International Humanitarian Law in regard to the Definition of the Term “Armed Forces”

One of the major requirements of the international humanitarian law is the provision in regard of the fact that all the population of a state in war cannot participate in a military conflict, this task is performed by special structures created by the state: regular and irregular armies, usually united by the term “armed forces” (combatants and non-combatants).In the article there is offered an analysis of customs, international legal documents, writings of Russian and foreign scholars, state practice, which reflect the evolution of the terms combatants and non-combatants during a substantial period of time starting from conclusion of the Convention on institutes and customs of land warfare of 1899/1907 and till Additional Protocol 1 of 1977 to Geneva Conventions of 1949. The author comes to a conclusion that Additional Protocol 1 clarified the issue of determining rightful participants in a military conflict as pertaining to one of the categories: a) combatants – persons belonging to armed forces of a state, who are entitled to wage a war; b) non-combatants (medical workers, priests) from the body of armed forces, who do not have such a right. Nonetheless the author points out that there is still no single opinion on this issue