Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Table of cases
- Table of treaties
- Table of Security Council resolutions
- Table of General Assembly resolutions
- Abbreviations
- 1 The framework
- 2 The preconditions of a NIAC
- 3 Thresholds and interaction of armed conflicts
- 4 Insurgent armed groups and individuals
- 5 Foreign intervention in a NIAC
- 6 Recognition
- 7 State responsibility
- 8 The principal LONIAC treaty provisions
- 9 Additional treaty texts
- 10 NIAC war crimes
- 11 LONIAC customary international law
- 12 LONIAC and human rights law
- Conclusions
- Index of persons
- Index of subjects
- References
3 - Thresholds and interaction of armed conflicts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Table of cases
- Table of treaties
- Table of Security Council resolutions
- Table of General Assembly resolutions
- Abbreviations
- 1 The framework
- 2 The preconditions of a NIAC
- 3 Thresholds and interaction of armed conflicts
- 4 Insurgent armed groups and individuals
- 5 Foreign intervention in a NIAC
- 6 Recognition
- 7 State responsibility
- 8 The principal LONIAC treaty provisions
- 9 Additional treaty texts
- 10 NIAC war crimes
- 11 LONIAC customary international law
- 12 LONIAC and human rights law
- Conclusions
- Index of persons
- Index of subjects
- References
Summary
The thresholds of armed conflicts
There are three thresholds of armed conflicts – two relating to NIACs and one to IACs – preceded by a tier of violence lying below the first threshold.
Below-the-threshold violence
Below-the-threshold violence relates to ‘isolated and sporadic’ internal disturbances (see supra 65). These extend to all forms of disorganized – individual or mob – violence, which do not make the grade of an armed conflict, although they may cause mayhem and provoke savage crackdowns by governmental forces. Grave internal disturbances may cause an incumbent Government to be reeling, and perhaps even force a political realignment or dissolution of the legislature, but that does not mean that a NIAC has been cut loose.
Internal disturbances need not be directed against an incumbent Government (see supra 86). Often, they give vent to sectarian – inter-ethnic or inter-religious – friction (e.g., what appears to be a perennial Hindu/Muslim tension in the Indian sub-continent). Whether or not it is the direct target, the Government may collapse as a result of the chaos produced.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Non-International Armed Conflicts in International Law , pp. 37 - 57Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014