to an end. The Red Cross has consistently advised States that the obligation under Common Article 1 to ‘ensure respect’ for the Conventions is not limited to behaviour only by parties to the conflict, and requires that States internationally do everything lawfully in their power to ensure that international humanitarian law is respected and not violated.99 In the context of international humanitarian law, the International Court of Justice has specifically stated that all States are ‘under an obligation not to recognize [an] illegal situation’ and ‘also under an obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created…’100 But, going further, the Court also held that all States have a positive obligation ‘to see to it that any impediment, resulting from’ the violation of international law ‘is brought to an end.’101 108. Where international obligations are specifically defined as obligations to prevent harms to civilians it is well established that a State breaches its own legal obligations when nonState actors, which the State could have taken steps to influence, commit violations. In the Bosnian Genocide case, the International Court of Justice held that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (‘FRY’)102 was responsible when it failed to take steps to prevent the Srebrenica massacre carried out by the non-State Republika Srpska (‘VRS’) forces, even though the massacre occurred outside FRY territory and there was no evidence that the FRY directed or controlled the VRS. States are expected to discharge a duty of due diligence, where they take all measures (if any) within their power which might contribute to the prevention or continuance of an illegal state of affairs.103 As to this due diligence obligation, ‘[v]arious parameters operate when assessing whether a State has duly discharged the obligation concerned. The first, which varies greatly from one State to another, is clearly the capacity to influence effectively the action of persons likely to commit, or already committing’ the fundamental breach.104 109. On the basis of RSI’s factual investigations, it is clear that a series of fundamental breaches of international law are taking place in North East Syria. First and foremost, thousands of women and children are being held by the SDF without charge, without any apparent legal basis, and without even any proper individual consideration of the security risk (if any) each of them may pose. This detention is indefinite and the women and children held have no recourse to judicial authority to have the legality of their detention reviewed. Such unlawful and arbitrary detention violates a fundamental norm of international law, consistently prohibited across customary international law, international humanitarian law, and human rights law. 110. Further, the conditions in which the women and children are being held, and the treatment to which they are subject, including the pervasive atmosphere of physical violence, the general lawlessness of the camps, the threat of disappearances of male children, and the depravity of the living conditions, arguably constitutes inhumane treatment contrary to Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and international human rights standards. 111. Further, there is a real argument that the extremity of the situation in the camps may qualify as torture under international law, given that physical violence is accompanied by inadequate basic living conditions, illness, the permanent fear for mothers of their male children being 41 RIGHTS & SECURITY INTERNATIONAL