II.  REQUIREMENTS, LIMITATIONS AND EFFECTS OF THE CONCURRENT APPLICABILITY OF INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW AND INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAW IN ARMED CONFLICT Moreover, international human rights law has continued to expand through jurisprudence and the addition of new human rights protections in the context of armed conflict, irrespective of whether the conflict is international or non-international. The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, for instance, creates international human rights obligations regarding the recruitment and use of children in armed groups, in times of peace and in times of war, irrespective of whether an armed conflict is international or non-international. As the range of international human rights protections particularly pertinent to situations of armed conflict increases, and because international human rights law applies to both international and noninternational conflict, it becomes arbitrary to exclude similar international humanitarian law protections that had previously been reserved for one category of conflict. Finally, recent developments show a sharp increase in the number and intensity of non-international armed conflicts, as well as a growing number of United Nations peacekeeping missions and international coalitions to assist a State in an armed conflict within its own territory. All these factors have combined to render the application of traditional distinctions of international humanitarian law between international and non-international armed conflicts extremely challenging. It is, however, uncontroversial that combatant immunity against prosecution for acts of hostility not prohibited by international humanitarian law (a central feature of prisoner-of-war status in international armed conflicts) and the rules on military occupation cannot be applied by analogy to non-international armed conflicts. In addition, when bringing international humanitarian law of non-international armed conflicts closer to that of international armed conflicts, it should be kept in mind that the former also applies to non-State armed groups, which are often less able to comply with the more demanding rules of international humanitarian law of international armed conflicts. 41