Impact of the Applicability of Common Article 3 on the Asymmetric Warfare

Abstract

Although International Humanitarian Law endeavors to curtail the calamities of warfare both at international and at national level in the form of non-international armed conflict (NIAC) and international armed conflict (IAC) yet due to the asymmetric nature of warfare there is a dire need to expand the scope of IHL especially the common article 3 (CA3) and the Additional protocol II (ApII) in order to implement it effectively. This article insinuates to broaden the scope of the international humanitarian Law in order to cater the unnecessary suffering and calamities caused the asymmetric warfare. The objective is to further chalking out an adhesive framework and mechanism to cover the cases of asymmetric warfare by extending the scope of Common Article 3 and additional protocol II as well. The research article inspects how asymmetric and symmetric warfare is distinguished and characterized to highlight the evolving dimensions of asymmetric warfare with time.