The basic principles of LOIAC are beyond dispute. The principle of distinction (between combatants and civilians), the principle of causing no unnecessary suffering to combatants, the principle of proportionality in attack, etc., are elevated to the pinnacle of the law regulating the conduct of hostilities in international armed conflict. However, as one descends from fundamentals to specifics, consensus shrinks. In the opinion of the present writer, the principal problems confronting LOIAC today are as follows:

1. (i) Conflicting deep-seated convictions about the direction that LOIAC should take have emerged during the drafting of Additional Protocol I of 1977. The result, after more than a quarter of a century, plagued by intransigent theoretical disagreements and divergent practice (even among nations otherwise like-minded), has been a veritable fault-line separating contracting Parties of the Protocol from some key players in the international arena led by the United States. Although many of the Protocol's provisions are uncontested, it would be folly to underrate the significance of the profound division of opinion regarding topics such as conditions of lawful combatancy or the use of belligerent reprisals against civilians. Nevertheless, there is no apparent desire to re-examine the issues by reopening a Pandora's box of toil and trouble.

2. (ii) The perennial bone of contention of the post-World War II period has been the legality of nuclear weapons. In the wake of an unsatisfactory Advisory Opinion by the International Court of Justice in 1996, there has been no abatement in the passionate controversy relating to the circumstances in which belligerent States may employ these formidable weapons. The only safe way to ensure that nuclear weapons be banned or restricted is to adopt a multilateral treaty to that effect. It must be borne in mind that, whereas in other fields of LOIAC custom often precedes treaty law, in the domain of prohibited weapons – thus far at least – customary international law has generally moved in the footsteps of existing treaty law.

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