From Peacekeepers to Parties to the Conflict: An IHL’s Appraisal of the Role of UN Peace Operations in NIACs

The article analyses the application of international humanitarian law (IHL) to UN ‘peace operations’ when, due to their factual involvement in hostilities, they become parties to a non-international armed conflict. It argues that the notion of party to the conflict allows to focus on the collective entity and its obligations, and to infer the status of individual members of the operation from the mission's collective status. In assessing the consequences of that scenario, the article further discusses the external and internal borders of the scope of the notion of party to the conflict as applied to UN peace operations, and examines the impact of the loss of protection from attack on the principle of distinction. It concludes by suggesting that, in light of the increasing involvement of UN peace operations in situations that factually amount to armed conflict, an evolutionary interpretation of the theory of IHL's application to the situation is needed.