Support given to the insurgents by a third party amounted to that foreign government’s participation in the war.Īfter World War II the emergence of a number of Communist states and of new nations in Asia and Africa changed the established international legal doctrine on insurgency. If the insurgents became a serious challenge to the government and achieved formal recognition as “belligerents,” then the struggle between the two factions became in international law the equivalent of war. The status of the faction opposing a government was usually determined by what Charles Cheney Hyde described as “the nature and extent of the insurrectionary achievement.” If the government was able to suppress the hostile faction rapidly, the event was described as a “rebellion.” In such cases recognition of the insurgents by a third party was regarded as “premature recognition,” a form of illegal intervention. Prior to such recognition, foreign States have a legal right to aid the parent State put down a revolt, but are under a legal obligation not to aid insurgents against the established government. Traditionally, the fact of armed rebellion has not been regarded as involving rights and obligations under international law.…Recognition of the belligerency of the insurgents by the parent State or of the contestants by foreign States changes the legal situation under international law. The existence of civil war or insurrection is a fact. Briggs in The Law of Nations (1952) described the traditional point of view as follows: In traditional international law, insurgency was not recognized as belligerency, and insurgents lacked the protection customarily extended to belligerents. It has subsequently been applied to any such armed uprising, typically guerrilla in character, against the recognized government of a state or country. Insurgency, term historically restricted to rebellious acts that did not reach the proportions of an organized revolution.
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