Belligerent Reprisals from Enforcement to Reciprocity: A New Theory of Retaliation in Conflict

This book challenges the traditional understanding of belligerent reprisals as a mechanism aimed at enforcing the laws of armed conflict. By re-instating reciprocity at the core of belligerent reprisals, it construes them as tools designed to re-calibrate the legal relationship between parties to armed conflict and pursue the belligerents' equality of rights and obligations in both a formal and a substantive sense. It combines an inquiry into the conceptual issues surrounding the notion of belligerent reprisals, with an analysis of State and international practice on their purpose and function. Encompassing international and non-international armed conflicts, it provides a first comprehensive account of the role of reprisals in governing legal interaction during wartime, and offers new grounds to address questions on their applicability, lawfulness, regulation, and desirability.

• Explores the purposes and function of belligerent reprisals, to better inform policy choices and reforms in the use, regulation or prohibition of the mechanism
• Provides an up-to-date depiction of the national and international practice on belligerent reprisals
• Suggests new methodologies and answers to resolve long-standing questions on the applicability and features of belligerent reprisals in non-international armed conflicts