Counter-terrorism and the protection of civilians: Armed non-state actors

Bericht

Recent events in the Middle East present the latest and undoubtedly not the last challenge to international engagement with armed non-state actors. Over the last many years international humanitarian law has increasingly regulated the behaviour of armed non-state actors with regard to the protection of civilians. At the same time, counter-terror measures have increasingly addressed such conduct, as well as controlled the extent to which other actors may interact with armed non-state actors. Yet there is a fundamental contradiction between these regulatory regimes. The report takes a case study approach to examine the conundrum facing policymakers and, not least, state militaries, when navigating these policy regimes in Iraq and Syria. It analyses two prominent armed non-state actors and their acceptance of these regulatory regimes the People´s Protection Units (YPG) and Islamic State. The report concludes that it is time to consider strategic interoperability of international humanitarian law and counter-terror regimes in order to maximise the protection of civilians. Drawing a line in the sand at compliance with international humanitarian law and forcing armed non-state actors to choose whether or not they stand with the "terrorists" (e.g. IS) can motivate many of them towards compliance (e.g. PKK/YPG and others such as Ahrar al-Sham), as long as counter-terror measures don´t undermine the incentives to do so.

Object Details

• ISBN: 978-87-7605-768-8
• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: DIIS Report ; No. 2015:14

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Sozialwissenschaften, Soziologie, Anthropologie

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Munive, Jairo ; Somer, Jonathan
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
• (where): Copenhagen
• (when): 2015

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/144726
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET