Application of International Human Rights Law in Non-International Armed Conflicts: Contemporary Challenges and Road Ahead

War is not new to the mankind, however, the kind of wars that man has indulged into is no doubt destructive, devastating and ruinous. The existing legal framework of Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian Law (IHL) situates its existence as a response to the dreadful World Wars and attempts to humanize future conflicts. In order to extend its jurisdiction to as many instances as possible IHL distinguishes into two types of armed conflicts viz, International and Non-international.

However, the cold war and the post-cold war era, arising after World War II saw the emergence of the fourth generation of warfare wherethe State has lost its monopoly over war and a considerable increase in Non-International Armed Conflicts (NIAC) is seen. The paper analyses contemporary forms of NIAC‘s that have emerged recently and have posed serious implications on the application of IHL and raised doubts on its significance to address issues of human rights violations during NIAC. The paper then seeks to pose questions that been raised by the applicability of human rights law to NIACs and has tried to answer the controversial question as to whether non-state actors are bound by human rights obligations. This article tries to analyze where international law stands now of these questions and attempts to find the applicability and reliability of the International Human Rights framework during the NIACs and its relation vis-à-vis IHL.