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Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law [MPEPIL]

Reprisals

Matthias Ruffert

Content type:
Encyclopedia entries
Product:
Max Planck Encyclopedias of International Law [MPIL]

Module:
Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law [MPEPIL]
Article last updated:
January 2021

From: Oxford Public International Law (http://opil.ouplaw.com). (c) Oxford University Press, 2023. All Rights Reserved.date: 03 October 2024

Subject(s):
Countermeasures — Armed conflict — Geneva Conventions 1949 — Use of force, prohibition — Use of force, threat — Reprisals

Published under the auspices of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law under the direction of Professor Anne Peters (2021–) and Professor Rüdiger Wolfrum (2004–2020). 

1 Although bearing a great tradition in the history of public international law, the notion of reprisals has considerably changed in recent time and has, to a large extent, been replaced by the concept of countermeasures. Nowadays, the latter notion is almost exclusively used for measures that would formerly have been designated as reprisals in peacetime (J Crawford [2002] 168). Consequently, the term ‘reprisals’ is now limited to wartime measures. Therefore, the current concept of reprisals is twofold. Reprisals represent (i) the historical basis of any...
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