect, prevention of usurpation of governmental authority by non-state actors who may take up arms against the government has always been paramount. States while keen on regulatory frameworks that humanise war have been wary of compliance mechanisms that may adversely interfere with the choice of means and methods in war and thus undermine their expansive domestic prosecutorial prerogative. The net result is that over centuries the regulatory framework relating to inter-state LOAC has advanced more than its intrastate counterpart.2 In effect, thus, the extent to ‘which the customary rules are applicable to armed conflict not of an international nature’ is often diluted by states with many LOAC violations not seen as readily extending to non-international armed conflicts which affects legal questions as breaches are often domestically prosecuted as ordinary crimes.
