Conflict

International armed conflict covers all cases of declared war and other de facto armed conflict between two or more States, even if the state of war is not recognised by one of them and/or the use of armed force is unilateral (ICRC, 2024).

It is widely accepted today that two key conditions must be met for a situation of violence to be considered a Non-International Armed Conflict (NIAC) and therefore subject to International humanitarian law (IHL): the non-state party/parties must be organized, and the violence between the parties must be sufficiently intense. The existence of a NIAC is not predicated on any other threshold or condition. In particular, political or other motivations of the parties play no role in the classification of a conflict. (adapted from ICRC, 2024)

Civil unrest is an umbrella term for a wide spectrum of social and/or political phenomena, and although there is no commonly agreed definition, the term is used widely among United Nations agencies, funds and programmes.