The Legal Conditions of Belligerent Occupation and Foreign Intervention.

Is the employment of authoritarian dominance over states through military directive, without assent of the supplanted sovereignty, a lawful operation?

Firstly, let us begin with a preliminary inquiry.

Which statues of IHL are applicable in any given circumstance?

As an oft debated query, it has been internationally concluded that in order to ascertain such circumstances you must primarily question:

• From which moment are civilians protected by IHL legislation?

• What does the involvement of different factions mean for the characterisation of this conflict?

• Is it of international or non-international nature?

• If of non-international classification, at what point can the conflict become international?

Thus, it is imperative to follow relevant legislation regarding the individual circumstance of a conflict - no same instance of belligerent occupation nor foreign intervention will be dealt with interchangeable proceedings.

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What is belligerent occupation?

Belligerent occupation refers to a circumstances whereby the forces of one or more states exercise effective control over a territory of another state, without the latter state's volition. The existence of occupation is dependant on a state's ability to assume the de facto governmental functions of an occupying power, most prevalently to ensure public security, and law and order, and not by their willingness to do so. Such example can be explicitly observed in the almost five year invasion of German occupation within Denmark in 1940, during World War II.

Occupation that received consent of the sovereign is termed 'pacific occupation', whereby a maintained dichotomy between war and peace is distinguishable.

What is foreign intervention?

Foreign intervention is the interference in the territory or domestic affairs of another state with military force, typically in a way that compromises a sovereign government's control over its own territory and population. Intervention is a much debated and controversial issue in IHL, and has been for the past several hundred years.

A prime instance would be the 1999 NATO bombing and military operation against Yugoslavia during the Kosovo war, or the Cuban intervention in Angola in 1975.

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So, are such circumstances permissible under the ordinance of international law?

Despite its presumed illegality, the patent insufficiency of regulation pertaining to occupation and intervention lends itself to circumstances of legal interstices; there is no technical legal governance dictating the exception of intervention or occupation through military authority or use of force, however there are regulations that ensure its practice is carried out in as close to a state of civilised humanity as possible.

IHL only conditions that such circumstances must be temporary, and regulates the prerequisites of effective control, the various phases of invasion and the end of an occupational period. Moreover, its legislation attests consequential situations of occupation, such as the of loss of effective control, consent to foreign military presence, political settlement of the territorial status and the multinational administration of territories.

Evidently however, we still see exceptions to these legalities of temporary occupation, such as in the instance of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian occupation.