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The denial of the privileges of combatant status to private persons engaging in hostilitiesmay be justified on the basis that such persons act inconsistently with the jus ad bellum principleof competent authority, under which the resort to armed force is a prerogative of the State. 377These individuals lack the principal qualification for entitlement to the privileges of combatantstatus—State authorization. 378 This requirement for State authorization has been traced tomedieval law of arms. 379Denying private persons who engage in hostilities the privileges of combatant status hasalso been viewed as justified on humanitarian grounds. Private persons who engage in hostilitiesrisk undermining the protections afforded the civilian population. 380 And, private persons whoengage in hostilities generally have not been trained in the law of war and are not subject to thesame disciplinary regime as members of the armed forces. 381 Thus, their participation inhostilities has been associated with the commission of war crimes. 382enjoy the full benefit of the laws of war” and instead “are apt to fare worse than either regular troops or an unarmedpeasantry” because, inter alia, “they put on and off with ease the character of a soldier”).377 Refer to § 1.11.1.1 (Competent Authority (Right Authority) to Wage War for a Public Purpose).378 Refer to § 4.6.2 (Belonging to a Party to the Conflict).379 G.I.A.D. Draper, The Status of Combatants and the Question of Guerrilla Warfare, 45 BRITISH YEAR BOOK OFINTERNATIONAL LAW 173, 175 (1971) (“With the break-up of Christendom the medieval law of arms took shape asthe embryonic international law of war. The older idea of knights, men-at-arms and mercenaries ‘avowed’ by aprince changed to that of armed forces in the service of a territorial, secular state. However, many of the ideas andtechnical rules of the jus militare came through into the new international law of war, including the idea of a right orprivilege to fight reserved for military classes and the requirement of a certain ‘openness’ in the manner of fighting.This ‘openness’ spells out the older idea of a ‘public’ war and the rejection of perfidy as abhorrent to the knightlyclasses. Conversely, those who had not the right to fight met short shrift at the hands of those who had. Themarauder and the freebooter acted against, and were outside, ‘faith and the law of nations’ and were early forms ofwar criminals.”). See also M. H. KEEN, THE LAWS OF WAR IN THE LATE MIDDLE AGES 246 (1965) (The medievallaw of arms “was a formal and generally accepted law, and its currency helped to establish” the principle that “war,in its proper sense could only be waged by sovereigns.”).380 GREENSPAN, MODERN LAW OF LAND WARFARE 55 (“If any and every citizen capable of bearing arms is entitledto use them then the distinction between the soldier and the remainder of the population disappears. The resultcould only expose the civilian element, regardless of sex, to massacre. The enemy soldier, unable to distinguish hisfoe, aware that any man, woman, boy, or girl in civilian clothes might produce at any moment a concealed weaponto be used against him, would inevitably be disposed to treat soldier and civilian alike, indiscriminately.”); RaymundT. Yingling and Robert W. Ginnane, The Geneva Conventions of 1949, 46 AJIL 393, 402 (1953) (“While theconditions imposed by the convention for treatment as prisoners of war of members of resistance movements wouldnot have covered many persons acting as ‘partisans’ during World War II, nevertheless, it is believed that suchconditions are the minimum necessary if regular forces are to have any protection against attacks by the civilianpopulation and if any distinction is to be made between combatants and noncombatants. The farmer by day,assassin by night, type of ‘partisan’ cannot be condoned by international law, whatever other justificationcircumstances may give him.”). Refer to § 4.6.4 (Having a Fixed Distinctive Sign Recognizable at a Distance),footnote 164 and accompanying text.381 Refer to § 4.6.3 (Being Commanded by a Person Responsible for His or Her Subordinates).382 See, e.g., CHARLES HENRY HYDE, II INTERNATIONAL LAW: CHIEFLY AS INTERPRETED AND APPLIED BY THEUNITED STATES 296 (1922) (“The law of nations, apart from the Hague Regulations above noted, denies belligerentqualifications to guerrilla bands. Such forces wage a warfare which is irregular in point of origin and authority, ofdiscipline, of purpose and of procedure. They may be constituted at the beck of a single individual; they lackuniforms; they are given to pillage and destruction; they take few prisoners and are hence disposed to show slight159