5 Insurgents, Belligerents, Mercenaries and Terrorists

The non-state armed actors — international law's grey zone between objects and subjects:1. Insurgents: organized groups in internal conflict against a government. In exceptional settings they acquire limited personality: when a government grants or acknowledges belligerency, or when insurgents control territory and discharge governmentalfunctions — practice recognizing limited capacity (treaties of a provisional character — the Nationalist China and the Spanish civil war practice; the modern analog: peace agreements as internationalized instruments — Nepal's own Comprehensive Peace Accord (2006) — agovernment-insurgent agreement with international monitoring — a Nepali exemplar of insurgent quasi-personality). Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions binds each party to non-international conflict — the minimal personality's humanitarian floor.2. Belligerents: insurgents recognized as belligerents acquire the war-law's rights and duties (prisoner status, blockade competence) — recognition of belligerency: the classical doctrine (the conditions: civil war's scale, organized forces, territorial control, government-like conduct, and (for third states) the necessity of defining relations).3. Mercenaries: the recruit who fights for pay, not cause — defined by the Additional Protocol I Article 47 formula (specially recruited, abroad, motivated by private gain, not a national/party member, not sent by a state) and the 1989 International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries — a category created to deny protection (no combatant/POW status) and to criminalize the trade; the modern market's…