Although contemporary international humanitarian law (IHL) has existed for more than 60 years, only recently have international lawyers and scholars focused their attention on how to enhance IHL compliance.Footnote ¹ In todays’ armed conflicts, the effectiveness of this legal regime faces challenges from different quarters. This can be linked to several circumstances – for example, the unwillingness of the parties to acknowledge that a situation of violence amounts to an armed conflict, the absence of an incentive for the parties to abide by IHL, or their lack of appropriate structure or resources to acknowledge, understand and implement their international obligations.Footnote ² The particular features of these scenarios reveal the importance of implementing strategies specifically aimed at achieving IHL compliance. While the importance of the subject is certainly undisputed, how to actually achieve protective outcomes has led to a variety of proposals.

In Inducing Compliance with International Humanitarian Law, Heike Krieger offers an opportunity to explore some of these issues through the lens of some of the most highly qualified contributors in a collection of 21 topical essays. Running in parallel with an exponential increase of academic literature on the subject,Footnote ³ the editor took upon herself the task of putting together an interdisciplinary analysis of different compliance mechanisms which have been ‘in the foreground of international efforts in recent years’.Footnote ⁴ The book focuses on war-torn areas of limited statehood in the African Great Lakes Region. There, ‘[f]ragmented armed groups fight each other or armed forces of a government, which represents only the remainders of collapsed State structures’.Footnote ⁵ Considering that governmental authorities would not be able to enforce the law, it remains unclear who may replace the state and how this replacement would take place. Unraveling these issues is not merely an intellectual exercise, and the examples provided in the book validate their importance, in particular for individuals living in those territories. Based both on its geographical scope and on the inclusion of legal and political sciences pieces, Inducing Compliance with International Humanitarian Law fills an important gap in the literature.

The book organizes the various topics that it covers in an introduction and four parts, all of which are subject to vigorous academic debate. Published in 2015, the volume was conceived as an edited collective because improving respect for IHL requires an exchange of ideas, reflections and experiences between international lawyers, political and social scientists and practitioners. Together, the chapters give a good overview of the efficiency and legitimacy of IHL vis-à-vis the parties to armed conflicts, be they non-state armed groups (NSAGs) or states.

In the introduction, Krieger identifies some of the main difficulties of addressing compliance with IHL in the African Great Lakes Region. In particular: i) the possible asymmetry between states and NSAGs in terms of national criminal prosecution, which ‘directly affects the classically most important motive for compliance in international law – reciprocity – and seems to diminish the prospect of compliance based on the norm's legitimacy’;Footnote ⁶ ii) the unlawful nature of NSAGs’ action, which may affect their lack of willingness to voluntarily comply with the law; and iii) the fragmentation of NSAGs and states, whose collapsing structures make any internalization, enforcement and dissemination of humanitarian norms highly unlikely.

Part I addresses certain conditions for IHL compliance, focusing specifically on non-hierarchical instruments. Understanding the reasons why this legal regime is violated is a necessary step to persuade those responsible to respect the law. Traditionally, international legal compliance theories have addressed why states follow international rules, claiming that contrary to the popular belief, they do observe international law and breaches are actually rare.Footnote ⁷ As the book under review shows, in armed conflicts involving failed or failing states and fragmented or decentralized NSAGs,Footnote ⁸ the reality can be different. Incentives to comply with international law can indeed be weak.Footnote ⁹ Wood, precisely, explores the motives for insurgent violence against the civilian population. According to him, this is a rational action, as ‘it helps insurgents stave off collapse and denies victory to the government’.Footnote ¹⁰ In order to induce NSAGs to respect the law, Part I includes a variety of proposals, such as the inclusion of rebel governance into IHL-promotion efforts with the goal of maintaining services and stability for the population living in those territories. Furthermore, it is proposed to directly engage these non-state entities on humanitarian norms, as certain international non-governmental organizations (for instance the ICRC and Geneva Call) have done; and to persuade their leaders, who will then replicate this internally. Finally, it is suggested to recognize that NSAGs have ‘some sort of role in the creation, translation and enforcement of humanitarian norms in order to foster a sense of ownership and therefore improve levels of compliance’.Footnote ¹¹ Although some important challenges by non-state armed groups are addressed throughout the five chapters, it remains unclear why strategies on how to improve compliance by failed or failing states are not similarly explored. As the book has geographical and thematic scopes (the African Great Lakes Region and IHL), the analysis of governmental structures should have also been included.

Part II deals with judicial procedures and hierarchical enforcement on different levels, focusing in particular on different aspects of prosecutions. Unlike Part I, it is noteworthy that two chapters specifically refer to a state's response to IHL violations, focusing on the Congolese legal system.Footnote ¹² Kumbu and Kahombo provide in this sense some insights into the difficulties the Democratic Republic of Congo faces when attempting to effectively prosecute war crimes. Interestingly, Willms’ chapter explores NSAGs’ courts as an alternative for law enforcement, taking into account a basic dilemma:

He then concludes that ‘[i]f the leadership of an armed group is genuinely willing to enforce humanitarian law, courts of that armed group have a relatively high potential to be successful in inducing compliance’.Footnote ¹⁴ This topic is later addressed by Fleck, who recognizes that even if these organs were unconstitutional and illegal under national frameworks, they may well be legitimate and lawful under IHL.Footnote ¹⁵ However, Fleck concludes that the practice, still rudimentary, has not provided a clear picture on this issue. The possibility of armed groups creating judicial bodies and passing sentences has real life practical utility. For instance, the Bemba Gombo Pre-Trial Chamber addressed the lack ‘of a functional military judicial within the [Mouvement de Libération du Congo] through which [Bemba Gombo] could have punished crimes committed and prevented their future repetition during the period of intervention’.Footnote ¹⁶ More recently, a former member of a Syrian NSAG was sentenced to life imprisonment by a Swedish court for violating IHL through his participation in the killing of seven individuals. The defence argued that this was, in fact, the enforcement of a death sentence by a NSAG's court following a trial.Footnote ¹⁷

Part III includes six chapters on the role of international organizations for ensuring compliance. Steiger begins by arguing that enforcement of IHL by human rights bodies ‘is a development that cannot be turned back but will continue and intensify in the future. It serves justice and the protection of human beings and thus serves human rights’.Footnote ¹⁸ He, indeed, suggests that these institutions fill a gap left by the absence of an individual complaints procedure for IHL violations, and this is done not by choice, but by a mandatory obligation. Klostermann follows this ‘institutional approach’ and deals with the UN Security Council (UNSC) involvement in securing respect with those international norms dealing with children and armed conflict. In 1999, the UNSC passed Resolution 1261, calling the parties to the conflicts to respect their legal obligations on this topic. In addition, it also required the UN Secretary General to submit a report on the implementation of the resolution.Footnote ¹⁹ In 2001, the UNSC requested that the report includes as an annex a list of parties that recruit and use child soldiers,Footnote ²⁰ with the aim of ‘naming and shaming’ the perpetrators.Footnote ²¹ In 2005, after the UN Secretary General suggested the establishment of a mechanism for the monitoring of six grave violations of children's rights, the UNSC issued Resolution 1612, which created the Working Group of Children and Armed Conflict.Footnote ²² As Clapham explains:

Klostermann presents an interesting perspective about the effectiveness of the system installed by the UNSC by discussing the reasons to comply with these rules. According to her, the party in question follows a rule: i) because the actor fears the punishment of rule enforcers (coercion); ii) because the actor sees the rule as in its own self-interest (self–interest); and iii) because the actor feels the rule is legitimate and ought to be obeyed (legitimacy).Footnote ²⁴ Interestingly, there have been some successful cases in which armed groups have signed action plans, some of which are still under implementation and others being accomplished and successfully de-listed.Footnote ²⁵ On the basis of an interdisciplinary approach, Kostermann concludes that the UNSC's special compliance system for children an armed conflict is a promising step towards inducing compliance. Part III also includes different chapters addressing alternative views on the role of peacekeepers.

Finally, Part IV sheds light on several important international law issues, such as the scope of Common Article 1 to the four Geneva Conventions when examining the obligation to ‘ensure respect’ for these treaties. Geiß explains, in this sense, that the wording of this provision can relate not only ‘to violations by other States but also to violations by organized armed groups’.Footnote ²⁶ Although this is an interesting argument, which follows the recent ICRC Commentary to Common Article 1,Footnote ²⁷ the extent of this obligation remains unexplored. In this sense, what type of measures a state could adopt towards a NSAG? Could this include some sort of capacity-building activity? If one thinks about Willms’ proposal regarding armed groups’ courts, would states be in the position of assisting these entities to enhance their respect in terms of judicial guarantees? Other topics are addressed in this Part. In particular, Schamalenbach deals with the possible international responsibility of armed groups for violations of IHL. According to her, since the international obligations of these entities are well defined, their responsibility under international law:

Although Schamalenbach's analysis correctly tries to open doors for new paradigms to be explored, her reference to practical cases seems to fail when differentiating primary and secondary rules. For instance, she refers to a ‘refreshingly precise legal assessment of the responsibility of armed groups in the 1997 Tablada Case’,Footnote ²⁹ which does not recognize the application of any rule invocating the responsibility of these non-state actors. Similarly, the UN General Assembly's Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to Remedy and Reparations of 2006Footnote ³⁰ do not seem to confirm the existence of these norms, but merely that if they did, ‘States should provide under their domestic laws effective mechanisms for the enforcement of reparation judgments’.

In her concluding ideas, Krieger affirms that ‘[t]he international community responds to the challenges which conflicts in war-torn areas of limited statehood pose for compliance with international humanitarian law by allocating competences to actors other than the State concerned’.Footnote ³¹ Although international organizations contribute to enforce this legal regime, this task remains dependent on their members, who may be reluctant to engage with armed groups. However, in today's IHL context in which the majority of armed conflicts include at least one organized NSAG, respect for IHL can only be achieved through their engagement. The need to find solutions for IHL compliance issues has led to the exploration of new paradigms in this regard. This book fulfils its purpose by reviewing practical problems and challenges related to the application of IHL in armed conflicts involving failed or failing states and fragmented or decentralized NSAGs. For the purpose of better protection of the victims, state-centric limits should be challenged in order to solve practical difficulties that arise in contemporary armed conflicts. Despite the shortcomings identified above – particularly the lack of strategies on how to enhance respect by states – this book provides useful tools for those who wish to gain insights into different existing mechanisms used to generate respect for IHL, notably including an understanding of the reasons for its violation and how important the direct engagement with the responsible parties is.