Mapping Calamities: Capturing the Competing Legalities of Spaces Under the Control of Armed Non State Actors Without Erasing Everyday Civilian Life

Abstract

This article illustrates how the concept of legal mapping opens up new ways of thinking about how the different frameworks of rules and laws that apply in territories under the control of armed groups. It demonstrates how the notion of ‘interlegality’ is a useful tool when seeking to understand how different layers and types of law (international, domestic and customary) contribute to the commonplace legal materiality in these spaces, penetrating and producing local, everyday experiences of armed conflict. Reflecting on international law’s constitutive power on the ground, the article concludes by considering how legal scholarship, teaching and practice may also play a role in reproducing maps of international law that disempower or render important experiences invisible in certain spaces.