West Support Publishes New Research on Identifying International Armed Conflict
In 2025 the ICRC counted more than 120 active hostilities across over sixty countries, involving upwards of 130 non-state armed groups. The test for identifying an international armed conflict dates to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, and states that start wars have learned to work around it — because the identification decides which protections apply, and whether there is anything to prosecute.
West Support took the decision to address this directly. Our team of researchers has published a peer-reviewed article in the Brooklyn Journal of International Law.
The subject is the identification of the existence of an international armed conflict. The article examines the definitions currently in force, sets out where they fail against the realities of modern warfare, and weighs the consequences of getting the identification wrong.
On the evidence of two conflicts — Ukraine (2014–2022) and Afghanistan (2001–2021) — the article shows that the existing definitions classified them wrongly, and sets out a new one: an international armed conflict exists where an act of aggression has been perpetrated by one state against another, provided that at least one state involved recognises itself as the victim of that aggression. The authors name it the Havryshuk Definition of IAC, and formulate it to prevent such errors.
Read the full abstract, citation and links to the published article →
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