Part III: Methods and Means of Warfare Combatant and Prisoner-of-War Status

This chapter relates to Part III of the book, and consists of two sections: Section I dealing with "Methods and Means of Warfare", and Section II dealing with "Combatant and Prisoner-of-War Status". The law of armed conflict, as codified by conventions, has two branches: First, the rules for the protection of victims of armed conflict. The second branch covers the rules regulating methods and means of warfare. The principal purpose of Section I is to provide regulations governing the relations of armed combatant fighting against other armed combatants. In this regard, the section reaffirms and makes more explicit some of the rules of the 1907 Regulations on this subject and clarifies some ambiguities in their provisions. The purpose of Section II is to regulate the standards by which persons are qualified as privileged combatants and the standards for entitlement to prisoner of war status or treatment. Keywords:armed conflict; prisoner-of-war status; warfare combatant