This paper explores how the general obligation of the Detaining Power to exercise the greatest leniency towards prisoners of war may be used in interpreting the provisions of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949 (GC III) related to the sanction regime to fulfil the obligation of humane treatment and to preserve the persons and honour of prisoners of war. The International Committee of the Red Cross updated Commentary on GC III is placed at the core of the arguments of this research.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (Da’esh) has put in place a governance system encompassing judicial structures to justify its grotesque violence. This paper seeks to evaluate the legitimacy of these courts under two complementary perspectives. Whereas establishing courts by an insurgent group during armed conflict should meet the requirements of international humanitarian law (ihl), because Da’esh claims to ground its laws on Islam, these courts should also follow the requirements of Islam as its constituting law. The paper starts with analysing whether international law entitles armed groups to establish their courts. It argues that although such courts are not prohibited at first glance under international law, they should meet the requirements of being regularly constituted while respecting minimum judicial guarantees. Since Da’esh has sought to found its legitimacy on Islam, the paper argues that Da’esh’s interpretation of Islam is not compatible with any major schools of Islamic thought.

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The law of belligerent occupation permits the Occupying Power to administer and use the natural resources in the occupied territory under the rules of usufruct. This provision has no counterpart in the provisions of humanitarian law applicable to non-international armed conflicts, which may suggest that any exploitation of natural resources by non-State armed groups is illegal. The International Committee of the Red Cross's updated 2020 Guidelines on the Protection of the Environment in Armed Conflict did not touch on this issue, and nor did the International Law Commission in its 2022 Draft Principles on the Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflicts, where it applied the notion of sustainable use of natural resources instead of usufruct. The present paper aims to fill this gap. It first reviews the development of the concept of usufruct and then studies whether the current international law entitles non-State armed groups with de facto control over a territory to exploit natural resources. By delving into the proposals raised by some commentators to justify such exploitation for the purpose of administering the daily life of civilian populations, the paper advocates for a limited version of this formula as the appropriate lex ferenda. In the final section, the paper discusses how situations of disaster, as circumstances which may preclude the wrongfulness of the act, may justify the exploitation of natural resources by non-State armed groups in the current international legal order.

The object and purpose is usually perceived as referring to one notion, the purpose that a norm is aimed to serve. This paper, however, argues that for interpretation in light of the object and purpose, first, the purpose that can be relied on by adjudicative bodies should be based on principle arguments and, second, without understanding the nature of a rule, its purpose cannot be properly identified. By adhering to the idea that the nature of the rule refers to the rights and obligations that are created by a norm, while the purpose is the overall result that a norm is aimed to achieve, the paper argues that the notion of object and purpose seen through the concept of ‘not one, not two’, refers to the interplay between the object of a rule and its purpose in a way that the nature of a rule contributes to the identification of its purpose, and the purpose thus identified contributes to the redetermination of the scope of a rule. Nevertheless, as the purpose remains relatively indeterminate in regard to the new facts that emerge and the importance of principles, redetermination of the purpose makes the interplay between the object and purpose continuous. Keywords: Interpretation, Object and Purpose, Treaties, Emergent Purpose, Adjudication, Principle and Policy