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CHAPTER ONE
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of Study
Within the modern regime of international law a branch has evolved referred to as law of armed conflict popularly known as International Humanitarian Law (IHL). International Humanitarian Law is found in the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949. Out of the 195 independent sovereign states in the world, virtually all the states have agreed to be bound by them . The Conventions have been developed and supplemented by two further agreements. Additional Protocols of 1977
(I) and (II) relating to the protection of victims of armed conflict2. The States parties to the 1949 Geneva Conventions have entrusted International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) through the statutes of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, to work for the understanding and dissemination of knowledge of International Humanitarian Law, applicable in armed conflict and to prepare any development thereof. International Humanitarian Law distinguishes two types of armed conflict namely;
(i) International Armed Conflicts (IAC), meaning fighting or opposition between two or more sovereign states.
(ii) Non-International armed conflicts (NIAC), meaning fighting or opposition between state and governmental forces and non-governmental armed groups.
Non-International armed conflict occur today much more frequently and entail more suffering than International Armed conflict. IHL of Non-International Armed Conflict is codified mainly in Article 3 Common to the Four Geneva Conventions for protection of war victims and the 1977 Additional Protocol II to the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949 and relating to the protection of victims of Non-International Armed Conflict. Others are the 1980 Convention on certain Conventional Weapons, as amended and its Protocols. The 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court; the 1997 Ottawa Convention banning anti-personal land mines, the 1993 Chemical Weapons Conventions and the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property and its second Protocol.
International Humanitarian Law was applied to Sierra Leone Internal Armed Conflict that lasted for 11 years from 1991-2002.One particular inhuman practice was cutting off the ears, noses, hands, arms and legs of non-combatants who were unwilling to cooperate with the rebel group. The victims ranged from small children to elderly women, in some cases, one limb was cut off, in others two limbs, typically two hands or arms. Rebel forces also detained, decapitated, burned alive and inflict bullets and machete wounds on civilians. Many died from their wounds before they could obtain any form of treatment. The rebel forces abducted missionaries and aid workers, ambushed humanitarian relief conveys and raided refugee sites. The Junta forces known as the Revolutionary United Forces (RUF) led by Foday Sankoh continued the long standing practice of abducting villagers and using them as forced labourers, sex slaves and human shields during confrontations with government and Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) forces. Boys were conscripted to become child soldiers and rebel forces used rape as a terror tactic against women.
Liberia on the other hand, had two devastating armed conflicts, which lasted from 1989 to 1996 and 1999 to 2003. The first conflict was led by Charles Taylor, leader of National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) who took over the government from Sergeant Samuel K. Doe in 1989. In 1999, Liberian Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD)-a rebel group operating out of Guineaattacked the town of Vioinjana in northwestern Liberia, marking the second civil war. In these two conflicts Liberian citizens were subjected to horrific abuses, including summary execution and numerous large-scale massacres, widespread and systematic rape and other forms of sexual violence, mutilation, and torture, and large-scale forced conscription and use of child combatants. The violence blighted the lives of tens of thousands civilians, displaced almost half the population and virtually grounded the country’s infrastructures .
On 14th August 2000, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1315 which requested “the Secretary General to negotiate agreement with the government of Sierra Leone to create an independent special court” whose subject matter and jurisdiction includes notable crimes against humanity, war crimes and other serious violations of International Humanitarian Law. The special court for Sierra Leone is composed of International and Sierra Leone judges, prosecutors and staff. It is hybrid court. This court indicted Charles Taylor for his part in atrocities related to his support for the RUF and issued an international warrant for his arrest. He was handed over in
March 2006 for trial. The former Liberian head of state was found guilty of war crimes in Sierra
Leone by the court and was sentence to prison terms of 50 years on Wednesday 16, May 2012.
He is presently serving this punishment in United Kingdom.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
That International Humanitarian law is applicable to Internal Armed Conflict is quite clear. Sadly, countless examples of violations of IHL are on the increase and the victims of war are civilians, for example there was indiscriminate killing of people by the Nigerian Military in Baga, Borno State in the North Eastern Nigeria in April 2013. Given that this body of law applies during times of extreme violence, implementing the law will always be a matter of great difficulty and, striving for effective compliance remains as urgent as ever. This research work has raised the following problem likely to be attributed to internal armed conflicts.
(1) Determining if and when a given situation amounts to an Internal Armed Conflict remains sometimes difficult.
(2) Lack of respect for IHL in Internal Armed Conflict is also another challenge especially in relation to non-state parties to such conflicts.
(3) There is also the issue of denial of applicability of humanitarian law, for example Government authorities might disagree that a particular situation qualifies as armed conflict. They might claim instead that it is a situation of ‘Internal Tensions and Disturbances’. A state might also be reluctant to permit any negotiations or engagement that in its view would grant “legitimacy” to the armed group.
(4) On the other hand, non-state groups might also deny the applicability of humanitarian law by refusing to recognize a body of law created by states or by claiming that they cannot be bound by obligations ratified by the government against whom they are fighting.
(5) There is lack of political will to implement humanitarian law. For example the military wing of a party might recognize the importance of respecting the law, while its political representatives might neither concede the applicability of humanitarian law nor support the implementation of its provisions. The case is also possible, where an Internal Armed Conflict is itself contrary to the principles, rules and spirit of humanitarian law, there will be no political will to implement the law, for example parties who perform certain acts as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a specific civilian population (Crime against Humanity) and who are interested only in seizing control of economic resources or wealth. The parties to such conflict lacks political will to recognize the existence of IHL, let alone to implement it just for them to achieve their objective.