Armed Opposition Groups’ (And Foreign Fighters’) Abidance by International Human Rights Law: The Issue of Compliance in Syria and Iraq

This chapter will examine the extent to which International Human Rights Law (IHRL) regulates the activities of foreign fighters. Its starting point is that IHRL does not address foreign fighters as individual natural persons, but binds them in their quality as members of one of the parties to an internal strife. Their breaches of IHRL, therefore, may trigger the international responsibility of the entity which they are part of. On this assumption, the present investigation will aim at providing an answer to the following issues: (i) to what extent IHRL binds the parties to an internal conflict; (ii) under which conditions human rights violations committed by foreign fighters are attributable to them; and (iii) what legal consequences ensue from such violations. At variance with the general approach adopted in this volume, this chapter will focus solely on foreign fighters siding with armed opposition groups, since in relation to foreign elements fighting with governmental forces these issues are relatively uncontroversial and do not need further discussion. The analysis will be carried out by taking as case studies the internal conflicts ongoing in Syria and Iraq.