Forms and Legal Consequences of Beginning and End of Armed Conflicts

Abstract

The purpose of the publication is to analyze and draw conclusions on the research issues based on the consideration of the provisions of existing international conventions, legal doctrine (including the position of the International Committee of Red Cross) and international practice. Methodology contain historical and legal, logical and system methods of scholar knowledge. The main content of publication is devoted to the legal consequences of the beginning and the end of each of the forms of armed conflict considered. The article points to the fallacy of widely spread in the domestic legal doctrine views on the “automatic occurrence of the legal consequences of the state of war” (namely, the absence of such conventional or customary norms in modern international law), as well as justifiably argues that there is no recorded case of an official declaration of war by the belligerent in any of the armed conflicts that occurred in the world after the end of the Second World War. At the same time, on the contrary, it is noted and justified the consolidation in existing international legal agreements of provisions on the legal consequences of the beginning and the end of other forms of armed conflict. In the case of international armed conflicts, this applies, inter alia, to the appointment of a Protecting Power, the establishment of a Central Information Agency for protected persons in a neutral country, the establishment of a National Information Bureau by the belligerents, the requirement for the release and repatriation of prisoners of war immediately after the general end of hostilities. With regard to the legal consequences of non-international armed conflicts, reference is made to the prohibition of attacks on civilians and civilian objects, the possibility of granting amnesty to members of illegal armed groups, and to extend to such non-international armed conflicts the provisions of the 1980 Convention and its Protocols prohibiting the use of certain conventional weapons, which is unjustifiably silent in domestic legal sources. The application of the principle of universal jurisdiction in relation to war crimes, including those committed during the armed conflict in the South-East of Ukraine, is substantiated.