This study aimed to assess the concept and implementation distinction principle of international humanitarian law in order to provide effective protection to combatants and civilians in modern armed conflict.This research uses a normative, legal principles, and historical method. The research also applies a descriptive-analytical approach to examine and analyse the research questions of the thesis. In doing so, this research uses a secondary data in the form of primary, secondary, and tertiary

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... egal materials. These legal materials are subsequently analysed using a qualitative juridical approach.The results of this study are: the First, the concept of the distinction principle international humanitarian law is able to provide effective protection to victims of armed conflict if the states participating in the Convention committed that in armed conflict, conflicting parties shall respect the distinction principles and proportionality principles and humanity principles in armed conflicts simultaneously. The second, the distinction principle international humanitarian law can not be implemented optimally in modern armed conflict since influenced the development of forms of conflict, who was only an international armed conflict then appeared non-international armed conflict; the difference between the norms of the Additional Protocols I and II of 1977; and differences in the interpretation of the object; as well as the difficulty of distinguishing between combatants and non-combatants in modern warfare today.