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Despite the existence of a comprehensive international legal framework protecting children in armed conflict, ensuring its respect by armed non-State actors (ANSAs) still remains an important challenge. This can be linked to several circumstances, such as their lack of knowledge of the law, the absence of an incentive to abide by the applicable rules, their fragmented structure and their lack of capacity to implement the applicable framework. Certain practical cases, however, show that ANSAs' behaviours may vary throughout armed conflicts. While certain groups have, at a given moment, breached some of their international obligations, others have shown some degree of commitment to respecting children's safeguards. When addressing the prohibition of recruiting and using children in hostilities, the reasons behind these variations have remained insufficiently explored. This article reviews some of the lessons learned from Geneva Call's experience when engaging ANSAs towards their compliance with child protection norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last few decades, the role of non-state armed groups has become an essential topic of analysis and discussion to better understand international humanitarian law dynamics. While their increasing importance is uncontroversial, their place and regulation in specific areas of international law still remains unclear or insufficiently explored. Chief among these is the possible non-state armed groups' international responsibility. Although it is undisputed that some of these entities breach their international law obligations, others seemingly engage with certain rules on the topic. This article addresses some legal consequences of such scenarios. Taking into account the principle of equality of belligerents in noninternational armed conflicts, two issues are dealt with: i) the existence of "nonstate" organs that could trigger the attribution of violations of international rules to non-state armed groups; ii) possible reparations owed by these non-state entities for their breaches during armed conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Common Article 3 to the four Geneva Conventions encourages the parties to a non-international armed conflict to bring into force international humanitarian law provisions through the conclusion of special agreements. Since armed groups are ever more frequent participants in contemporary armed conflicts, the relevance of those agreements as means to enhance compliance with IHL has grown as well. The decision-making process of special agreements recognizes that all the parties to the conflict participate in the clarification and expansion of the applicable rights and obligations in a way that is consistent with the principle of equality of belligerents. This provides incentives for armed groups to respect the IHL rules they have themselves negotiated. However, even upon the conclusion of such agreements, it remains unclear which legal regime governs them. This paper will argue that special agreements are governed by international law instead of domestic law or a sui generis legal regime. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Most of the present rules of international law regulate the behavior of States. Within States, however, there are other entities such as corporations, non-governmental organizations, individuals, international governmental organizations and armed opposition groups that are regulated by different national and international regimes. In this regard, non-State armed opposition groups present particular challenges to international law due to their dominant presence and participation in armed conflicts. Armed opposition groups are one of the most important actors in international humanitarian law today. Yet, taking into consideration that they a priori have certain international humanitarian obligations to fulfill, it remains unclear what the implications are when they, as a group, commit violations. Among these uncertainties, is that there is no formally recognized mechanism to attribute such breaches to the relevant non - state armed opposition group as such. In fact, unlike States, they have no organs. Similarly, there is also no consensus on circumstance that could preclude the wrongfulness of these breaches for armed opposition groups. By challenging the State-centric system of public international law, this article analyses the possible application of certain rules contained in the International Law Commission's Articles on the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts (2001) to violations of international humanitarian law by armed opposition groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The right to truth, as a legal concept, has emerged in different national, regional and international settings of human rights protection. It refers to the state's obligation to provide information to the victims, their families, and the society as a whole, about the circumstances in which gross human rights violations were committed. The truth is analyzed, therefore, as the consequence of a process involving the search of justice and the issue of rulings that have a merely reparational goal. However, for the safeguard international systems, this right has not been clearly recognized, at least in a conventional manner. Its mention in these systems is limited and ambiguous. Therefore, this paper aims to study how the Human Rights Inter-American System has defined the right to truth, taking as study case the El Mozote Massacre, which took place in El Salvador in 1981. This event still today remains unpunished, leaving the Salvadorian society without justice or reparation, but fundamentally without memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]