Communication 431/12 – Thomas Kwoyelo v. Uganda Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 outlines the provisions that regulate what it calls ‘armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties’. Armed conflict not of an international character or Non-International Armed Conflict (NIAC) is defined in Additional Protocol II of the 1949 Geneva Conventions as one ‘which takes place in the territory of a Party to the Protocol between armed forces and dissident armed forces or other organized armed groups’. It then stipulates that the dissident forces must be ‘under responsible command, exercise such control over a part of its territory as to enable them to carry out sustainable and concerted military operations and to implement this Protocol’.33 According to this definition and as further specified in the jurisprudence of both the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, there are four cumulative elements for determining the existence of NIAC. First, the conflict has to be between armed forces of a state and dissident or other organized armed group/s. Second, the conflict takes place in the territory of the state. Third, the dissident or the armed opposition group has to be organized with command and control structure exercising control over a part of the territory of the state. Fourth, the conflict has to be a situation of regular and intense armed confrontation and hence involving direct hostilities between the armed forces of a state and the dissident or opposition armed group. 145. With respect to the first element, it emerges from the facts that the conflict involved the Ugandan armed forces and the LRA, a dissident group that has been engaged in armed rebellion against the government of Uganda since 1986. Accordingly, the conflict situation in this case meets this element. On the second element, while the theatre of the conflict has been northern Uganda, it has been noted that at the time of the capture of the victim the LRA was driven out of The Commentary of the ICRC on Common Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions lays down an elaborate requirement/criteria that an armed conflict should fulfil to be regarded as NIAC: Available at https://ihldatabases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/1a13044f3bbb5b8ec12563fb0066f226/466097d7a301f8c4c12563c d00424e2b 33 37 62nd Ordinary Session, 25 April – 9 July 2018