When Conflict Recurs

Abstract

Abstract Conflict classification is essential for determining when the law of armed conflict applies and the concomitant protections, rights, and obligations. What happens, however, when a conflict ends or appears to end but violence and hostilities bubble up again? The complexity of conflict identification and classification and the challenges of analyzing the facts and actors in such new violence raise difficult questions regarding how to assess whether and when such new violence constitutes an armed conflict. This chapter analyzes the appropriate analytical tools and thresholds for identifying and characterizing conflict when violence recurs. Given the low threshold for international armed conflicts, a quicker identification of armed conflict when violence recurs after an inter-state conflict is unlikely. However, such scenarios pose challenging questions whether actions by a proxy group or other entity could constitute an international armed conflict and whether the threshold for such determination might be easier to satisfy after a recent conflict between the two states. In non-international armed conflicts, one overarching question is whether the Tadić factors of intensity and organization are the correct approach when violence recurs after conflict, or whether a lower threshold or “accelerated analysis” is more appropriate. Similarly, the nature of the armed group engaged in the resurgence of hostilities, or the location and nature of the hostilities, could all be consequential, such that the thresholds or framework for hostilities recurring with the same group or in the same location may not be the same as that for new or reconstituted groups or different locations.