![]() Moreover, massive attacks can be launched by a single individual or by a group that is organized entirely on-line. They are also inherently transborder, thereby frustrating any approach to classification based on geographical factors. Cyber operations have the potential for producing vast societal and economic disruption without causing the physical damage typically associated with armed conflict. In the future, cyber warfare will further complicate classification. Was such terrorism international in character because it transcended borders or non-international because it did not involve the forces of one State engaging in hostilities against those of another (or was it even armed conflict at all)? 3 More recently, external recognition of the National Transitional Council as the legitimate government of Libya raised the question of whether such recognition ‘de-internationalized’ the conflict between the States that were fighting on the side of the rebels and Qaddafi’s forces? 4 ![]() 2 Less than a decade later, transnational terrorism refocused attention on classification issues. For instance, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) struggled with criteria for internationalization of non-international conflict in its first case, Tadic. The current difficulties derive from the advent of hostilities over the past two decades that do not neatly fit the traditional bifurcation of conflict into either State-on-State or purely internal. Accordingly, classification is a subject of seminal importance. 1 Classifying the conflict in question is always the first step in any international humanitarian law analysis, for the nature of the conflict determines the applicable legal regime. ![]() The article concludes that while cyber exchanges may sometimes amount to international armed conflict, classification as non-international armed conflict is problematic.įew international humanitarian law topics are proving as problematic in modern warfare as ‘classification of conflict’, that is, the identification of the type of conflict to which particular hostilities amount as a matter of law. Groups organized on-line may be assessed on a case-by-case basis, but the traditional organization criteria render it difficult for them to qualify. Cyber operations conducted by individuals cannot qualify because they are insufficiently ‘organized’. Injury or damage is not alone sufficient. Intensity also requires that the level of violence exceed that of riots or civil disturbances. To be sufficiently intense, such cyber operations must be ‘protracted’ isolated incidents do not suffice. ‘Non-international armed conflict’ occurs when hostilities between a State and an ‘organized’ armed group reach a particular level of intensity. The article contends that the former criterion is met when cyber operations amount to an ‘attack’ because they injure individuals or damage objects, whereas the latter requires that the operations be between or attributable to States. ‘International armed conflicts’ are those that are ‘armed’ and ‘international’. This article examines the classification of conflicts consisting of only cyber operations under international humanitarian law.
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