3.4 Individuals

The classical system knew individuals only as objects — beneficiaries through their states. The 20th century reversed a corner: International criminal responsibility: Nuremberg's principle — crimes are committed by men, not abstract entities — to the ICC (the individual prosecuted, punished, personally responsible; Nepal a Rome Statute party — 2006 — its nationals within the Court's complementarity reach); Human rights: the individual as direct rights-holder under universal and regional instruments — petition procedures and treaty bodies; regional courts where the individual is a party — the direct-access architecture that "constitutionalizes" the individual; Investment law: the investor's standing to sue states directly (ICSID arbitration — the individual as full procedural subject); Limits: no general treaty capacity or claim-bringing; nationality's mediation survives (diplomatic protection — Unit 5) — the individual remains a limited, functional subject. The non-state grey zone (one compact paragraph — the adjacent candidates): insurgents acquire limited personality exceptionally (recognized belligerency; territorial control discharging governmental functions; Common Article 3 binding each party to non-international conflict — Nepal's Comprehensive Peace Accord (2006), a government-insurgent agreement with international monitoring, a living Nepali exemplar of insurgent quasi-personality); mercenaries are defined (Additional Protocol I, Art. 47; the 1989 Mercenaries Convention) to deny combatant status and criminalize the trade; "terrorist" groups are objects of sectoral conventions and Security Council sanctions-listing (the Kadi line giving even…