International and non-international armed conflict

Traditionally, for an armed conflict to warrant regulation by the international law of armed conflict, it was necessary for the situation to amount to a war, in other words, a contention between states through the medium of their armed forces. While the full panoply of the international law of armed conflict does not apply to non-international conflicts, to some extent non-international conflicts have come under the aegis of international law since 1977, with the adoption of Article 1 (4) of Protocol I. The first and only international agreement exclusively regulating the conduct of the parties in a non-international conflict is Protocol II additional to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. As to non-parties to the Conventions, in so far as the Conventions embody rules of customary law they will apply in any international armed conflict, as will all other rules of the customary law of armed conflict.