II. THE CONFLICT IN NORTH EAST SYRIA 22. Women held by the SDF in the al Hol and Roj camps have been detained during and following a long-running armed conflict occurring within North East Syria. The Kurdish ethnic group – generally recognized as the largest ethnic minority worldwide – have long harboured ambitions of self-determination as part of a Kurdish-majority political entity in western Asia comprising territory currently located within the territorial borders of southeastern Turkey, northeastern Syria, northern Iraq, northwestern Iran, and the southern part of the South Caucasus. Following the commencement of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, and the weakening of Syrian military control over North East Syria, the SDF – led by the mostly-Kurdish YPG – have been involved in a substantial conflict in the region, first engaging Syrian forces and then ISIL forces. 23 . Depending upon the characteristics of a conflict, different legal rules may apply to how belligerent parties are entitled to behave, and what obligations they owe. While a considerable number of States have been involved, to a greater or lesser extent, in conflicts in Syria since the outbreak of the civil war, most legal experts agree that the conflict taking place in North East Syria between the SDF and ISIL was properly classified, for purposes of international law, as an armed conflict of a non-international character (a ‘NIAC’). 24. The classification as a NIAC depends upon the conflict satisfying the criteria identified in an influential decision of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (‘ICTY’) of ‘protracted armed violence between governmental authorities and organised armed groups or between such groups within a State.’5 That standard requires a minimum degree of intensity of fighting which is distinguished from lesser forms of collective violence such as civil unrest, riots, isolated acts of terrorism, or other sporadic violence.6 It also requires a sufficient level of organisation of the parties. The aspects of the broader Syrian conflict involving the SDF and taking place in North East Syria has been largely confined to a conflict between the SDF and ISIL (two non-State actors), with particular hostilities at times between those groups on the one hand and Syrian, Turkish, Iranian, and Russian forces on the other (expanding the NIAC to one between non-State actors and States, but not between States). For clarity, the involvement of international forces – known as the Global Coalition for the Defeat of Daesh/ISIL – did not of itself transform this NIAC between the SDF and ISIL into a full-blown international armed conflict under international law, given that international forces were supporting the fight against ISIL, rather than against official Syrian forces. 25. The significance of classifying a conflict as a NIAC is that relevant principles of the law of war will apply. The law of war is typically more permissive as to the power it grants parties to respond to security threats, but it also demands that basic principles of international humanitarian law regarding civilian protection must be complied with, even by non-State actors, so long as the NIAC persists. 14 RIGHTS & SECURITY INTERNATIONAL