– At war: what exactly defines a region as “occupied”?
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There’s no international body that will officially decide, but typically a region is considered “occupied” when the other claimants on that land are no longer actively militarily contesting the land in any organized fashion. There may still be pockets of disorganized insurgency for many years, but no large scale military efforts holding towns and infrastructure.
This doesn’t necessarily mean the larger war is over and it doesn’t mean the occupiers magically gain any legal status, it’s merely reflective of the facts on the ground.
This state of “occupation” may persist for just a few months or years like the German occupation of France in WWII, or it may persist indefinitely like the Maoist occupation of China.
Typically once a long enough period of time has passed without any further hostilities the war is over for any practical purposes, and the occupying government becomes the de facto official government.
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