International Law Association

Since at least the time of Hugo Grotius and his seminal work, THE LAW OF WAR AND PEACE (1625), international law has been organized around the existence of the two categories he refers to: war and peace. Of course there is no immutable, scientifically-definable line between these socially-constructed concepts, and, therefore, a perennial challenge for international law has been understanding what armed conflict is and determining when the rules relevant to armed conflict apply. In May 2005, the ILA created a new committee to produce a report on the meaning of armed conflict under international law. The committee submitted its work plan at the ILA meeting in Toronto (June 2006). The Committee held a preliminary drafting session in Berlin (December 2006). It held a formal drafting session at the University of Notre Dame in September 2007 and submitted an Initial Report at Rio de Janeiro in August 2008. The Committee plans to submit its final report in The Hague in August 2010.

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