Punishment of non-state actors in non-international armed conflict

Non-State actors--like State actors--are increasingly exposed to the threat of accountability and punishment for abuses of human rights. If human rights law has shown itself to be somewhat limited with respect to non-State actors precisely because it is focused on the obligations of the State towards individuals within its jurisdiction, this is not the case when it comes to individual liability for international crimes. The broadening of the scope of the concept of “crimes against humanity” and war crimes in recent years, so as to include acts committed in time of non-international armed conflict, has been of decisive importance in this respect. As the judges at Nuremberg observed in condemning the Nazi leaders for their atrocities: “[c]rimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals who commit such crimes can the provisions of international law be enforced.”