Communication 431/12 – Thomas Kwoyelo v. Uganda (PoW). In support of its claim, the Respondent has attached an Affidavit by the Assistant Inspector of Police. Besides the lack of any evidence to prove the Complainant’s claim and the latter’s apparent failure to refute the Respondent’s assertion, the Commission could not find any logical explanation as to why the Victim would be abducted by the Respondent State when he is already in their custody. 141. In view of the above, the Commission is convinced that the Victim was shot and wounded in active combat duty, not after surrendering, and that he was not abducted by military intelligence as alleged by the Complainant. 142. The finding that the Victim was wounded in the context of a conflict situation while being a member of an armed rebel group triggers the issue of applicable law. 143. It is not disputed that the case at hand relates to and arouse from a conflict situation involving an armed rebel group, the LRA. It is also further established that the Victim was captured in the battlefield in active combat. This gives rise to the question of whether the conflict in question is of such a nature that is governed by the rules of International Humanitarian Law (IHL). There are two types of conflicts to which IHL rules apply. The first type of conflicts involves international armed conflicts, conflicts between the armed forces of two states. This is not the kind of conflict in the case at hand. The second type of conflicts relate to those identified under IHL as constituting ‘armed conflicts that are not of an international character’ or simply non-international armed conflicts. Given that in the case at hand the conflict concerns the armed forces of Uganda and a rebel group, the LRA, the Commission has to determine whether this constitutes a noninternational armed conflict to which rules of IHL pertaining to such type of armed conflicts apply. 144. 36 62nd Ordinary Session, 25 April – 9 July 2018