This article explores the contribution of the international legal framework to strategies for exercising leverage over and engaging with non-state armed groups. In addressing the framework’s relevance in meeting these challenges, it examines the tensions between hierarchy and reciprocity in international law; key normative developments in international human rights and international humanitarian laws, the issue of existing gaps in the protective framework envisaged by these two bodies of law, and the impact of their growing intersections; recent trends in the international (...) arena that point toward the expansion, as well as restriction, of the normative space and their implications; and, in light of the opportunities/challenges identified, the international legal framework’s prospects for articulating credible engagement strategies with non-state armed groups. (shrink)