ICRC Humanitarian Law and Policy Blog: Recent Episodes
ICRC Law and Policy
The Humanitarian Law & Policy blog is a unique space for timely analysis and debate on international humanitarian law (IHL) issues and the policies that shape humanitarian action.
Memorialization, one of the five pillars of transitional justice, plays a vital role in preserving the memory of international humanitarian law (IHL) violations and gross human rights violations, supporting accountability, and preventing recurrence. Building an accurate and inclusive collective memory of past atrocities is a resource-intensive process, fraught with challenges ranging from limited access to archives and conflict zones to the risk that dominant narratives overshadow marginalized voices. Artificial intelligence (AI) and data-driven technologies are increasingly used to ease these burdens, from cross-referencing dispersed records to expanding public access to memorialization projects.In this post, Paola Forgione and Megah Bintang Mahadinah examine the opportunities and risks that AI presents for memorialization processes. The authors argue that while AI can accelerate documentation and broaden the reach of memorialization efforts, it cannot substitute for the human judgement, empathy, and contextual understanding that transitional justice ultimately depends on.
The international humanitarian system has built a sophisticated architecture for the protection of civilians, namely political resolutions, cluster coordination mechanisms, reporting frameworks, and accountability tools. Yet when conflict-affected people are asked directly whether they feel protected, or whether they trust the actors claiming to protect them, the answer is frequently at odds with the system’s own assessments. Despite commitments under the Grand Bargain to center local actors and affected communities, research consistently reveals a persistent gap between how humanitarian actors evaluate their own performance and how affected communities experience it.In this post, part of our ongoing series “Delivering for people in an evolving humanitarian landscape,” Imane Karimou argues that humanitarian protection faces a trust and legitimacy crisis that cannot be resolved through better coordination or increased funding alone. Drawing on community perception research and the experience of community-centered protection frameworks, she makes the case for reorienting how the system evaluates success, measuring protection through community-reported experiences of safety, trust, and dignity, rather than through system-generated indicators and outputs.
Pacific Island states have long demonstrated leadership in promoting peace, disarmament, and humanitarian values. From traditional customs that reflect principles contained in contemporary international humanitarian law (IHL), to global advocacy for nuclear disarmament and environmental protections during armed conflict, the region is uniquely equipped to contribute to discussions on advancing IHL. This is particularly important in the context of contemporary challenges, including climate change, the illicit trade of small arms, cyber operations, and the vulnerability of submarine data cables that affect Pacific livelihoods.In this post, ICRC Legal Advisers Hannah Crothers and Catherine Thornton explore the importance of amplifying Pacific voices in the conversation on IHL, including through the Global Initiative to Galvanize Political Commitment to IHL, which provides a platform for states to contribute to the global discussion through sharing their experiences and insights.
offers what legal and policy language often cannot: an interior account of displacement, the longing for protection, and what it means to reach – or fail to reach – safety. Timed to this year's World Refugee Day theme of solidarity with refugees, and its call to uphold dignity and stand up for the rights of displaced people, the poem is a reminder that behind every case, every crossing, and every camp is a person who once looked toward a shelter they hoped would hold them.Listen to more of Mamuch Bey's work on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/user/31bnjlzbyocnaelbup5zdmgxmqey
Across Africa, norms regulating the conduct of hostilities long predate the codification of modern international humanitarian law (IHL). The ICRC Tool on African traditions and the preservation of humanity in warfare highlights how many African societies developed rules limiting violence, protecting civilians, and preserving human dignity during conflict. These traditions resonate strongly with contemporary IHL principles and offer important insights for current efforts to protect children affected by armed conflict. At a time when children continue to face killing and maiming, attacks on schools and hospitals, recruitment, displacement, and profound psychological harm, grounding humanitarian protection in both legal obligations and culturally rooted values can strengthen efforts to uphold humanity during war.In this post, Professor Robert Doya Nanima, Member of the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, and Special Rapporteur on Children Affected by Armed Conflict, reflects on the relevance of the ICRC Tool through the lens of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. Drawing connections between African traditions, IHL, and African Union frameworks such as Agenda 2040 and Agenda 2063, he argues that the protection of children in conflict requires breaking down institutional silos and placing children at the center of humanitarian action.
Conflict and displacement do more than destroy homes, livelihoods, and infrastructure. They also fracture the social relationships through which people sustain dignity, identity, and collective life. Yet humanitarian responses often focus primarily on individuals as beneficiaries, measured through categories of vulnerability, targeting, and service delivery. In many conflict settings, this approach can actively erode the communal bonds, local agency, and relational structures that communities themselves rely on to survive and recover.In this post, part of our new series “Delivering for people in an evolving humanitarian landscape”, Eberechukwu Owuamanam, Jesuit scholastic and humanitarian practitioner, draws on experiences from conflict-affected and disaster-affected communities in Nigeria, as well as African relational ontology, to argue that humanitarian action should move beyond models centered primarily on intervention and delivery. Drawing on concepts including Ubuntu, Igwebuike, and the Ijeluwa framework, he argues for approaches grounded in accompaniment, practice that strengthens, rather than replaces, the relational networks through which dignity and recovery become possible.
Climate change is intensifying water insecurity in fragile urban settings, where ageing infrastructure, rapid urbanization, and inequality already strain access to essential services. In Peshawar, Pakistan, a city hosting generations of Afghan refugees and facing growing water scarcity, climate pressures have reduced river flow, damaged infrastructure for water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), and increased waterborne disease. These impacts fall most heavily on refugees, informal settlement residents, and other marginalized communities with limited access to safe and reliable water and sanitation services.In this post, part of our new series “Delivering for people in an evolving humanitarian landscape”, Sundus Tehreem Shahzad Khattak draws on qualitative research with government officials, residents and humanitarian practitioners in Pakistan to argue that effective, climate-resilient WASH projects do more than deliver services; they safeguard a spectrum of human rights, including dignity, safety from violence, and economic opportunity. She contends that meeting legitimate community expectations requires moving beyond siloed, short-term interventions toward formalized, multi-stakeholder collaboration that places local knowledge, gender responsiveness, and long-term sustainability at the centre of humanitarian action in an era of climate uncertainty and urban fragility.
Refugee education is often framed in terms of access, infrastructure, and policy – but for children who grow up inside camps, meaningful learning begins long before they enter a classroom. It unfolds in everyday camp life: in caregiving roles, improvised survival strategies, and the small responsibilities that accelerate emotional maturity and practical skill. Imagination, resilience, and daily contribution form an “invisible curriculum” that shapes identity, agency, and social belonging, strengths that formal schooling in many crisis contexts can fail to acknowledge.In this post, the first in our new series “Delivering for people in an evolving humanitarian landscape”, education specialist Sara Aleisseh draws on personal experience and years of professional work in humanitarian education to illustrate that the “invisible curriculum” carried by children in conflict settings is not a deficit to be corrected but a form of knowledge that demands recognition. She calls for education systems that listen to children’s realities, link learning content to those realities, protect their dignity, and build learning models rooted in healing, identity, and belonging.
Across contemporary armed conflicts, the use of explosive weapons in populated areas (EWIPA) has emerged as one of the gravest threats to civilians. Urban centres are increasingly sites of hostilities, where the use of explosive weapons with wide-area effects causes devastating and often predictable harm. In Africa, where rapid urbanization intersects with persistent insecurity in several regions, the humanitarian consequences are particularly acute. Civilians, essential infrastructure, and long-term development prospects are all at risk, raising urgent questions about how international humanitarian law (IHL) can be better implemented in practice.In this post, Brigadier General (Professor) Dan Kuwali, Chief Strategist, Commandant-Emeritus of the National Defence College-Malawi and Chairperson of the Malawi National International Humanitarian Law Committee, argues that African states should urgently endorse and implement the Political Declaration on EWIPA. He argues that this approach is not only a humanitarian imperative, but also a strategic decision that strengthens civilian protection, enhances military credibility, and reinforces Africa’s collective voice in advancing responsible conduct in contemporary warfare.
In the policy debate on artificial intelligence (AI) in the military domain, there is a growing consensus that international humanitarian law (IHL) must be a central consideration in the design of military AI systems. The imperative to make military AI systems “lawful by design” has, naturally, led to a sharper focus on the role of industry. But what this means in practical terms for AI suppliers – and how states can and should collaborate with industry to strengthen IHL compliance – remains an open question.In this post, Laura Bruun and Netta Goussac from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) argue that while focusing on IHL at the design stage makes sense, it carries the risk that states over-rely on industry to make military “lawful by design”. Efforts to elaborate what it means to make military AI “lawful by design” must be grounded in realistic expectations and limits, as well as clear legal responsibilities.
The brutal effects of war have long prompted efforts to limit suffering and preserve humanity in times of conflict. Across cultures, religions, and legal traditions, people have sought to restrain violence and preserve a measure of humanity in conflict. Yet the emergence of modern humanitarianism in the nineteenth century marked a turning point: compassion became increasingly organized, codified, and institutionalized. Against the backdrop of industrialized warfare, technological change, and growing public awareness of battlefield suffering, new forms of humanitarian action began to take shape.In this post, ICRC experts Anastasia Kushleyko, Cédric Cotter, and Ahmed Al-Dawoody revisit the contributions of Swiss businessman Henry Dunant, Russian philanthropist Anatole Demidoff, and Algerian scholar and leader Emir Abdelkader. Through their efforts to protect prisoners of war, care for the wounded, and uphold humane treatment during conflict, these three figures demonstrated that humanitarian principles were neither confined to one region nor rooted in a single tradition. The authors argue that modern humanitarianism emerged through converging ideas, networks, and practices across different societies, and that revisiting these histories can help reaffirm the universal character of humanitarian principles today.
Enforced disappearances remain an issue of profound seriousness, with lasting consequences for the families of those affected. These realities continue to raise complex legal and practical questions in criminal and human rights law at national, regional, and international levels. This issue remains a priority for UN treaty bodies, Special Procedures, and the International Committee of the Red Cross.In this post, Milica Kolaković-Bojović, PhD, a Former Vice President of the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances and Prof. Grażyna Baranowska, the Vice-chair of the UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances, analyse a multidimensional approach to the phenomenon of enforced disappearance, its causes and roots, phenomenology, contexts of occurrence, and approaches to its eradication as being addressed in the edited volume Enforced Disappearances: On Universal Responses to a Worldwide Phenomenon, recently published by Cambridge University Press.
Lebanon’s accession last week to the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention (APMBC) comes not in a time of peace, but amid ongoing conflict – precisely when the consequences of inaction are most visible. In communities across the country, particularly in the south, anti-personnel mines are not relics of past wars, but active threats shaping daily life, obstructing return, and undermining recovery. Lebanon’s decision reflects a stark reality: weapons that continue to harm long after their use cannot be reconciled with the protection of civilians.In this post, Brigadier General Ziad Rizkallah of the Lebanese Army traces how Lebanon’s lived experience with contamination, clearance, and community recovery informed its choice to formalize long-standing practice into legal commitment. He underscores that drawing limits in conflict is neither theoretical nor deferred; it is grounded in operational reality, where the effects of certain weapons cannot be contained in time, space, or intent.
During the last decade, attacks against hospitals have been a hallmark of almost every conflict. What humanitarian medical practitioners have witnessed and denounced for years has become alarmingly routine. International humanitarian law (IHL) is sometimes criticized for failing to protect the very purpose that justified its own existence, particularly when the states responsible for its enforcement remain incapable or unwilling to stand up for the protection of medical facilities in armed conflicts.In this post, Claude Maon, Legal Director for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), highlights the need to build consensus around the specific protection of the medical mission under IHL. She calls for good faith interpretation in applying these rules to ensure the effective protection of hospitals by all actors in real situations of attack. In doing so, she underscores that attacks on hospitals are not inevitable and argues that this persistent trend of violations can only be reversed if states respect the law by adopting good operational practices to protect the medical mission, alongside ensuring accountability for attacks affecting medical facilities in armed conflict.
International humanitarian law (IHL) has long been critiqued for its gendered fault lines, specifically the marginalization of violence and harm to women and girls during armed conflict, laid bare by the lacunae of protection found in the normative content of the Geneva Conventions. The inadequacy of this normative protection finds a parallel in the Pictet Commentary, whose contours reflect patriarchy, entrenched gender stereotypes, and a lack of awareness of, and disregard for, the vulnerabilities, positionalities and participation of women in war. The limitations of the Fourth Geneva Convention (GC IV), in particular, have been substantively explored by feminist scholars over several decades.In this post, part of a joint symposium on the updated Commentary on the Fourth Geneva Convention with EJIL:Talk! and Just Security, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin undertakes a close examination of GC IV’s Article 27 on the treatment of protected persons, offering an assessment of the extent to which a revised and updated Commentary can overcome the Convention’s structural limitations. The answer, she suggests, is mixed. The Commentary is rigorous, expansive and determined, but it remains constrained by the text itself. While progressive interpretative developments help narrow the gap, they cannot fully remedy the gendered DNA of the Conventions as a whole, a challenge that will unfold over decades of sustained work.
Across the world, essential civilian services increasingly depend on information and communication technologies (ICTs). These same technologies are also reshaping the conduct of armed conflict. As warfare becomes more digitalized, a critical question emerges: how can civilians be protected in an interconnected battlespace? Ensuring the faithful implementation of international humanitarian law in relation to ICT activities is central to this challenge.In this post, Wen Zhou, ICRC Legal Adviser with the Global Initiative to Galvanize Political Commitment to International Humanitarian Law (Global IHL Initiative), draws on discussions under the ICT workstream of the Initiative to highlight key humanitarian and legal questions arising from ICT activities in armed conflict, and to reflect ongoing efforts by states and other stakeholders to uphold the protections afforded by IHL and strengthen its implementation in practice.
By the end of 2024, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated that 123.2 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations and events seriously disturbing public order. If a large-scale conflict erupts, the intensity, scale and tempo of military operations will only worsen this trend, impacting not only those displaced but also receiving communities, and potentially those staying behind. International humanitarian law’s (IHL) rules seek to prevent displacement due to armed conflict – while respecting people’s agency and genuine will to move – and to reduce harms to civilians, including displaced populations. In this post, part of the “Complying with IHL in large-scale conflict” series, ICRC Legal Advisers Matt Pollard and Helen Obregón explore the humanitarian challenges related to movement, mass displacement and the rupturing of family ties that would inevitably arise in such conflicts. It also looks at some of the practical measures that states can – and should – take to be prepared to meet these challenges and to comply with their obligations under IHL and under other relevant bodies of international law. Advance planning, already in peacetime, is essential for IHL to provide effective protection if such a conflict breaks out.
As security concerns intensify across Europe following the escalation of the international armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine in 2022, several states – including Finland, Poland, and the Baltic countries – have moved to withdraw from the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention (APMBC), while similar calls have emerged in other Nordic countries. These developments reflect a growing perception that existing humanitarian disarmament commitments may constrain military effectiveness in a deteriorating security environment. Yet they also raise fundamental questions about the continued relevance of these commitments at a time when they are most needed.In this post, the Secretaries-General of the Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish Red Cross Societies argue that withdrawing from the APMBC would not enhance security but risk weakening civilian protection and eroding long-standing humanitarian norms. Drawing on legal, operational and humanitarian considerations, they show that anti-personnel mines remain inherently indiscriminate and of limited military utility, and that their prohibition is fully compatible with modern military cooperation frameworks. They call on the remaining Nordic governments to remain committed to the Convention even – and especially – in times of heightened insecurity.
When armed conflict ends, education does not always return with it. In many post-conflict settings, schools remain closed long after ceasefires, while children stay at home, enter work, remain displaced or navigate unsafe environments. Education systems remain constrained by destroyed infrastructure, militarization, unexploded ordnance, trauma and fear. Although international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHRL) require the continuity of education even during armed conflict, schooling is frequently disrupted in practice, raising questions about how education can be safely restored after conflict.IHL regulates the conduct of hostilities and contains important protections for children and access to education during armed conflict. Lessons drawn from these protections can help inform recovery decisions as societies transition from conflict to peace, including after the cessation of hostilities, when recovery begins but IHL may still apply. In this post, as part of our Emerging Voices series, Geeta Mahapatra proposes a framework to facilitate children’s safe return to education, centred on child-specific harm assessments, safe access and inclusive recovery. It contends that stronger compliance with IHL rules protecting schools and children during armed conflict helps preserve the conditions necessary for restoring education in post-conflict settings.
Climate change and armed conflict increasingly intersect in humanitarian settings. While the sector is now alert to climate-related risks – particularly in disaster response, resilience programming, and displacement governance – the ways these risks are interpreted and operationalized vary across institutional mandates and operational contexts. In protection practice within conflict-affected settings, climate impacts are still often framed primarily as “conflict multipliers” rather than direct drivers of civilian harm. This narrow lens risks overlooking the very insecurities communities experience most acutely: displacement, restricted movement, isolation, and livelihood collapse.In this post, researcher and former ICRC delegate Lina Aburas argues that our current conflict-centered analysis has a dangerous blind spot. Drawing on her experience in northeast Nigeria, she explores how communities define their own insecurity amid climate and conflict pressures. Practitioner and community perspectives reveal how climate-related hazards reshape mobility, access to livelihoods and assistance, and exposure to protection risks in ways not fully captured by prevailing conflict-centered analyses. Centering these lived experiences reveals that adapting humanitarian action isn’t about mission creep or expanding mandates; it’s about fundamentally shifting how we interpret and prioritize the risks already in front of us.
Artificial intelligence (AI)-based decision-support systems are increasingly embedded upstream of the use of force, shaping how military actors plan attacks, assessing effects, and anticipating harm. In contemporary urban warfare, where civilian infrastructure forms complex and deeply interconnected systems, these tools are increasingly used to guide decisions with far-reaching humanitarian consequences. This raises critical questions for international humanitarian law (IHL), which requires parties to anticipate and mitigate foreseeable civilian harm when applying the principles of proportionality and precaution, including indirect, cumulative and systemic effects on civilian infrastructure.In this post, independent legal researcher Yéelen Marie Geairon argues that while AI-enabled decision-support systems do not alter the legal rules governing attacks, they significantly reshape how foreseeability is operationalized in practice. By structuring what decision-makers are able to anticipate, compare and justify ex ante, AI systems recalibrate the factual basis of legal judgment, while also introducing new risks linked to data gaps, opacity and over-reliance on technical outputs. The protection of civilian infrastructure in AI-enabled warfare therefore depends less on technological performance than on the legal discipline, transparency and human judgment with which these tools are embedded in decision-making processes.
The ICRC continues to witness unacceptable levels of suffering when the law designed to protect families, prevent people from going missing, and ensure the dignified and respectful treatment of the dead is disregarded. At the same time, we have also documented countless, daily efforts by parties to armed conflict to prevent family separation, clarify the fate and whereabouts of missing people, and treat the dead with dignity and respect. This is a humanitarian imperative, a legal obligation that should be a priority of any party to an armed conflict.In this post, ICRC Legal Advisers Tilman Rodenhäuser and Ximena Londoño present key findings of a recent ICRC study, “Non-State Armed Groups and the Separated, Missing and Dead: Obligations Under International Humanitarian Law and Examples of How to Implement Them”. Drawing on the doctrine and practice of 64 non-state armed groups (NSAGs) across the world, the study offers unique insights into practical measures that NSAGs can take to implement IHL and protect missing people and their families. This post provides a snapshot of the study’s main findings and operational relevance.
More than seven decades after their adoption, the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 remain foundational to contemporary international humanitarian law (IHL). Efforts to update their Commentaries testify to both the resilience of the Geneva Conventions and their enduring relevance in modern armed conflicts. Yet the story of their making is inseparable from the longer history of the law of armed conflict, which developed in the late nineteenth century within a deeply hierarchical international legal order. From the perspective of colonized states and territories, that history reveals a persistent divide between European and non-European worlds, a divide that shaped not only general international law but also key features of the Geneva Conventions themselves.In this post, part of a joint symposium on the updated Commentary on the Fourth Geneva Convention with EJIL:Talk! and Just Security, Associate Professor Srinivas Burra revisits the adoption of the 1949 Geneva Conventions against the backdrop of the Second World War, the creation of the United Nations, and the onset of decolonization. Focusing on the Fourth Convention’s regime of occupation and on Common Article 3, he examines these developments from a Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) perspective, accounting for the structural legacies of empire in international law. He argues that while these provisions marked important advances, they also carried forward earlier exclusions embedded in colonial conceptions of sovereignty. Read in this light, the Conventions represent both a decisive break in humanitarian protection and a continuation of hierarchies inherited from the nineteenth century.
Islamic legal traditions and the modern framework of international humanitarian law (IHL) emerged from different contexts and traditions, but they share many underlying values – such as restraint, humanity, and the protection of those not (or no longer) participating in hostilities. Islamic law therefore offers a distinct but complementary perspective to IHL on the sanctity of life (ḥurmat al-nafs), particularly in contexts where international legal frameworks lack traction, understanding, or perceived legitimacy.In this post, and as part of our Emerging Voices series, legal researcher Alannah Travers explores how Islamic law, as its own coherent and longstanding legal tradition, offers a parallel framework of moral constraint during armed conflict. She argues that better understanding these Islamic legal norms can provide stronger grounds for compliance with protective norms, deepening our collective understanding of the right to life in war.
The updated ICRC Commentary on the Fourth Geneva Convention (GC IV) includes a number of important updates to its treatment of Common Article 3 (CA3). These relate primarily to three areas: the treatment of coalitions in non-international armed conflict (NIAC); the provision of support by one party to another; and questions of gender and the treatment of other marginalized groups.In this post – part of a joint blog symposium on the updated GC IV Commentary with EJIL: Talk! and Just Security – Associate Professor Katharine Fortin examines these developments, highlighting their significance and strengths while also pointing to areas that may warrant further reflection or study.
Following five years of research and consultations, the ICRC published a new, updated Commentary on the Fourth Geneva Convention (GC IV) of 1949 in October 2025. GC IV is the cornerstone of protection for civilians in international armed conflict and occupation – protections that remain urgently relevant amid patterns of urban warfare, strikes on essential services, and persistent harm to people who are not, or are no longer, taking part in hostilities. The 2025 Commentary, following the interpretive methodology outlined in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, consolidates seven decades of practice, jurisprudence, and operational experience into a practical guide to applying GC IV’s safeguards effectively today.Over the coming weeks, we are delighted to co-host a joint symposium with the editors of Just Security and EJIL:Talk!, sharing expert contributions on selected topics addressed in the updated ICRC Commentary on the Fourth Geneva Convention. We hope this analysis will help shed light on important aspects of the Fourth Convention that are explored in depth in the updated Commentary, outline developments in law, technology and language since 1949, and give readers an idea of what has changed since the initial ICRC Commentary on this Convention was published in 1958.As Jean-Marie Henckaerts highlights below, a good faith interpretation and application of the Fourth Convention is indispensable: “it keeps interpretation anchored in the Conventions’ object and purpose, ensuring that their protective spirit prevails over technical evasions.” His following post, initially published on 21 October 2025, serves as an introduction both to the updated Commentary and to this symposium.
Naval warfare has undergone dramatic transformation, expanding across multiple domains and exposing civilian seafarers, infrastructure, and global supply chains to new and evolving risks. As modern maritime operations become faster, more complex, and more interconnected, long-standing legal frameworks face growing pressure to keep pace.In this post, ICRC Legal Adviser Abby Zeith examines the changing character of naval warfare and questions whether the maritime domain should still be treated as exceptional. She explores how technological, operational, and geopolitical shifts intersect with existing international humanitarian law (IHL), and why renewed clarity from states is essential to protect civilian shipping, seafarers, and populations ashore.
Militaries are gearing up for confrontation on a new battlefield: the human brain.While psychological operations aimed at deceiving enemies or manipulating soldiers and civilian populations have long been part of the military playbook, “cognitive warfare” marks a conceptual shift in which human cognition is framed as a “sixth domain” of military competition, alongside land, sea, air, cyber, and space.In this post, ICRC Policy Adviser Pierrick Devidal offers an overview of the concept of “cognitive warfare” and examines the humanitarian concerns it raises. He argues that if our brains are to be treated as future battlefields, now is the time to consider how the risks can be prevented and mitigated.
Security Fellow at the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, outlines the strategic advantages of closer coordination between IHL and WPS when it comes to strengthening protection and accountability for women and girls. Key benefits of bridging IHL and WPS include filling in gaps within IHL’s existing protections to better reflect the realities of women and girls before, during and after conflict; expanding IHL’s impact through stronger recognition of gender crimes; countering non-compliance; and strengthening awareness of women and girls’ needs by addressing gender stereotypes inherent to IHL.
Many women and children are exposed to violence, exploitation and other risks, including death and family separation, during their migration journeys. Despite the recognition that gender and age shape migration experiences, there is limited data and analysis that systematically and directly addresses how and why migrant women and children go missing or become separated. To reduce this knowledge gap and identify steps to mitigate risks for women and children, the ICRC’s Central Tracing Agency and the Red Cross Red Crescent Global Migration Lab undertook research across the Americas, Africa, and Europe.[1]In collaboration with 17 National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies,[2] we spoke to over 800 migrant women and children, families of missing migrants, and key informants to hear their stories, concerns, and proposed solutions. In this post, we present key insights from the recently published research reports that draw on migrants’ lived experience to identify drivers of deaths and separations, obstacles to maintaining contact and searching for their missing loved ones, and strategies to ensure the safety, dignity, and well-being of migrant women and children.
As cyber operations are increasingly taking place during armed conflicts, and this trend is likely to continue, certain specific protections afforded under IHL and identified in the physical world by the distinctive emblems of the Red Cross, Red Crescent, and Red Crystal must also be visible in an environment the drafters of the very first Geneva Convention in 1864 could never have imagined.In this post, Samit D’Cunha, Legal Adviser at the ICRC, and Mauro Vignati, Technical Adviser at the ICRC, examine the rationale behind the Digital Emblem Project and the significant progress made in recent months. Drawing on ongoing standardization efforts and a growing list of supporters of the project, this post explores how a simple, globally recognizable marker is being developed to help distinguish specifically protected medical and humanitarian assets online.
The ICRC’s 2005 study on customary international humanitarian law – along with the free, public database launched five years later – arrived at a moment when the legal landscape of armed conflict was rapidly shifting. Mandated by the 26th International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, the study set out to map the customary rules governing contemporary warfare by systematically analyzing global state practice and opinio juris. Twenty years on, with more than 130 armed conflicts active worldwide, reassessing the study’s methodological contributions, its evidence base, and its impact on the regulation of both international and non-international armed conflicts offers a timely lens on how customary IHL continues to underpin protections for people affected by war.In this post, ICRC Legal Adviser Claudia Maritano and members of the British Red Cross-ICRC customary IHL research team reflect on how the study’s rigorous methodology, global scope, and identification of 161 customary rules helped clarify gaps left by treaties, especially in non-international armed conflicts, and strengthen the practical application of IHL.
Large-scale armed conflicts consistently sever the systems that sustain civilian life, leaving populations without essential services or access to basic goods. International humanitarian law (IHL) sets out clear obligations for states to anticipate these foreseeable humanitarian needs and to ensure that impartial relief can reach affected communities swiftly and safely. Yet from customs hurdles to restrictive regulatory frameworks, many of the barriers to life-saving assistance are rooted not in conflict itself, but in peacetime choices. In this post, ICRC Legal Adviser Ellen Policinski examines how states can proactively shape legal, administrative, and logistical systems that enable, rather than obstruct, humanitarian relief in moments of crisis. She underscores that meeting IHL obligations requires advance preparation – from easing import restrictions to ensuring postal and customs exemptions – so that when conflict erupts, assistance can move without avoidable delay.
The environmental toll of armed conflict is neither insignificant nor fleeting: it contaminates water, soil, and air, erodes ecosystems, undermines livelihoods, and burdens public health long after the fighting stops. The damage both mirrors and magnifies humanitarian crises, from Gaza’s mountains of debris to Ukraine’s flood-borne pollutants, to Sudan’s industrial contamination. Compounded by the impacts of the climate crisis, these environmental challenges only deepen the vulnerabilities of those affected by conflict. Understanding and addressing the interwoven impacts of conflict and the environment is essential for global climate, nature, pollution and sustainable development efforts, and to ensure that people can live and thrive in a healthy, secure and resilient environment. In this post, part of the War, Law and the Environment series, the UNEP Disasters and Conflicts Branch reflects on its decades of work helping countries address these challenges, charting a path from emergency response to long-term recovery. Through science-based assessments, practical guidance, and strategic partnerships, UNEP is equipping states to address the toxic legacies of war, restore ecosystems, and build resilience into the reconstruction process. Recent UN resolutions, including UNEA’s 2024 consensus decision, underscore growing political recognition that protecting the environment in armed conflict is integral to peace and recovery. What emerges is a vision of environmental response not as an afterthought to war, but as a cornerstone of recovery, and an entry point to build back greener, fairer, and stronger in the shadow of destruction.
Five States Parties to the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention have recently submitted instruments of withdrawal, citing national security and military necessity, while at least one other has taken steps to “suspend” the Convention. These developments raise important questions about whether anti-personnel mines retain any meaningful military utility in contemporary conflict. In this post, Erik Tollefsen, Head of the ICRC Weapon Contamination Unit and Pete Evans, Head of the ICRC Unit for Arms Carriers and Prevention examine this question from an operational perspective. They argue that advances in technology and the realities of modern warfare have significantly reduced the military relevance of anti-personnel mines, while their humanitarian consequences remain severe. They outline why some of the most frequently cited justifications – border security, the supposed benefits of “smart” mines, or perceived low cost – no longer withstand scrutiny, and why renewed interest in these weapons risks reversing decades of progress. The authors call on states to base decisions on rigorous, transparent assessments of current military relevance weighed against humanitarian and legal obligations. In a security environment defined by rapid innovation, they conclude that, now as at the Convention’s adoption 30 years ago, anti-personnel mines have no place on the modern battlefield – and that reaffirming the norm against their use is more urgent than ever.
More than 200 million people live today in contested territories – places where the authority of the state is challenged outright and armed groups exercise full or fluid control. This number has risen by 30 million since 2021. These are not distant statistics; each figure represents a person living in the shadow of competing powers, making difficult choices in an almost impossible environment. How do people navigate the presence of multiple, often competing, armed actors? Is dignity found in defiance, or safety in uneasy compliance? How do families secure food, water or medical care when neither the state nor armed groups are able or willing to provide basic services? And, crucially, what can humanitarian actors do to better protect and assist those caught in these fractured landscapes? In this post, and drawing on recently published research in Cameroon, Iraq and the Philippines, Arjun Claire, Senior Policy Adviser at the ICRC, and Matthew Bamber-Zryd, the ICRC’s Adviser on Armed Groups, offer five insights to help strengthen humanitarian responses in contested territories – insights rooted in the lived realities of the people who navigate them every day.
Restrictions on movement and access to medical supplies have become an often-unseen threat to health care in today’s armed conflicts. Even where hospitals are not attacked, the quiet tightening of supply routes can deprive them of the medicines, equipment, and basic services they need to function. In this post, ICRC Legal Advisers Supriya Rao and Alexander Breitegger outline what the obligation to protect medical facilities means in practice, from allowing the passage of medical consignments to enabling essential services like power and water. They also describe how concerns about dual-use risks must be balanced against humanitarian needs, and highlight ongoing work under the Global IHL Initiative to identify good practices that help keep hospitals operating even in the most difficult conditions.
As artificial intelligence (AI) begins to shape decisions about who is detained in armed conflict and how detention facilities are managed, questions once reserved for science fiction are now urgent matters of law and ethics. The drive to harness data and optimize efficiency risks displacing human judgment from one of the most sensitive areas of warfare: deprivation of liberty. In doing so, AI could strip detainees of what remains of their humanity, reducing them to data points and undermining the core humanitarian guarantees that the Geneva Conventions were designed to protect. In this post, Terry Hackett, ICRC’s Head of the Persons Deprived of Liberty Unit, and Alexis Comninos, ICRC’s Thematic Legal Adviser, explore how the use of AI in detention operations intersects with international humanitarian law (IHL), and why humane treatment must remain a human-centered endeavor. Drawing on the ICRC’s recent recommendations to the UN Secretary-General, they argue that while IHL does not oppose innovation, it sets the moral and legal boundaries that ensure technological progress does not come at the cost of human dignity.
When people go missing in war, their absence lingers far beyond the battlefield – splintering families, deepening social divides, and haunting political transitions. Yet amid this grief, the families of the missing often become unlikely peacebuilders: their search for truth draws them across old front lines, transforming pain into connection and personal loss into a collective force for reconciliation.In this post, Jill Stockwell, Simon Robins, and Martina Zaccaro explore how families of the missing – through shared advocacy and dialogue – can reshape divided societies. Drawing on ICRC research from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus, and Nepal, they show how families who once faced each other as enemies now work side by side, using their moral authority and lived experience to foster empathy, resist manipulation, and model the very reconciliation peace processes often fail to achieve.
When wars end, peace rarely begins overnight. It’s built, slowly and painstakingly, through acts that restore a sense of humanity where it was once suspended. Among these, how a society treats people it detains may seem peripheral, yet it can determine whether trust survives long enough for peace to take root. Humane detention, often overshadowed by more visible aspects of conflict recovery, is in fact one of the earliest and most concrete tests of readiness for peace. Each act of respect for law and dignity – registering a detainee, allowing a family visit, providing medical care, or releasing a prisoner when the reason for detention has ceased – helps reduce the harm that fuels revenge and instead preserves the fragile threads of trust that can bind divided societies. In this post, Terry Hackett, ICRC’s Head of the Persons Deprived of Liberty Unit, and Audrey Purcell-O’Dwyer, ICRC’s Legal Adviser with the Global Initiative on IHL, show how compliance with international humanitarian law (IHL) in detention – while not a direct path to peace – can serve as a legal and moral bridge towards it, one rooted in dignity, accountability, and the quiet rebuilding of trust. By limiting suffering and safeguarding dignity, it helps prevent conflicts from eroding the institutions and confidence that societies need to recover.
Picture a potential future armed conflict: missiles and drones crowding the skies, uncrewed vehicles rolling across borders, and governments scrambling to coordinate their defences. Their conclusion: Every citizen is needed. Some collect and relay information about the approaching enemy into an artificial intelligence (AI) platform that supports military decision-making. Reservists join the ranks of the armed forces. Computer experts choose to contribute by conducting cyber operations aimed at disrupting military operations, sowing chaos among the civilian population, and harming the enemy’s economy. As the militaries on both sides rely heavily on digital communication, connectivity, and AI, the armed forces call on tech companies to provide cybersecurity services, computing power and digital communication networks. In this post, Tilman Rodenhäuser, Samit D’Cunha, and Laurent Gisel from the ICRC, Anna Rosalie Greipl from the Academy, and Professor Marco Roscini from the University of Westminster (and former Swiss IHL Chair at the Geneva Academy) present five key risks for civilians, along with the obligations of both civilians and states, related to the involvement of civilians in information and communication technology (ICT) activities in armed conflict.
In line with its mandate, the ICRC engages with all parties to an armed conflict, including non-state armed groups. The ICRC has a long history of confidential humanitarian engagement with armed groups to alleviate and prevent the suffering of persons living in areas controlled by these groups. However, this engagement has become increasingly complex. Accordingly, the ICRC undertakes an annual internal exercise to evaluate the status of its relationships with armed groups and to identify developments to strengthen its future engagement worldwide.In this post, ICRC Adviser Matthew Bamber-Zryd discusses key findings from the 2025 exercise. The ICRC estimates that 204 million people live in areas controlled or contested by armed groups. In 2025, there were more than 380 armed groups of humanitarian concern. A key development in 2025 is the ICRC's deepened engagement with non-state armed groups that are parties to armed conflict and bound by international humanitarian law (IHL), achieving significantly higher contact rates with these groups than with other armed actors. Yet engagement remains constrained by three major obstacles: deteriorating security conditions, operational constraints including limited resources and competing priorities, and state-imposed barriers, notably counter-terrorism legislation.
The law of naval warfare is a complex collection of international laws, developed in an era that could not anticipate today’s global interdependence, the scale of maritime trade, or the nature of modern maritime conflict. Recent attacks on civilian shipping and ports have underscored the significant humanitarian consequences for seafarers and the global community of states who are heavily dependent on open and secure sea lines of communication. While the existing legal framework – partly codified in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and supplemented by later conventions – remains robust, it was conceived for a different maritime world. Proactive, inclusive dialogue among states is urgently needed to identify and address legal implementation challenges and protection gaps.In this post and through the naval warfare workstream of the Global IHL Initiative, ICRC Legal Advisers André Smit and Kelisiana Thynne outline the international community’s reflections, ideas and recommendations for protecting civilian lives and livelihoods affected by naval operations in an era of heightened geopolitical tension at sea.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Fundamental Principles of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement – humanity, impartiality, neutrality, independence, voluntary service, unity and universality. Proclaimed in Vienna in 1965, they were born not as abstract ideals but as the direct result of over a hundred years of humanitarian action. They have enabled aid to cross frontlines, families to be reunited, and hope to reach places of despair. Yet today, the world in which they must operate is under extraordinary strain: conflicts drag on for years, humanitarian workers face record levels of attack, climate shocks compound existing crises, digitalization reshapes the battlefield, and politicization erodes the fragile space where help can reach those who need it most. The human consequences of war remain devastatingly constant, and the Principles- that have guided the Movement since 1965 are under growing pressure.In this post, ICRC’s Director General Pierre Krähenbühl reflects on the enduring relevance and importance of the Fundamental Principles in a rapidly shifting world. He argues that they are not self-sustaining ideals to be admired from afar, but living commitments that must be exercised and defended. Drawing on his three decades of humanitarian work, he makes the case that the Principles resist the dangerous normalization of war, safeguard access to people in need, and fuel the courage necessary to channel indignation into lifesaving action. At sixty, the Principles will only remain vital if we choose to live them, and in so doing, keep humanity alive in the darkest of times.
Following five years of research and consultations, the ICRC has published a new, updated Commentary on the Fourth Geneva Convention (GC IV) of 1949. GC IV is the cornerstone of protection for civilians in international armed conflict and occupation – protections that remain urgently relevant amid patterns of urban warfare, strikes on essential services, and persistent harm to people who are not, or are no longer, taking part in hostilities. The 2025 Commentary consolidates seven decades of practice, jurisprudence, and operational experience into a practical guide to applying GC IV’s safeguards effectively today.In this post, Jean-Marie Henckaerts, the head of the ICRC project to update the Commentaries on the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977, situates the updated Commentary in contemporary conflict realities and explains why GC IV’s protective purpose must steer its interpretation. He argues that good faith interpretation – required by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties – means reading GC IV in a way that realizes its humanitarian object and purpose, not hollowing it out through technical argumentation that defeats protection in practice.
The impact of armed conflict on mental health is increasingly evident. According to data from the World Health Organization, one in five people who have experienced armed conflict in the last ten years suffers from some form of mental health condition. With an estimated two billion people living in places affected by war, the scale of the problem is staggering. Yet, despite its magnitude, the legal protection of mental health during hostilities remains largely overlooked by both academics and practitioners. In this post, part of the Emerging Voices series, Giulia Bosi, Postdoctoral Researcher in International Law at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa, Italy, examines whether and how international humanitarian law (IHL) seeks to safeguard mental health. Her analysis shows that the drafters of IHL treaties were, at least to some extent, aware of the importance of mental health, that several IHL norms aim to protect it, and that the growing recognition of mental health as an integral part of health is shaping contemporary interpretations of IHL.
For groups involved in long-running non-international armed conflicts, the decision to end the use of violence poses significant challenges – even when it is no longer recognized to be an “effective” means of achieving organizational objectives. In this post, independent researcher Dr Thomas Evans argues that exploring the cultural perspectives, influences, and identities within non-state armed groups and their members is vital to understanding the continued usage of, and disengagement from, political violence.
The number of conflicts continues to rise – with the ICRC currently classifying some 130 armed conflicts worldwide – while at the same time, they are rarely brought to an end. The human suffering they cause is devastating and hard to comprehend. But wars are not inevitable – and the best way to end the suffering they cause is to end conflicts or prevent them from breaking out in the first place. In the absence of effective efforts to find sustainable political solutions, humanitarian organizations like the ICRC are often left to manage the suffering caused by these conflicts, which affect civilians most of all. Political will to reinvest in international cooperation, conflict prevention, and resolution is urgently needed. While humanitarian action cannot substitute for political action, humanitarian actors can contribute to the prospects for peace. In this post, ICRC Policy Advisers Ariana Lopes Morey and Avigail Shai outline key reflections on the ICRC’s direct and indirect contributions to an environment conducive to peace. Drawing on case studies and other research, they identify three primary areas of the ICRC’s humanitarian action – its work with communities, in dialogue with parties to conflict and other influential actors, and in building respect for human dignity through laws, norms and institutions – which can strengthen prospects for peace. While focused on the ICRC’s own work, many of these reflections can apply more broadly to other organizations who strive to address the humanitarian impacts of conflict on people.
Across contemporary armed conflicts, the presence of civilian groups who take up arms to defend their communities raises enduring and complex legal challenges. At what point do these groups become parties to an armed conflict or otherwise bound by IHL? Do civilians who participate in hostilities lose protection against attack, and if so, for how long? Who bears responsibility for ensuring that they, and other civilians drawn into conflict, respect IHL?In this post, ICRC Legal Advisers Jelena Nikolic, Tilman Rodenhäuser and Thomas de Saint Maurice examine these questions in the context of non-international armed conflicts, seeking to help in the analysis of determining whether and at what point groups of civilians become parties to armed conflicts, what their legal obligations are, and who is responsible for their conduct.
For as long as humans have existed, stories have been our bridge to one another. Today, in a world shaped by digital networks, synthetic media, and hyperconnected feeds, that bridge is under unprecedented strain. Storytelling remains one of the most powerful ways to counter division and remind us of our shared humanity, yet it is also increasingly manipulated, dismissed, or drowned out in a noisy and polarized information landscape. The risk is not simply losing narratives but losing the very empathy and recognition that underpin humanitarian action.In this post, ICRC Communications Coordinator Najum Ul Saqib Iqbal argues that in an age of competing truths and rising dehumanization, telling stories of dignity and resilience is not a luxury but a moral necessity, an act of resistance against apathy, and a vital means of reconnecting us across divides.
The waters stretching from the Eastern Indian Ocean through Southeast and East Asia to the Western Pacific sustain global trade, host abundant marine resources vital to the livelihoods of many, and power regional economies. They are central to the national security of many states and are also home to major powers, vast archipelagic states, and many smaller states, including small island nations. These waters are also marked by overlapping maritime claims, strategic maritime chokepoints, and a growing military presence, including states from outside the region. Tensions rise when maritime incidents occur and there is an ever-present risk of miscalculations spiraling into broader confrontations. While armed conflict is not inevitable, if it were to occur it would likely unfold with considerable intensity, scale and tempo, with far-reaching and severe humanitarian consequences. Preparing for such a scenario requires not only preventing escalation but also ensuring that humanitarian impacts are mitigated and that impartial humanitarian action can take place, even in complex maritime environments where neutral states would also be called upon to shoulder important responsibilities.In this post, part of the “Complying with IHL in large-scale conflict” series, ICRC Legal Advisers Ansha Krishnan and Eve Massingham explore some of the humanitarian challenges posed by potential large-scale conflict in the Asia-Pacific region. The maritime nature of the region, together with its vast geographical scope and the present geo-political realities means aspects of conflict preparedness bear specific consideration because of the practical measures required to comply with IHL obligations and prepare for likely humanitarian consequences.
As many states, especially those with large and resourceful militaries, are exploring the potential of using artificial intelligence (AI) in targeting decisions, there is an urgent need to understand the risks associated with these systems, one being the risks of bias. However, while concerns about bias are often mentioned in the military AI policy debate, how it manifests as harm and what can be done to address it is rarely discussed in depth. This represents a critical gap in efforts to ensure the lawful use of military AI. To help bridge this gap, Laura Bruun and Marta Bo from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) unpack the humanitarian and legal implications of bias in military AI. They show how bias in military AI is likely to manifest in more complex and subtle ways than portrayed in policy debates, and if unaddressed, it may affect compliance with IHL principles of distinction, proportionality, and, especially, precautions in attack.
Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are no longer speculative technologies of future warfare – they are being field-tested by countries such as the United States and China. As BCI technologies transition from the laboratory to the battlefield, they bring both significant risks and potential advantages for future warfare. In this post, Dr. Anna M. Gielas, an affiliated researcher with the Centre for Global Knowledge Studies at the University of Cambridge, explores how BCI may challenge international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law, requiring closer scrutiny and deeper debate on the development of national and international BCI regulations.
How AI learns, and what it misses: why data selection matters in humanitarian action by ICRC Law and Policy
On August 6th and 9th 1945, Hiroshima and Nagasaki became the first – and so far only – targets of nuclear weapons in warfare, killing over 100,000 people instantly and devastating countless lives for decades to come. The humanitarian consequences of such weapons are unmatched in scale and severity. While legal and ethical arguments against the most horrendous weapons have existed since the 19th century, nuclear arsenals remain active and are even expanding, as global discourse shifts away from nuclear disarmament toward renewed reliance on deterrence.In this post, ICRC Policy Adviser Dominique Loye traces the evolution of legal and humanitarian objections to nuclear weapons, from the 1868 Saint Petersburg Declaration to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). He argues that despite hopeful legal and diplomatic milestones, the world is once again drifting towards catastrophe. With the 2026 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) Review Conference on the horizon, the time is now to reframe global security around humanity – not annihilation – and to take urgent, collective steps to reduce nuclear risks and prevent their use.
“Without information and telecommunication, people don’t know where to go for safety,” the ICRC reported from an ongoing armed conflict. Another humanitarian worker recalled that when connectivity is down and “a bombing happens, especially in the night, you cannot reach ambulances”. The importance of connectivity for people affected by armed conflict is further exemplified when displaced people ask humanitarian organizations for Wi-Fi or a ‘hot spot’, as connectivity provides the most direct contact to their loved ones. Yet, disruptions of connectivity are frequent in today’s armed conflict, at times part of incidental damage caused by hostilities, at other times presented as a measure necessary to impact an enemy’s operations.In this post, ICRC Legal Adviser Tilman Rodenhäuser discusses some of the limits that international humanitarian law (IHL) imposes on connectivity disruptions in armed conflict. The notion ‘connectivity disruptions’ is used to describe operations by belligerents that make digital connectivity or tele-communications unavailable or otherwise disrupted, temporarily or in the longer term.
As people around the world become increasingly reliant on digital and telecommunications networks to access essential services, contact loved ones, and seek help, the rising number of connectivity disruptions in armed conflicts is a growing source of concern for their safety and dignity.In this post, ICRC Protection Specialist Cléa Thouin reflects on the humanitarian consequences of such disruptions – situations in which digital or telecommunications become partially or completely lost – and on the need to address their causes and mitigate their impact, especially in contexts where connectivity can mean the difference between life and death.
When a powerful earthquake struck Myanmar on 28 March 2025, it tore through communities already living under the shadow of armed conflict and chronic instability. In the tangle of collapsed homes and fractured lives, it laid bare the brutal convergence of natural hazard-induced disaster and manmade violence – a crisis within a crisis, testing not only the resilience of survivors but also the principles that guide humanitarian response.In this post, ICRC Communication Delegate Stephanie Xu reflects on what it means to photograph humanity at the intersection of conflict and catastrophe. Her lens captures both the visible wreckage and the quiet dignity of those rebuilding amid despair. Marking three months since the earthquake – and in a year marking the 60th anniversary of the Fundamental Principles of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement – she shows how the principle of humanity continues to illuminate and inform the work of humanitarian actors responding in some of the world’s most complex emergencies.
In contemporary humanitarian crises, handling the dead presents significant practical and ethical challenges. With a significant number of armed conflicts occurring in Muslim contexts, understanding how Islamic law mandates dignified treatment of the deceased is essential to ensure that forensic interventions align with cultural and legal norms.In this post, Dr Ahmed Al Dawoody, ICRC Legal Adviser for Islamic Law, examines how Islamic legal traditions address matters such as collective burial, rapid interment, exhumation, autopsy, burial at sea, and gender sensitive handling of remains. He argues that these rules both reinforce and complement international humanitarian law (IHL), offering forensic practitioners culturally grounded pathways to uphold the dignity of the dead while navigating operational realities in Muslim majority settings.
The universality of international humanitarian law (IHL) assumes that its principles transcend cultural, geographical, and political boundaries. However, this presumption is challenged by the complexities of how IHL is perceived and implemented across different sociocultural contexts. Bridging the gap between theoretical universalism and practical application requires strategies that are sensitive to local cultural and normative particularities. In this post, part of the Emerging Voices series, Ayan Abdirashid Ali explores how Somali literary traditions, particularly Sugaanta Soomaaliyeed, offer a unique and effective means of aligning IHL’s ethical framework with local cultural narratives, thereby enhancing its legitimacy and effectiveness. By weaving together legal and cultural perspectives, she highlights how such traditions can serve as powerful tools for fostering peace and reconciliation in conflict-prone regions.
In today’s armed conflicts, hospitals are increasingly being attacked or misused for military purposes, undermining one of international humanitarian law’s most fundamental protections. These strikes have devastating consequences for the people who rely on hospitals for life-saving care, from patients and medical staff to entire communities. When hospitals are damaged or forced to shut down, critical services like paediatric care or intensive care treatment vanish, often with fatal results. Despite clear legal safeguards granting protection to hospitals, cases indicate that hospitals are at times misused for military purposes and attacks regularly ensue. In many cases, core IHL principles are either deliberately ignored or applied in a permissive manner, threatening the very idea that hospitals must be specifically protected as neutral sanctuaries by all sides to a conflict.In this post, ICRC Legal Advisers Supriya Rao and Alex Breitegger explore how IHL’s specific protection of hospitals is both robust and comprehensive, grounded in a presumption of neutrality that can only be lost in narrowly defined cases. Even when misuse occurs, parties are required to issue a warning and give time for it to stop, striking as a last resort only if the hospital meets the definition of a military objective – and even then, the rules of proportionality and precautions apply to limit the harm. Upholding this framework is essential to ensuring that the wounded and sick can access care, and that humanitarian principles endure, even amid the horror of war.
This year marks eight decades since the Holocaust, a defining moment of human suffering and moral failure. The memory of six million murdered Jews, and millions of others persecuted and killed, remains a solemn imperative. It compels not only remembrance, but a reaffirmation of collective responsibility. The 1949 Geneva Conventions were born to serve as a legal and moral bulwark against such atrocities. Yet memory fades, and with it, vigilance. As civilians continue to suffer in today’s wars, the legacy of the Holocaust urges both commemoration and action: against dehumanization, against silence, and in defence of the rules meant to protect life and human dignity in conflict.This audio recording captures a discussion recently held at ICRC headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, as part of an institutional event to mark the 80th anniversary of the Holocaust – a moment of remembrance and reflection. Thirty years ago, the ICRC publicly acknowledged its failure during the Holocaust: silence in the face of mass extermination. While not an exhaustive account of the ICRC’s actions and inactions, the conversation confronts a number of difficult truths to inform present and future action. It is not intended to offer comfort, but clarity. By revisiting parts of this painful history, the ICRC reaffirms its commitment to transparency, accountability, honoring victims, and the enduring relevance of international humanitarian law.
The accelerating integration of emerging technologies into armed conflict is transforming not only the tools of war, but its tactics, geography, participants and impact. Technological developments – from commercial drones to artificial intelligence, electronic warfare to the military use of civilian infrastructure – risk undermining boundaries between military and civilian domains. These changes challenge long-held assumptions about the character and conduct of warfare, how wars are fought in practice, while raising legal and humanitarian concerns for the protection of civilians and the preservation of the principle of distinction.In this post, Ruben Stewart, ICRC Adviser on New Technologies of Warfare, explores the drivers and implications of this transformation. He focuses on how evolving technologies and trends are influencing the conduct of hostilities and impacting the protection of civilians. He underscores the urgent need to uphold legal norms amid these shifts, particularly the principle of distinction, ensuring that complexity does not become a pretext for non-compliance. At the heart of his analysis is a call to reckon with the profound humanitarian consequences these changes impose on those caught in conflict.
Large-scale detention operations in international armed conflicts (IACs) pose significant humanitarian, legal, and operational challenges. International humanitarian law (IHL) provides detailed rules governing the treatment and protection of persons deprived of liberty, whether they are prisoners of war, other persons interned for security reasons, or other protected persons. These obligations, enshrined primarily in the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions, require not only compliance once the armed conflict begins, but advance planning during peacetime. Without the appropriate institutions, infrastructures, and trained personnel in place beforehand, states risk falling short of their legal obligations when hostilities erupt, to the detriment of detainees’ rights and dignity. In this post, ICRC Legal Advisers Sylvain Vité and Isabelle Gallino explore what it takes to comply with IHL in large-scale detention operations during IACs, focusing on the preparatory measures that states must undertake long before the first capture. Building on the previous post in this series, they highlight the critical need to establish functioning legal and administrative mechanisms, ensure the availability of adequate facilities and resources, and embed IHL training across relevant personnel.
When states adapt “total defence” strategies that mobilize entire populations in preparation for armed conflict, the line between civilian and combatant can become dangerously blurred. This raises pressing legal, ethical, and humanitarian questions about the risks to civilians in warfare. In this post, Ruben Stewart, ICRC Adviser on Technology in Warfare, traces the roots of “total defence” to the Napoleonic Wars, when conscription, guerrilla resistance, economic blockades, and propaganda drew civilians into the machinery of war. Through this historical lens, he shows how involving civilians in defence efforts – then and now – can expose them to harm, complicate their legal protection, and increase the burden on states to safeguard those not taking direct part in hostilities.
Amid the complexities of contemporary armed conflicts, damage to water infrastructure and the use of water as a means or method of warfare have devastating consequences for both civilian populations and the environment. Despite existing legal protections, gaps in compliance and enforcement leave water systems vulnerable, exacerbating humanitarian crises and ecological harm. Addressing these challenges requires a renewed focus on legal frameworks, accountability, and practical measures to strengthen the protection of water in conflict settings.In this post, part of the Emerging Voices series, Tadesse Kebebew, Researcher and Project Manager at the Geneva Water Hub, examines the severe consequences of attacks on water systems and the weaponization of water in armed conflicts. He assesses the strengths and limitations of current international legal protections and offers concrete recommendations to enhance safeguards for freshwater resources, emphasizing the need for stronger compliance with international humanitarian law.
Landmines, a persistent threat in post-conflict zones, pose severe risks to both human lives and the environment. These explosive devices, often buried underground, remain dormant for years, contaminating soil and water and causing long-term ecological damage. While robust legal frameworks governing landmines exist under international humanitarian law (IHL), landmine instruments have only recently begun to incorporate more explicit environmental protections. In this post, and as part of the Emerging Voices series, Goran Sandić, Researcher at the University of Belgrade and Coordinator of the Belgrade International Law Circle, argues that the “polluter pays” principle – originally formulated in international environmental law – can serve as an interpretive lens to reinforce the responsibility of states and other actors for environmental harm arising from landmine use. By weaving this principle into existing processes, we can more effectively address the ongoing costs of landmine remediation and underscore the responsibility of parties that violate fundamental obligations under IHL. This approach aims to support environmental justice while enhancing the legal framework for armed conflicts, which could influence post-conflict recovery efforts and mine action globally.
As public opinion is critical in shaping decision-making during armed conflict, engaging with and informing youth and the broader public about international humanitarian law (IHL) is essential for ensuring compliance with the law and promoting accountability. IHL education – both formal and non-formal – is key to this endeavor. Engagement across all generations and audiences – both military and civilian – is important to ensure a broad and enduring understanding of the goals of IHL and ultimately contribute to prevent and reduce suffering in armed conflict through an informed and motivated public. With over 42% of the global population under the age of 25, young people are especially critical to these efforts.In this post, Etienne Kuster, Catherine Gribbin, Jonathan Somer, Thomas Harper and Charlotte Tocchio share insights from IHL educators and IHL experts around the world on how IHL education needs further investment in order to build a universal culture of compliance.
As states increasingly focus on strengthening their defense capabilities, discussions on military preparedness are gaining prominence, particularly in relation to large-scale conflicts. Such conflicts, involving major powers, advanced weaponry, and extensive resources, would unfold with considerable intensity, scale, and tempo. The humanitarian consequences would be far-reaching and severe, potentially causing mass casualties, mass displacement, and the disruption of essential services. The Geneva Conventions, adopted in the aftermath of two world wars, were designed precisely to help mitigate the suffering in armed conflict. Yet ratification alone is not enough: for these rules to be upheld in practice, extensive legal and operational preparations must begin in times of peace.This introductory post sets the stage for a new series examining the steps needed to ensure compliance with international humanitarian law (IHL) in large-scale conflicts. Isabelle Gallino, ICRC Prevention Adviser, and Sylvain Vité, ICRC Senior Legal Adviser, argue that states must do more than recognize their legal obligations. Applicable rules must be understood, internalized, and backed by legal and practical measures today if they are to be effective once an armed conflict erupts. Ultimately, failure to prepare can undermine even the best-intentioned efforts to comply with IHL.
References to Islamic law made by the delegations of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Syria during the 1974–1977 Diplomatic Conference – which led to the adoption of the two Additional Protocols to the 1949 Geneva Conventions – offer a partial glimpse into the contributions of Islamic law to the development of some modern international humanitarian law (IHL) principles.In this post, ICRC’s legal adviser for Islamic law and jurisprudence, Ahmed Al-Dawoody and ICRC Associate Medha Damojipurapu examine some of the contributions of Islamic law to the development of the Additional Protocols, as well as the motivations for ratification by Muslim-majority states. They maintain that studying these perspectives can support humanitarian organizations to effectively communicate and anchor the protection owed to people affected by armed conflict during their dialogue in relevant contexts.
International law recognizes the importance of environmental protection during armed conflict. Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions was the first treaty to formally prohibit warfare methods that cause widespread, long-term, and severe environmental damage. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) further criminalizes damage to the natural environment as a war crime, though its high threshold has so far prevented its use. The existing initiatives to define “ecocide” aim, among other things, to broaden accountability beyond armed conflict and include corporations. In this post, part of the Emerging Voices series, Iryna Rekrut, Legal Fellow at the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, proposes an additional potential avenue that could also be used to improve accountability for environmental damage under the Rome Statute. She argues that a more expansive interpretation of existing provisions – particularly refining the definitions of “widespread,” “long-term,” and “severe” damage – could meet the evidentiary burden and make prosecution more viable under current international law.
Earlier this month, Lithuania’s unprecedented withdrawal from the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) took effect. Meanwhile, several states are openly questioning their continued adherence to other humanitarian treaties, including the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention (APMBC). These developments take place amid heightened international tensions and mounting security concerns, both in Europe and globally. They come at a time when respect for fundamental humanitarian norms is shockingly insufficient, as the immense devastation in ongoing conflicts demonstrates.In this post, ICRC Chief Legal Officer Cordula Droege and ICRC Legal Adviser Maya Brehm caution that recent challenges to the APMBC mirror broader threats to the life-saving protections of international humanitarian law (IHL). They argue that justifications for using anti-personnel mines (APM) tend to be divorced from battlefield realities and overlook the appalling impacts of these treacherous weapons. The authors also show how efforts to circumvent or abandon the APMBC challenge fundamental precepts of IHL and undermine the international rule of law. The post concludes with a call to reinforce humanitarian norms as essential safeguards for upholding humanity in war.
Amid the devastation of armed conflict, hospitals stand as fragile sanctuaries, overwhelmed by demand and depleted of essential supplies. Struggling to function under relentless strain, they remain uniquely vulnerable – yet, rather than being protected, they are too often caught in the crosshairs of tactical attacks and political allegations.In this installment of the Emerging Voices series, Khang Phan and Thao Nguyen, recent graduates of Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, trace patterns in attacks on hospitals in contemporary conflicts. They examine the legal protections in place and the practical challenges that undermine compliance and enforcement. In doing so, they underscore the need for more effective warning systems and stronger communication among stakeholders to ensure hospitals receive the fullest possible protection.
Contemporary armed conflicts are increasingly complex and, through rapid technological development, increasingly remote. This calls into question the capacity of a machine to apply human emotional traits such as empathy and caution, crucial for effective judgement and evaluation in challenging situations. Despite the precision and reliability that might be achieved through the increased automation of military activities such as target identification, from a humanitarian perspective, outsourcing such high-stakes decisions to machines is highly problematic. In this post, Dr Joanna Wilson, Lecturer in Law at the University of the West of Scotland, calls for the urgent ‘rehumanization’ of military decision-making. Emotions play a key role in this. While sometimes blamed for unpredictable, erratic human behaviour, for which a machine might therefore be viewed to be a welcome alternative, emotions are indispensable for effective and flexible moral reasoning, intuition, and self-regulation. The use of artificial intelligence (AI) should thus be exclusively limited to effectively supplementing and facilitating human agency and decision-making: a technological means for strictly human ends.
In today’s multilateral disarmament, peace and security, and humanitarian fora, a key responsibility of states – and a challenge for their lawyers and policy makers – is to find common understandings on the international legal limits on information and communication technology (ICT) activities during armed conflicts. Following over two decades of discussions – and gradual progress – in UN General Assembly mandated groups of governmental experts and open-ended working groups on the use of ICTs, multilateral efforts to agree to such limits have reached an important juncture. In this post, the ICRC’s Laurent Gisel and Tilman Rodenhäuser highlight the significant progress achieved on the protection of civilian populations against ICT activities through the adoption of ‘the first humanitarian ICT resolution’ at the 34th International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement in October 2024. The authors discuss the trajectory that this resolution sets for multilateral work in the UN Open-Ended Working Group that concludes this year, for the ICTs workstream of the Global Initiative on IHL, and the ICRC’s project on a digital emblem.
As the devastating impacts of armed conflicts continue to mount, civilians are enduring unimaginable suffering. Violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) are compounding these crises, while emerging threats such as autonomous weapons and cyber warfare add new dimensions to the challenges facing humanity. Despite the universal ratification of the Geneva Conventions, the erosion of respect for these fundamental rules of war endangers lives, infrastructure, and the fragile prospects for peace.In this post, ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric outlines the pressing need for states to join the Global Initiative on international humanitarian law. By reaffirming their commitment to this much-needed body of law, states can ensure the protection of civilians, restore dignity to those affected by conflict, and build a pathway toward sustainable peace. The time to act is now, and the Global Initiative offers a platform for collective action to uphold the rules that safeguard humanity.
Canada recently published its first voluntary report on the implementation of international humanitarian law (IHL), highlighting its efforts to comply with IHL rules. However, the report overlooks key challenges and critical issues, leaving gaps that future reports should address.In this post, Professor Tiwa Fomekong examines the achievements described in Canada’s report alongside its omissions, arguing that for such reports to reach their full potential as tools for enhancing respect for IHL and accountability, future efforts must be more comprehensive and transparent in addressing shortcomings, detailing corrective actions, and tackling emerging issues.
In an era of rising geopolitical tensions, terms like ‘hybrid threats,’ ‘grey zones,’ and ‘proxy warfare’ are frequently used to describe covert and ambiguous operations, suggesting they blur the lines between peace and armed conflict. From cyberattacks on civilian infrastructure to the damaging of undersea cables, these acts are often labeled as ‘hybrid warfare,’ raising questions about their legal and political implications. In this post, and drawing from the ICRC’s 2024 report on contemporary challenges to international humanitarian law (IHL), ICRC Legal Advisers Samit D’Cunha, Tristan Ferraro, and Tilman Rodenhäuser clarify how legal criteria – not political narratives – determine whether a situation constitutes an armed conflict, highlighting the importance of accurate classification to uphold the protections afforded by IHL.
Around the world, civilians in cities at war face immense risks. Urban warfare devastates lives and livelihoods, as people are killed and injured, critical infrastructure such as hospitals and water systems are damaged or destroyed, and entire communities are forced to flee. Disruptions to essential services amplifies the suffering of civilians and poses significant humanitarian challenges. As urbanization grows, the impact of conflicts in cities demands urgent and coordinated action to reduce harm and uphold the protections afforded under international humanitarian law (IHL).At the 34th International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent in October 2024, this pressing issue was raised through the adoption by the Council of Delegates of a Solemn Appeal on War in Cities. The resolution reflects a shared recognition by the RCRC Movement of the human cost of urban warfare and a commitment to improving the protection of civilians. To mark this moment, the resolution was read aloud during the conference, underscoring its importance and the collective responsibility it calls for. Today, we share both the transcript and video of the reading as a reminder of the need for action to safeguard human lives and preserve dignity in urban conflict settings.
Members of armed forces receive international humanitarian law (IHL) training as a matter of course, but they are not the only actors who must apply this body of law; lawyers within governments, international organizations, and NGOs all have roles in this regard. Did they have the opportunity to study IHL? And contemporary armed conflicts have made IHL compliance an issue on university campuses around the world. But do students have access to IHL courses?In this post, international law professor Marina Sharpe answers these questions in relation to Canadian law schools, finding that while IHL is not widely offered, student interest in the subject is strong.
During 2024, efforts to address the governance of military artificial intelligence (AI) have gained momentum. Yet in the same year, we have also witnessed the growing use of AI decision support systems during armed conflict, and it is becoming clearer that such systems may pose a significant challenge to peace and stability. These developments raise questions about the current approach toward military AI governance. In this post, Elke Schwarz, Professor of Political Theory at Queen Mary University London, argues that efforts toward governance are complicated by a number of factors intrinsic to contemporary AI systems in targeting decisions. She highlights three in particular: (1) the character of current AI systems, which rests on iteration and impermanence; (2) the dominance of private sector producers in the sector and the financial ethos that grows from this; and (3) the expansive drive implicit in AI systems themselves, especially predictive AI systems in targeting decisions. These realities of AI suggest that the risks are perhaps greater than often acknowledged.
When discussing the measurement of sexual- and gender-based violence (SGBV) prevention in humanitarian settings, reactions often polarize around two main arguments: that measurement is impossible (“How can we measure what hasn’t happened?”), or that prevalence alone signals success (“Do you have data showing decreased perpetration?”). Both perspectives overlook the complexity of SGBV prevention – and the valuable insights gained from measuring it through alternative approaches.In this post, Zuleyka Piniella, ICRC’s Global Coordinator for the Prevention of Sexual Violence Programme, and Jessica Lenz, Senior Protection Advisor for InterAction, explore new ways to capture the nuanced impacts of prevention efforts, moving beyond prevalence data to understand what truly drives change.
The development of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies brings significant opportunities, and risks, for principled humanitarian action. While AI innovations advance at a pace that seemingly defies human capabilities to manage them responsibly, humanitarian organizations are chasing ‘AI for Good’, and struggling to find effective safeguards.In this post, ICRC Senior Policy Adviser Pierrick Devidal reflects on some of the lessons from the ICRC’s experience in building its recently adopted AI Policy, with the hope that it can inform other efforts to build an ethical and responsible approach to the use of AI in the humanitarian sector.
Private businesses that operate in situations of armed conflict, do business with a government or other entity involved in an armed conflict, or may do so in the future, should be aware of relevant rules of international humanitarian law (IHL).In this post, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Australian Red Cross Society and French Red Cross Society describe a new publication that introduces the most relevant rules of IHL and explains why and how private businesses need to respect them.
Communities in conflict-affected areas are direly impacted by growing climate risks and shocks. Over the last few years, political will to strengthen climate action in these settings has been growing. Commitments need to be urgently translated into tangible outcomes for communities – and avenues to do so exist.In this post, and on the eve of COP29, Catherine-Lune Grayson and Amir Khouzam reflect on pathways to strengthen climate action in conflict settings.
Language matters and the protections of international law are crucial when facing global trends of dehumanization. Dehumanizing narratives strip people of their dignity, making it easier to justify inhumane treatment, torture, and exclusion from legal protections.In this post, Terry Hackett, Head of Division on Persons Deprived of Liberty at the ICRC, emphasizes the urgent need to reject dehumanization, ensure humane treatment, and strengthen compliance with international law to protect the dignity and rights of detainees globally.
In line with its mandate, the ICRC engages with all parties to an armed conflict, including non-state armed groups. The ICRC has a long history of confidential humanitarian engagement with armed groups to alleviate and prevent the suffering of persons living in areas controlled by these groups. However, this engagement has become increasingly complex. Accordingly, the ICRC undertakes an annual internal exercise to evaluate the status of its relationships with armed groups and to identify developments to strengthen its future engagement worldwide. In this post, ICRC Adviser Matthew Bamber-Zryd discusses some of the key findings from this exercise. In 2024, the ICRC estimates that 210 million persons live in areas under the full or contested control of armed groups. There are more than 450 armed groups of humanitarian concern worldwide and the ICRC’s engagement with these groups remains stable. Despite the ICRC’s successful contact with 60% of armed groups worldwide, engagement with some groups remains challenging. These obstacles stem from a combination of state-imposed barriers, notably counter-terrorism legislation, and the precarious security environment prevailing in certain countries.
Gender can still be a confusing and contested subject for international humanitarian law (IHL) and military practitioners. But just as practitioners keep abreast of astonishing technological advancement, and states continue to dedicate significant – and, in numerous contexts, increasing – national spending on defence and security, it is high time that the equal protection of civilians is invested in, too. Gender inequality remains ingrained across today’s conflict-affected contexts, and gender-specific harms shape some of the horrors inflicted on civilians. To encourage parties to armed conflict to take more and better measures to reduce this harm, in 2024 the ICRC, the Swedish Red Cross, and the Nordic Centre for Military Operations published a new report – International Humanitarian Law and a Gender Perspective in the Planning and Conduct of Military Operations – based on an expert meeting with state and military practitioners. In this post, the report’s co-authors set out ten legal, policy and operational recommendations to equip armed forces to reduce the gendered risks faced by diverse women, men, girls and boys in armed conflict, and identify good practices from modern militaries. It’s time for these to be part-and-parcel of how militaries comply with IHL and related civilian harm reduction measures.
The 34th International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent will take place 28-31 October 2024 in Geneva, Switzerland. At this meeting, states party to the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the components of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement will meet to discuss humanitarian issues under this International Conference’s theme “Navigate uncertainty, strengthen humanity”.In the lead-up to this meeting, ICRC Legal Adviser Ellen Policinski looks back at the role of the International Conference in drafting the 1949 Geneva Conventions, in particular the Fourth Geneva Convention, which protects civilians.
Food insecurity remains a critical issue in modern armed conflicts, exacerbated by the mutually reinforcing effects of conflict, economic shocks, and climate change. In response, the ICRC's 2024 Challenges Report emphasizes how compliance with a broad range of rules of international humanitarian law (IHL) can help avoid acute food crises, and highlights a number of contemporary obstacles to achieving such compliance in practice.In this post, ICRC Legal Adviser Matt Pollard highlights key legal protections under IHL, including the prohibition against using starvation as a method of warfare. He stresses the importance of a much wider range of rules relevant to safeguarding civilian access to essential resources like food and water, and outlines how avoiding unduly narrow interpretations of such IHL rules is essential to reducing food insecurity and its devastating long-term effects during armed conflicts.
Detention by non-state armed groups is a widespread, diverse, and legally complex occurrence in armed conflicts across the globe. In 2023, the ICRC assessed that around 70 non-state armed groups in non-international armed conflicts have detainees. The circumstances of detention can pose serious humanitarian concerns, including ill-treatment and inadequate living conditions for detainees. In this post, part of a series on the Fourth Geneva Convention and the internment of protected persons and drawing upon the 2024 ICRC Challenges Report, ICRC Legal Adviser Tilman Rodenhäuser discusses the prohibition of arbitrary detention under international humanitarian law (IHL) and how this relates to internment by non-state armed groups in the context of non-international armed conflicts.
Water and wastewater pipelines, electricity lines and telecommunication installations permeate contemporary urban landscapes and form complex, interdependent service networks, which populations rely on for their essential needs. Armed conflict can damage or disrupt these networks and the essential services they provide. In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to protecting critical civilian infrastructure, yet addressing the humanitarian impact of essential service disruption requires a broader focus beyond physical infrastructure. In this post, the group of experts behind the newly released report “Keeping the Lights on and the Taps Running”, co-published by the ICRC and the Norwegian Red Cross, highlight the crucial yet often overlooked role of the personnel who operate, maintain, and repair essential service infrastructure during hostilities. They argue that protecting and facilitating safer access for essential service providers during armed conflict should be considered a key component of humanitarian action and review the Movement's experience in doing so.
Since 2003, the ICRC has submitted a report on ‘International Humanitarian Law and the Challenges of Contemporary Armed Conflict’ to the International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, where the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions come together with the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement to discuss key matters of humanitarian concern and to make joint commitments.In this post and drawing from the 2024 Challenges Report, ICRC Chief Legal Officer Cordula Droege presents the ICRC’s analysis of some of the salient legal issues of today’s conflicts, animated, first and foremost, by its desire to achieve greater protection of victims of war from the effects of armed conflicts, and informed by its observation of key humanitarian issues on the ground and its dialogue with parties to conflicts in all parts of the world.
In the debate on how artificial intelligence (AI) will impact military strategy and decision-making, a key question is who makes better decisions — humans or machines? Advocates for a better leveraging of artificial intelligence point to heuristics and human error, arguing that new technologies can reduce civilian suffering through more precise targeting and greater legal compliance. The counter argument is that AI-enabled decision-making can be as bad, if not worse, than that done by humans, and that the scope for mistakes creates disproportionate risks. What these debates overlook is that it may not be possible for machines to replicate all dimensions of human decision-making. Moreover, we may not want them to. In this post, Erica Harper, Head of Research and Policy at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, sets out the possible implications of AI-enabled military decision-making as this relates to the initiation of war, the waging of conflict, and peacebuilding. She highlights that while such use of AI may create positive externalities — including in terms of prevention and harm mitigation — the risks are profound. These include the potential for a new era of opportunistic warfare, a mainstreaming of violence desensitization and missed opportunities for peace. Such potential needs to be assessed in terms of the current state of multilateral fragility, and factored into AI policy-making at the regional and international levels.
The military decision-making process is facing a challenge by the increasing number of interconnected sensors capturing information on the battlefield. The abundance of information offers advantages for operational planning – if it can be processed and acted upon rapidly. This is where AI-assisted decision-support systems (DSS) enter the picture. They are meant to empower military commanders to make faster and more informed decisions, thus accelerating and improving the decision-making process. Although they are just meant to assist – and not replace – human decision-makers, they pose several ethical challenges which need to be addressed.In this post, Matthias Klaus, who has a background in AI ethics, risk analysis and international security studies, explores the ethical challenges associated with a military AI application often overshadowed by the largely dominating concern about autonomous weapon systems (AWS). He highlights a number of ethical challenges associated specifically with DSS, which are often portrayed as bringing more objectivity, effectivity and efficiency to military decision-making. However, they could foster forms of bias, infringe upon human autonomy and dignity, and effectively undermine military moral responsibility by resulting in peer pressure and deskilling.
The Fourth Geneva Convention was the first humanitarian law convention dedicated to protections for civilians during armed conflict. Amongst its numerous protective rules, it also provides the main rules of international humanitarian law (IHL) governing the exceptional practice of internment of protected persons – detention of such persons for security reasons during international armed conflict.In this post, and in commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions this year, Group Captain Tim Wood, Provost Marshal of the New Zealand Defence Force, shares his views and practical insights with regards to procedures for internment review of civilians. Drawing on operational experience, he considers some of the characteristics of review bodies which are essential for them to properly fulfil their role.
When the very first Geneva Convention was adopted in 1864, it was the culmination of several interwoven humanitarian projects of the ICRC’s principal founder, Henry Dunant. One of those ambitions was the conception, standardization, and integration into what would become known as international humanitarian law (IHL) of the distinctive emblem of the Convention. Designed to signal the specific protections IHL accords to the medical services and certain humanitarian operations, the emblem – today the red cross, red crescent, and red crystal – is displayed on different persons and objects in the physical world, including on buildings, transports, units, equipment, and personnel that are accorded these protections. Over its 160-year history, the distinctive emblem has saved countless lives.Today, the ICRC is again engaged in a project to conceive, standardize, and integrate into IHL a means to identify those very same specific protections, but in a way the drafters of the original 1864 Geneva Convention could not have imagined: a digital emblem specifically designed to identify the digital assets of the medical services and certain humanitarian operations. In this post, building on previous work on this topic, ICRC Legal Adviser Samit D’Cunha summarizes some of the key milestones of the history and development of the distinctive emblem and explores how these milestones serve as a lodestone – or compass – for the Digital Emblem Project’s path forward.
During armed conflict and other situations of violence, timely access to reliable information can save lives. Affected people need to know where danger and risks come from, how and where they can find assistance, and how to protect themselves and access needed services. At the same time, the information dimensions of conflict have become part of the digital frontlines, where harmful information can spread at greater scale, speed, and reach than ever before. The information space can be riddled with narratives that distort facts that are essential for people to make decisions regarding shelter or their security, that undermine humanitarian operations, or that influence people’s behavior, fueling polarization and hate speech or triggering or inciting violence against civilian populations. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is concerned that the spread of misleading or hateful narratives may undermine the protection and safety of people affected by armed conflict and other situations of violence. The ICRC focuses on the potential for harmful effects resulting from the distortion of information or the absence of reliable information. In this post, ICRC Digital Risks Adviser Joelle Rizk presents four risks associated with the spread of harmful information in situations of armed conflict and elaborates on the ICRC approach that focuses on addressing its harmful effects on people.
Over the past decade, discussions surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) in the military domain have largely focused on autonomous weapon systems. This is partially due to the ongoing debates of the Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. While autonomous weapon systems are indeed a pressing concern, the critical reality is that AI is hastily deployed to gather intelligence and, even more worrisome, to support militaries to select and engage targets.As AI-based decision support systems (AI DSS) are increasingly used in contemporary battlefields, Jimena Sofía Viveros Álvarez, member of the United Nations Secretary General’s High-Level Advisory Body on AI, REAIM Commissioner and OECD.AI Expert, advocates against the reliance on these technologies in supporting the target identification, selection and engagement cycle as their risks and inefficacies are a permanent fact which cannot be ignored, for they actually risk exacerbating civilian suffering.
Algorithmic bias has long been recognized as a key problem affecting decision-making processes that integrate artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. The increased use of AI in making military decisions relevant to the use of force has sustained such questions about biases in these technologies and in how human users programme with and rely on data based on hierarchized socio-cultural norms, knowledges, and modes of attention.In this post, Dr Ingvild Bode, Professor at the Center for War Studies, University of Southern Denmark, and Ishmael Bhila, PhD researcher at the “Meaningful Human Control: Between Regulation and Reflexion” project, Paderborn University, unpack the problem of algorithmic bias with reference to AI-based decision support systems (AI DSS). They examine three categories of algorithmic bias – preexisting bias, technical bias, and emergent bias – across four lifecycle stages of an AI DSS, concluding that stakeholders in the ongoing discussion about AI in the military domain should consider the impact of algorithmic bias on AI DSS more seriously.
The desire to develop technological solutions to help militaries in their decision-making processes is not new. However, more recently, we have witnessed militaries incorporating increasingly complex forms of artificial intelligence-based decision support systems (AI DSS) in their decision-making process, including decisions on the use of force. The novelty of this development is that the process by which these AI DSS function challenges the human’s ability to exercise judgement in military decision-making processes. This potential erosion of human judgement raises several legal, humanitarian and ethical challenges and risks, especially in relation to military decisions that have a significant impact on people’s lives, their dignity, and their communities. It is in light of this development that we must urgently and in earnest discuss how these systems are used and their impact on people affected by armed conflict.With this post, Wen Zhou, Legal Adviser with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and Anna Rosalie Greipl, Researcher at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, launch a new series on artificial intelligence (AI) in military decision-making. To start the discussion, they outline some of the challenges and risks, as well as the potential, that pertain to the use of AI DSS in preserving human judgement in legal determinations on the use of force. They also propose some measures and constraints regarding the design and use of AI DSS in these decision-making processes that can inform current and future debates on military AI governance, in order to ensure compliance with international humanitarian law (IHL) and support mitigating the risk of harm to people affected by those decisions.
In cities from Gaza to those in Sudan and Ukraine, childhoods are irrevocably changed by urban warfare. Yet despite the number of children affected and the increasingly urbanized nature of conflict, the detail of the child-specific nature of the harm caused remains poorly understood by practitioners and decision-makers. To address this gap, in 2023 the ICRC published a new report – Childhood in Rubble: The Humanitarian Consequences of Urban Warfare for Children – drawing from existing literature, 52 interviews with experts, and the organization’s firsthand experience. In this post, three of the report’s contributors set out eight overlooked ways that children are affected by urban warfare and outline a set of legal, policy and operational recommendations that states, non-state armed groups and humanitarians could implement to elevate the protection of children from media rallying cry to political priority.
Next week marks the 75th anniversary of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949. Against a backdrop of over 120 armed conflicts worldwide, this should prompt us not to celebrate, but to reflect: how were these now universally accepted humanitarian norms drafted, and are they still fit for purpose today?In this post, ICRC Legal Adviser Ellen Policinski examines how the Geneva Conventions are interpreted and applied today, providing concrete examples from the ICRC’s updated Commentaries. She goes on to investigate the recurring critique that international humanitarian law (IHL) is somehow outdated, examining who benefits from the narrative that the Geneva Conventions and IHL more generally are not appropriate legal tools to govern armed conflicts today.
Around two thirds of ICRC operations are in Muslim countries where armed conflicts are in progress. Our ability to understand the connections and differences between international humanitarian law (IHL) and Islamic law can make a crucial difference in our operational work and in our ability to build trust and respect with local communities. But how can we do this in the most effective way?As part of commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions this year, ICRC’s legal adviser for Islamic law and jurisprudence, Ahmed Al-Dawoody, looks at some of the parallels between IHL and Islamic law, and considers the critical importance of engagement between the two in today's world.
Preventing the catastrophic human cost of war is a central purpose of modern international law. Some norms, like those found in the UN Charter, set out to eliminate war altogether, requiring the peaceful resolution of disputes instead. Other rules, like those found in the Geneva Conventions, step in to protect us when all else has failed. The Conventions, which every country has joined, are at the heart of the law of armed conflict: a set of rules that constrain the behavior of warring parties during a conflict, no matter how it might have started, and no matter who is at fault.In this post, ICRC’s chief legal officer and head of the legal division Cordula Droege asserts that it is time to remember that the purpose of international humanitarian law is to protect lives, not legitimize large-scale devastation.
Recent conflicts have brought to light the jarring personal dilemmas humanitarian workers confront and provoked legitimate questions about the validity of the principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence as a framework to navigate them. In this post, Olivier Ray, the ICRC’s Director of Mobilization, Movement, and Partnerships, reaffirms the principles’ enduring relevance precisely because of the sometimes-excruciating trade-offs and dilemmas humanitarian workers must face.
Over the last decade, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and its Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement partners, as well as other humanitarian actors responding to sexual violence, have increasingly raised concerns about mandatory reporting policies and whether they may, in fact, be harming rather than helping victims/survivors of sexual- and gender-based violence. Following its 2020 multi-country study on the unintended humanitarian consequences of mandatory reporting, the ICRC and the British Red Cross (BRC) have continuously advocated for a more cohesive survivor-centered approach that harmonizes the legitimate aims of such laws with victims/survivors’ rights to safe and confidential care. To help practitioners and policymakers navigate these complexities, the ICRC and BRC hosted a half-day hybrid conference on 19 June 2024, during which expert panelists provided insights into the research, lived experiences, legal and law enforcement frameworks, as well as operational impact of mandatory reporting. In this post, the ICRC’s Adviser for Humanitarian Diplomacy and Policy Maria Carolina Aissa de Figueredo analyzes some of the key outcomes of these discussions while proposing concrete recommendations for how states, humanitarian actors, and communities can start to reconcile some of the existing challenges around mandatory reporting.
There is today an idea of a single humanity, with each member equally valued, and a global legal framework exists to prevent needless human suffering, including in war. Dehumanization arises as the negation of a common, positive, and mutually supportive humanity, though there is no single definition, and it certainly predates its opposite. Research indicates that dehumanization increases the risk of conflict and violence, increases the risk of abuses therein, and makes it harder to resolve conflict.In this post – an overview of a forthcoming article written in her personal capacity – Natalie Deffenbaugh posits mirror definitions of humanity and dehumanization and what they mean, especially in relation to conflict and violence. She looks at why and how dehumanization happens and the real-world harm that can result when espoused or tacitly condoned by those holding power. She closes with an overview of how humanity, in global legal frameworks and as a Fundamental Principle, can curb and push back against some of the worst that dehumanization can do.
Based on the ICRC’s firsthand observations in and around cities in conflict across the globe, an evolved form of one of the oldest methods of warfare – siege and encirclement – remains a persistent feature of today’s urban battles. Civilians trapped within besieged areas or those displaced from them endure some of the most horrific humanitarian conditions.In this post, ICRC Legal Adviser Abby Zeith takes a closer look at contemporary urban siege and encirclement and the civilian harm that they cause, how international humanitarian law (IHL) regulates such methods of warfare, and why states and their policymakers and militaries need to do more to understand, prepare for, and mitigate civilian harm caused by such operations in the future.
For more than a decade, states have met at the UN in Geneva to discuss the governance of autonomous weapon systems (AWS). One pandemic, several real-world cases of artificial intelligence (AI) being used in targeting decisions, and numerous meetings later, there is a growing consensus among states that the challenges posed by AWS should be addressed through both prohibitions and restrictions, a so-called ‘two-tier’ approach. But while there is progress on the basic structure (i.e. two tiers), the actual content of these tiers is debated.To help states elaborate on possible elements of a two-tiered approach to the governance of AWS, Laura Bruun from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) points to three lessons from past arms control negotiations that can be applied to the AWS debate: First, a prohibition does not need to be grounded in a clearly defined class of weapons, second, restrictions can be used to clarify what international humanitarian law (IHL) requires in the specific context of AWS, and third, if there is will (and a need), two-tiered instruments can be grounded in concerns beyond IHL.
The Fourth Geneva Convention was the first humanitarian law convention dedicated to protections for civilians during armed conflict. Amongst its numerous protective rules, it also provides the main rules of international humanitarian law (IHL) governing the exceptional practice of internment of protected persons – detention of such persons for security reasons during international armed conflict.In this post, part of a series that delves into the grounds and procedures for internment contained in the Fourth Geneva Convention, Camilla Guldahl Cooper, Associate Professor at the Norwegian Defence Command and Staff College, gives some context to certain rules in the Fourth Geneva Convention which apply to the initial decision to intern a protected person. She elaborates on what these rules require and how they have been taken into account in Norway’s military manual.
The legal and practical issues related to the exceptional practice of internment of protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention are complex. One such question is when internment begins. The treaty provides guidance on grounds for internment and the procedural safeguards to be applied, as well on the requisite conditions of internment, but is silent on when this type of detention actually starts. This gap in the law, which is the focus of examination, has proven time and again to have pernicious effects on the protection of detained civilians.In this post, and as part of a series on the rules governing the grounds and procedures for the internment of protected persons, former ICRC Senior Legal Adviser Jelena Pejic suggests that a detained civilian should be deemed an internee no later than two weeks after being deprived of liberty for reasons related to an armed conflict, if not released earlier or designated a criminal suspect.
The Fourth Geneva Convention, adopted 75 years ago, was the first humanitarian law convention dedicated to humanitarian protections for civilians during armed conflict. Amongst its numerous protective rules, it provides the main rules of international humanitarian law (IHL) governing the exceptional practice of internment of protected persons – i.e. the detention of such persons for security reasons during international armed conflict.In this post, and in the lead up to the 75th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions later this year, ICRC Legal Adviser Mikhail Orkin introduces a new series on how the rules governing the grounds and procedures for the internment of protected persons – the primary source for which is the Fourth Convention – have been interpreted, presenting a range of questions and challenges that states have faced in implementing these rules.
Can military training in international humanitarian law (IHL) lead to greater adherence to IHL and increased protection for civilians in war?In this post, Andrew Bell, a researcher in the ICRC’s Centre for Operational Research and Experience (CORE), outlines recent findings from his work reviewing results from U.S. Army surveys on the effects of IHL training on combatant views and behaviour in war. He demonstrates that training in IHL and norms of restraint can achieve significant effects in military forces, shaping both combatant attitudes and behaviour and generating more restraint in battlefield operations.
Today, there are over 120 armed conflicts around the world, involving over 60 states and 120 non-state armed groups. The majority of these armed conflicts are of a non-international character, the number of which has tripled since the turn of the millennium. To know what rules regulate an armed conflict, there is one crucial first step to take: its classification.In this post, and in the run-up to the 75th Anniversary of the Geneva Conventions, ICRC Legal Advisers Samit D’Cunha, Tristan Ferraro, and Thomas de Saint Maurice introduce the latest ICRC Opinion Paper, which restates the rules, approaches and interpretations the organization uses to classify and declassify armed conflicts. They argue that, despite the many contemporary challenges, IHL remains today fit-for-purpose for the classification of armed conflicts.
Efforts to address the ethical challenges posed by autonomous weapon systems are growing. In December 2023, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution requesting the Secretary-General to seek states’ views for addressing, among other issues, the ethical challenges posed by these systems, and in April 2024 Austria is hosting the conference ‘Humanity at the Crossroads: Autonomous Weapon Systems and the Challenge of Regulation’, with the aim of bringing ethical challenges to the fore. In this post, Alexander Blanchard, Senior Researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), argues that while ethics has been a prominent part of international regulatory debate on autonomous weapon systems for years, the promise and potential of ethics for advancing that debate is still far from being realized. He holds that, for progress to happen, new efforts must be coupled with work to clarify the role of ethics for regulation.
The widespread use of heavy explosive weapons has reached alarming levels, exacting a staggering toll on civilian lives. From Gaza to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan to Syria, and Ukraine to Yemen and Myanmar, the suffering of civilians and destruction is immense, scarring communities long after the bombing stops – but it is also preventable. The Political Declaration on Strengthening the Protection of Civilians from the Humanitarian Consequences Arising from the Use of Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas, endorsed by 86 states worldwide, brings hope of long-term change for civilians caught in conflict. Yet if it is to bring about meaningful impact, it demands resolute action from endorsing states.In this post, a group of experts from organizations gathering alongside the global community of states to assess progress and challenges and discuss future prospects at the first international follow-up conference hosted by the Norwegian government in Oslo urgently call on states to faithfully implement their commitments and broaden the support for the Political Declaration. They argue that the success of the Declaration hinges on translating political will into meaningful action among endorsing states, including comprehensive policy reforms, enhanced training for military personnel, improved operational planning processes, and robust exchanges of experience and best practices to ensure better protection of civilians and compliance with international humanitarian law (IHL).
From frontline female combatants with the People’s Defence Force in Myanmar to queer Syrian refugees living in displacement in Lebanon, from seasonal workers on the factory floor of textile companies in Bangladesh to adolescents vulnerable to early marriage to fighters of armed groups in Somalia, the need of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) is ubiquitous, stark and often gendered in various humanitarian settings. It concerns a wide range of issues, including fertility, maternal and child health, menstrual health, contraceptive service and safe abortion as well as prevention and treatment of HIV and STIs, and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) services.In this post, MSF Humanitarian Affairs Analyst Peixuan Xie examines the gendered nature of SRHR needs and progressive potential of leveraging feminist methods for inclusive SRHR in humanitarian assistance and in post-humanitarian transition, arguing that feminist analysis could help unveil the continuum and power dynamics of SRHR deprivation and that the fulfilment of SRHR by concerted humanitarian efforts aides the realization of human security, inclusion and bodily autonomy.
The draft elements of the resolution ‘Toward a universal culture of compliance with international humanitarian law’ elaborated for the 34th International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent ‘welcome the increasing number of voluntary reports published by states on the domestic implementation of international humanitarian law (IHL)’ (para. 13). This recognizes how voluntary reports are progressively implementing the recommendations made to states by the 2019 Resolution 1 ‘Bringing IHL Home’, ‘to carry out…an analysis of the areas requiring further domestic implementation…(and)…to share examples of and exchange good practices of national implementation measures taken in accordance with IHL obligations’.In this post, and in the run-up to the 75th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions later this year, Giulio Bartolini, professor of international law (Roma Tre University/Geneva Academy IHL and HRs) and President of the IHL Scientific Committee of the Italian Red Cross, analyzes the genesis and characteristics of voluntary reports on IHL, underscoring their potential to play a role in favouring a ‘culture of compliance with IHL’.
Before the Lieber Code and Geneva Conventions came a treaty between the Spanish Empire and Simon Bolivar’s revolutionary forces in Colombia and Venezuela. The 1820 Treaty for the Regularization of War aimed at reducing the unnecessary suffering of both soldiers and civilians affected by armed conflict and occupation across a broader spectrum than any previous international agreements. However, despite the significance of such a development in international law, the treaty fell into relative obscurity after the Colombian War of Independence until being slowly reintroduced throughout the 20th century.In this post, graduate student Jacob Coffelt from the University of Padua explores what can be considered the birth of international humanitarian law in Latin America as well as the effects colonialism has had on its legacy. Using both historical and contemporary sources, he argues that the codification of modern principles of international humanitarian law had occurred decades prior to what is traditionally suggested.
The Asia-Pacific region is diverse in religious, ethnic and historical backgrounds as well as in economic development. However, armed conflict is often not recognized by states in the region, and if it is, there is an expectation that they will address such issues internally. The region is also known for having the fewest ratifications of international humanitarian law (IHL) treaties. The Asia-Pacific region is nonetheless home to an active and growing group of academics and practitioners of IHL, which some refer to as “IHL ambassadors”. This group of people can draw on the historical underpinnings of IHL which derive from many traditions and religions still followed today in the region, as well as the understanding of the huge technological advances that are taking place here.In this post, and in the run-up to the 75th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions later this year, Jonathan Kwik, Ai Kihara-Hunt and Kelisiana Thynne examine the role that academics as “IHL ambassadors” play in the Asia-Pacific region and which they can play elsewhere in promoting, interpreting and developing IHL. They also consider the role that academic journals can play in enhancing the coverage of this important, and often overlooked, task.
As part of the historic 2016 peace agreement, the “Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence and Non-repetition” (hereafter the Colombian Truth Commission) was established to focus on victims and their right to the truth with an emphasis on the way different people were impacted by the armed conflicts. The findings of the Commission’s subchapter, “The truth is rainbow”, are highly relevant for the humanitarian community.In this post, Elias Dehnen, peace and conflict studies researcher and journalist, argues that drawing lessons from the Colombian Truth Commission’s LGBTIQ-subchapter is not about ideological alignment, but about making humanitarian response truly impartial, considering particular needs of vulnerable groups.
Last week, states parties met for the first session of the Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS) in 2024. This debate featured the GGE’s most substantive discussion to date about bias under the topic “risk mitigation and confidence building”, including around a working paper dedicated to bias by Canada, Costa Rica, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, and Panama.In this post, Dr. Ingvild Bode, Associate Professor at the Center for War Studies (University of Southern Denmark) argues that bias is as much a social as a technical problem and that addressing it therefore requires going beyond technical solutions. She holds that the risks of algorithmic bias need to receive more dedicated attention as the GGE’s work turns towards thinking around operationalisation. These arguments are based on the author’s presentation at the GGE side event “Fixing Gender Glitches in Military AI: Mitigating Unintended Biases and Tackling Risks” organised by UNIDIR on 6 March 2024.
Two years ago, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Central Tracing Agency activated a dedicated Bureau for the international armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the first time since the Gulf Wars. The role of such a Bureau includes helping locate missing persons. While this is a key function of the ICRC’s Central Tracing Agency, there is more to its role specifically during an international armed conflict that is worth re-discovering.In this post, Natalie Klein-Kelly, ICRC’s Transformation Programme Manager for the Central Tracing Agency, Karen Loehner, ICRC’s National Information Bureau Manager, and Jelena Milosevic Lepotic, Head of Protection of Family Links unit, share their reflections on the contemporary relevance and the historical origins of the ICRC’s Central Tracing Agency. They show the importance of reviving certain activities, such as the transmission of information on protected persons between the parties, that is specific to this type of conflict that humanitarian actors may be less used to operating in, following past decades that were dominated by non-international armed conflicts and other situations of violence.
From traditional media to social media, coordinated information campaigns or operations, the ways in which harmful information can enable or aggravate risks of harm for civilians are constantly evolving. However, evidence of risk factors remains incomplete, and solutions elusive.In this post, Chris Brew, a former Protection Associate with the ICRC, looks to previous examples of harmful information (often referred to as misinformation, disinformation and hate speech or “MDH”) resulting in civilian harm to identify patterns in underlying risk factors to inform when and in what circumstances civilian harm may result from such information.
The work and contribution of national committees on IHL (NCIHLs) can be relevant in a range of circumstances, whether a country is at peace, emerging from conflict, still affected by past conflict or involved in one or more current armed conflicts. Many successful national structures are proof that if they function efficiently and have the required capacities, NCIHLs can provide considerable support to states in implementing their commitments under international humanitarian law (IHL) and achieving policy objectives in this area.The roads to national implementation of IHL can vary, creating new opportunities through events that arise, and actors encountered along the way. In this post, Yasmin Bedir, ICRC Communications Officer for the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries, provides a recap of the Twelfth Regional Meeting of Arab National Committees on IHL. The meeting, run with contributions from Dr Omar Mekky, Regional Legal Coordinator for the Near and Middle East Region at the ICRC, resulted in a dynamic two-year action plan with pledged commitments on specific themes and obligations for the implementation of IHL.
Though remarkable progress has been made towards the eradication of anti-personnel landmines (APM) since the adoption of the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention (APMBC) in 1997, casualties from APM are, alarmingly, on the rise, including due to the increased use of improvised APM, mostly associated with non-state actors. Whereas efforts to counter the threat of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) tend to centre on military and security approaches, improvised APM are a type of IED whose devastating humanitarian impacts can and must be addressed through humanitarian mine action and within the framework of the APMBC.In this post, Josephine Dresner, Director of Policy and Strategic Partnerships with the humanitarian mine action organisation Mine Advisory Group (MAG), points to the challenges facing states contaminated with improvised landmines in the Sahel and West Africa. Drawing on lessons learned from MAG’s work in the Middle East since 2016, she presents elements of a humanitarian mine action response to addressing improvised mines and explains how the APMBC can be used to support affected states in their efforts to fulfil their obligations under the Convention.
The year 2023 marked a significant shift in how the EU makes space for humanitarian action in the design of sanctions, a foreign policy tool that has traditionally raised concerns due to its potential to hinder impartial humanitarian efforts. Mounting evidence and advocacy on the need for sanctions to include robust humanitarian safeguards to comply with international humanitarian law requirements resulted in the December 2022 adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 2664, which explicitly excludes humanitarian action from UN financial sanctions, initiating a transformative approach towards incorporating humanitarian exemptions in sanctions design.In this post, ICRC Advisers Sophie Huvé, Guillemette Moulin and Tristan Ferraro explore progress made in recent years at the EU level, as well as the remaining challenges. They suggest that the EU’s recent policy changes, aligning with UN Security Council Resolution 2664, should be set as a default in future sanctions designs, ensuring that humanitarian action is protected and facilitated within the framework of international humanitarian law (IHL).
The extent to which a victim/survivor-centered approach (VSCA) should be incorporated into data protection remains an emerging issue for accountability actors. What does a VSCA look like when collecting data through open-source channels, for example? On a technical level, it means having processes in place to secure and govern data. On a human level, it means recognizing the rights of victims/survivors, building trust among historically marginalized and undervalued communities, and mitigating risks to individuals whose data is entrusted to our care.In this post, part of a new series on Cybersecurity and data protection in humanitarian action, IIIM-Syria Associate Legal Officer Rayyan Ghuma and Information and Evidence Officer Birhane Wossen Reta delve into areas of concern at the intersection of victim/survivor-centeredness, data protection, and open-source collection. They ultimately draw upon the IIIM experience to continue an ongoing conversation about data protection and the VSCA in inclusive accountability.
Online violence is not contained by the digital sphere – it is killing women and adolescent girls in offline spaces. It seeps into their daily lives, infecting their psychological and physical well-being and resulting in paranoia, shame, isolation, and even leading to their deaths through honor killing, murder, and suicide.In this post, part of a new series on Cybersecurity and data protection in humanitarian action, Megan O’Brien, from the International Rescue Committee’s Violence Prevention and Response Unit, summarizes her discussions with GBV experts and her review of the existing literature to better understand the impact online violence and technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) has on women and girls in emergency and conflict settings.
In times of crisis and conflict, advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) might become as much part of the problem as the solution. An ever-growing number of children in need risk having their data used as part of AI systems that do not implement safeguards and protections for vulnerable populations. Given the short- and long-term consequences for the first generations to grow up with AI, there is an urgent need to scrutinize AI-powered systems that are not aligned with the rights, needs, and realities of children in humanitarian action.In this post, part of a series on Cybersecurity and data protection in humanitarian action, Roxana Radu, Associate Professor of Digital Technologies and Public Policy at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, and Eugenia Olliaro, Programme Specialist at UNICEF’s Chief Data Office and the global UNICEF lead of the Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) initiative, make three recommendations for the humanitarian sector to become children-centred in the age of AI.
Mobile phones are a powerful tool for participation and engagement in humanitarian crises. Responsible public/private partnerships are increasingly unleashing their potential.In this post, part of a new series on Cybersecurity and data protection in humanitarian action, Susanna Acland and Barnaby Willitts-King from the GSMA Mobile for Humanitarian Innovation programme outline the private sector perspective on this important trend.
The deployment of open-source intelligence, or OSINT – information gathered from publicly-available data sources and used for intelligence purposes – is having a dramatic impact on armed conflict in the 21st century, rebalancing information asymmetries between states and other actors while supporting accountability efforts. There is, however, a downside to these developments, with OSINT creating and enabling the risk of harm to civilians’ rights, lives, and safety in ways that are not yet fully understood.In this post, part of a new series on Cybersecurity and data protection in humanitarian action, legal researcher and OSINT analyst Ed Millett considers how far international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHRL) currently regulate the use of OSINT techniques by state and non-state actors in armed conflict settings, suggesting that our limited understanding of emergent harms is hampering effective regulation
At COP28, states and organizations will adopt a Declaration on Climate, Relief, Recovery and Peace, committing to strengthen climate action and finance in conflict and fragile settings. Over the last few years, the ICRC has carried out analysis on reducing the impacts of the climate and environment crisis on people enduring conflict, notably captured in a new report, Weathering the Storm.In this post, part of a series on Climate Change, Conflict and Humanitarian Action, Catherine-Lune Grayson and Amir Khouzam, co-authors of the report and respectively head of the policy team and policy advisor at the ICRC, reflect on dilemmas pertaining to strengthening the response to growing climate risks in conflict settings.
During an international armed conflict, commercial space actors under the jurisdiction or control of a third, neutral state may find themselves implicated in the conflict in various ways, which could increase tensions and trigger misunderstandings between a belligerent and neutral state and risk the latter losing its neutral status.In this post, part of a series on War, law and outer space, Professor Guoyu Wang of the Academy of Air, Space Policy and Law at the Beijing Institute of Technology discusses the potential legal issues raised by such involvement under both neutrality law and international humanitarian law (IHL), including the significance of legal interpretation of the lex lata for space security governance
Technological trends and the rapid expansion of activity in outer space is creating new urgency for the pursuit of effective measures to ensure peace and security in this crucial domain. Efforts by the United Nations in this area have traditionally been aimed at moderating strategic competition among the major military powers by preventing any arms race in outer space.In this post, part of a series on War, Law, and Outer Space, Michael Spies, Senior Political Affairs Officer at the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs, explains how a human-centered approach to disarmament can accelerate progress toward agreements on outer space security.
Despite the longstanding efforts of the international community to prevent an arms race in outer space, the rules governing the potential use of force there is something worth serious consideration – and we have already have seen spill-over effects of terrestrial conflicts into space. This raises the question, how would international humanitarian law (IHL) apply to the conduct of hostilities in outer space?In this post, part of a series on War, Law and Outer Space, Svenja Berrang, Legal Adviser for the German Federal Ministry of Defence, gives a short overview of the basic IHL principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution and takes a closer look at the challenges in their application to outer space posed by the widespread dual-use of space systems, the employment of civilian operators for space systems used by the military, and the creation of space debris by attacking a space object.
In less than a year, Chat-GPT has become a household name, reflecting astonishing advances in artificial intelligence-powered software tools, especially generative AI models. These developments have been accompanied by frequent forecasts that AI will revolutionise warfare. At this stage of AI development, the parameters of what is possible are still being explored, but the military response to AI technology is undeniable. China’s white paper on national defense promoted the theory of the “intelligentization” of warfare, in which leveraging AI is key to the PLA’s modernization plan. The director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Jen Easterly warned that artificial intelligence may be the “most powerful weapon of our time.” And whilst autonomous weapon systems have tended to dominate discussions about AI in military applications, less attention has been paid to the use of AI in systems that support human decisions in armed conflicts.In this post, ICRC Military Adviser Ruben Stewart, and Legal Adviser Georgia Hinds seek to critically examine some of the touted benefits of AI when used to support decisions by armed actors in war. In particular, the areas of civilian harm mitigation and tempo are discussed, with a particular focus on the implications for civilians in armed conflict.
In situations of armed conflict, access to digital technology can save lives. But the use of cyber, information, and other digital operations by belligerents during armed conflict also brings new threats and risks for civilians. Think about cyber operations disrupting civilian infrastructure and services, information operations inciting violence against civilian populations, and digital operations undermining humanitarian relief efforts. In ever-more interdependent digital and physical environments, civilians and civilian infrastructure are increasingly drawn upon to support military operations and, as a result, face real risks of being targeted. As digital technologies permeate our lives and societies, cyber and information operations are no longer abstract or “only online”. They can, directly or indirectly, have serious online and ‘offline’ consequences and harm people.Between 2021 and 2023, the International Committee of the Red Cross’ (ICRC) President convened a Global Advisory Board of high-level experts from the legal, military, policy, technological, and security fields to advise the organization on digital threats and to develop concrete recommendations to protect civilians against such threats. Today, this Board released its report entitled ‘Protecting Civilians against Digital Threats During Armed Conflict’. In this post, Cordula Droege (chief legal officer and head of the legal division of the ICRC), Laurent Gisel (Head of the Arms and Conduct of Hostilities Unit of the ICRC), Tilman Rodenhäuser (Legal Adviser at the ICRC) and Joelle Rizk (Digital Risks Adviser at the ICRC) present four worrying trends the Board identified, and examples of the Board’s recommendations to address one of them, namely the growing civilian involvement in digital military operations.Read the full blog post here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/
“In war, truth is the first casualty” is perhaps one of the best known aphorisms about armed conflict. Information operations have long been conducted to influence or mislead military adversaries or civilian populations during war. However, the instantaneous transmission of information from any distance – through social media platforms and messaging apps – has changed the scale, speed, and reach of information operations. Today, generative artificial intelligence provides seemingly infinite possibilities to create misleading or dangerous content. In light of these developments, states (para. 33 and 57), humanitarians and human rights advocates have voiced concern that spreading harmful information risks inciting violence, causing distress, increasing vulnerabilities, denying access to essential services, and may also undermine or disrupt humanitarian operations. Worryingly, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Freedom of Expression has found that in today’s armed conflicts, disinformation and hate speech are “increasing[ly] focus[ed] on civilian populations rather than military personnel”.In light of this reality, we must recall that there is a red line between an information operation that complies with international humanitarian law and one that violates it. In this post, ICRC Legal Advisers Tilman Rodenhäuser and Samit D’Cunha explain some of the legal boundaries of information operations under international humanitarian law (IHL) through four examples. Limits on information operations under public international law as applicable outside armed conflict, or under human rights law during armed conflict, are not examined in this post.Read the full blog post here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/
In line with its mandate, the ICRC engages with all parties to an armed conflict, including non-state armed groups. The ICRC has a long history of confidential humanitarian engagement with armed groups to alleviate and prevent the suffering of persons living in areas controlled by these groups. However, this engagement has become increasingly complex. Accordingly, the ICRC undertakes an annual internal exercise to evaluate the status of its relationships with armed groups and to identify developments to strengthen its future engagement worldwide. In this post, ICRC Adviser Matthew Bamber-Zryd discusses some of the key findings from this exercise.In 2023, the ICRC estimates that 195 million persons live in areas under the full or fluid control of armed groups. There are more than 450 armed groups of humanitarian concern worldwide and the ICRC’s engagement with these groups remains stable. Despite the ICRC’s successful contact with nearly two-thirds of armed groups worldwide, engagement with some groups remains challenging. These obstacles stem from a combination of state-imposed barriers, notably counter-terrorism legislation, and the precarious security environment prevailing in certain countries.Read the full blog here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy
It’s often said that sexual violence is a weapon of war, but the actual weapons used to perpetrate these crimes are rarely discussed.Based on recent research, Hana Salama, Researcher with the Gender and Disarmament programme at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), explains how the proliferation of small arms and light weapons (SALW) is linked to sexual violence in conflict and encourages practitioners and policy makers to better consider arms-related risks and integrate gender-responsive arms control and disarmament measures into efforts to address and prevent sexual violence in conflict.
Sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) is tragically widespread along migration journeys, especially when these take place along irregular routes “due to armed conflict-related poverty, insecurity, and distress.” Risks of SGBV – including those related to trafficking and modern slavery – can increase in countries of transit and destination.In this post, Sandra Pertek, Ahmed Al-Dawoody, and Amjad Saleem highlight the critical importance and role of faith leaders and communities in tackling SGBV, discussing the importance of incorporating faith literacy and sensitivity in SGBV prevention and responses, and calling for an increased engagement of humanitarian actors with faith actors to address SGBV in armed conflict and migration.
Non-state armed groups are responsible for a significant proportion of attacks that kill and injure students and teachers and damage schools and universities. These attacks also keep students from learning, stunting community and economic development.
In this post, Jerome Marston, senior researcher at the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA), marks the International Day to Protect Education from Attack and suggests steps the humanitarian community can take to safeguard education.
Armed conflict and other humanitarian emergencies disrupt health systems in many ways: making healthcare less accessible to people in need; reducing the capacities of the health workforce; weakening health infrastructure and causing the degradation or collapse of other essential services on which health systems depend. Sometimes during conflict, health structures are themselves targeted, increasing the vulnerability of health systems. All this makes addressing pandemic prevention, preparedness and response (PPPR) in such settings extremely difficult, and means that, in reality, responses to the needs of people in these settings continuously fall short. As COVID-19 recedes in memory, it’s vital that the world retains the hard-won lessons of that pandemic and others that came before it, undertaking robust PPPR efforts in all settings – including humanitarian ones – and for all people.In this post, ICRC’s Head of Health Dr. Micaela Serafini and ICRC Policy Adviser Avigail Shai outline the key issues which must be addressed in global efforts to agree on a Pandemic Accord, in order to ensure that those people most affected by armed conflict and violence are not left behind when – not if – the next pandemic strikes.
There is now a general consensus that being accountable to people affected by conflict and their inclusion in programming is both a moral and ethical imperative for humanitarian actors and that it enhances the impact and relevance of the response. Humanitarian practitioners successfully approach the practice of accountability to affected people through the logic of a program cycle: involving communities in the assessment phase and respecting their wishes in the implementation phase leads to people-centric programming. Such approaches, however, as important as they are, hide many tensions and dilemmas inherent in humanitarian response, especially in conflict settings and protection interventions.
In this post, Indu Nepal, ICRC’s Deputy Head of Accountability to Affected People, and Natalie Klein-Kelly, ICRC’s Transformation Programme Manager for the Central Tracing Agency, share their reflections from putting accountability to affected people in practice and the dilemmas faced by humanitarian actors ahead of a larger discussion due to take place on 12th – 14th September 2023, People-centric humanitarian response in conflict: strategies, insights and dilemmas.
In an ever-evolving global landscape, the dynamics of humanitarian work are constantly challenged and shaped by new realities. From acknowledging power imbalances and unconscious biases to embracing the essence of empathy and trust, humanitarians seek to navigate the delicate balance between procedural efficiency and the profound simplicity of human connection.
In this post, David Loquercio, ICRC’s Head of Accountability to Affected People, and Martin Schüepp, ICRC’s Director of Operations, examine the pivotal role of relationships and mindsets in the humanitarian sector, with a focused lens on the ICRC’s people-centric approach. Highlighting the importance of adaptability, multi-level accountability, and a genuine commitment to people-centric values, it prompts readers to reflect on the spirit that underpins the humanitarian movement ahead of a larger discussion due to take place during a learning event on 12-14 September 2023, People-centric humanitarian response in conflict: strategies, insights, and dilemmas.
Civilians are heavily dependent on space systems for everyday life. Yet, those same space systems can also be critical for national and international security. While the civilian and military uses of space are governed by international law, the current framework needs to be strengthened to ensure the protection of civilians, particularly in light of the increasing militarization and weaponization of outer space.
In this post, part of a series on War, Law, and Outer Space, Nivedita Raju, a researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), presents an overview of space security governance and proposes three steps towards this objective.
Enabled by advanced technologies, the past few decades have seen a revolution in the utility and criticality of space systems for military operations as well as for essential civilian services and humanitarian relief operations. The military dependence on space systems has spurred the re-emergent competition of developing counterspace capabilities in major spacefaring nations. In parallel, military and commercial space systems have converged such that military operations make routine use of commercial systems and essential civilian services are now reliant on dual-use space systems. As the spectre of potential future armed conflict extending to outer space looms, essential civilian services including humanitarian relief are at risk of being disrupted or significantly degraded due to military operations against satellites and space infrastructure.
In this post, part of a series on War, Law and Outer Space, Gilles Doucet of Spectrum Space Security Inc., and Dr Stuart Eves of SJE Space Ltd, review the evolving and converging aspects of military and essential civilian space services, causes and results, highlight the risks to the civilian population should space systems be targeted and offer some policy options to mitigate civilian harm.
Despite the long-term desire of the international community to explore and use outer space for peaceful purposes, space systems have been employed for military purposes since the dawn of the space era. As the role of these systems in military operations during armed conflicts increases, so too does the likelihood of their being targeted, with significant risk of harm to civilians and civilian objects on earth and in space. This is because technology enabled by space systems permeates most aspects of civilian life, making the potential consequences of attacks on space systems a matter of humanitarian concern.
In this post, ICRC Legal Adviser Wen Zhou launches a new series on war, law, and outer space, laying out the potential human cost on civilians of military space operations during armed conflicts, outlining the existing rules regulating and restricting such operations under international law – in particular, international humanitarian law (IHL) – and introducing recommended measures to minimize the risk of civilian harm posed by threats to space systems.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but images taken during modern conflicts instill a different sense of interpretation. Humanitarian communications, specifically photography, take on a new meaning when each photo exhibits the work of humanitarian action.
In this post, ICRC Law and Policy Digital Marketing Officer Stephanie Xu reflects on her time in the field after a three-month support mission and ponders on the aspects of neutrality from a completely different angle.
The international armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine has revealed a knowledge gap across the global financial sector regarding exposure to armed conflict, reiterating an already pressing need to deepen corporate understanding of international humanitarian law (IHL). Although there is mounting pressure on companies to conduct structured and informed heightened human rights due diligence when investing or doing business in conflict-affected contexts, more must be done to effectively embed IHL and conflict sensitivity into corporate policies and practices. In 2022, Australian Red Cross engaged Deloitte Australia to undertake a review of the extent to which the Australian financial sector incorporates IHL and conflict-related considerations in investment and operational decision-making.
In this post, Australian Red Cross Legal Adviser, Fauve Kurnadi, and Australian lawyer, Adaena Sinclair-Blakemore, discuss some of the findings from this report, including risks and trends in the Australian financial sector and the growing relevance of IHL to financial institutions, as well as what certain actors like the Responsible Investment Association of Australasia are doing to address IHL knowledge and implementation gaps that exist across the sector.
The deployment and use of new digital technologies in modern conflicts – from information to cyber operations – creates new risks and enables actual risks of harm to civilians’ rights, lives, safety, dignity, and resilience. Understanding these risks is at the core of protection work in the digital age.
In this post, ICRC Digital Risk Adviser Joelle Rizk and Digital Risk Researcher Sean Cordey reflect on some key protection concerns in the digital age and lay out the way forward for protection actors to improve their preparedness to address these.
As a 2022 global report by the World Health Organization estimates, about 1.3 billion people – or 16% of the world’s population, more than one in six people – have a disability. In armed-conflict affected areas, the number could be even higher, upwards of 18-30%. Beyond every figure, there are personal experiences and potentially lethal risks.
In this post, ICRC Senior Legal Adviser Alexander Breitegger outlines some of the barriers and risks persons with disabilities face during armed conflicts, the rules pertaining to their protection, and recommendations to pave the way towards a more disability-inclusive interpretation of international humanitarian law (IHL).
Earlier this month, a viral story alleged that a US Air Force simulation took place during which an “AI drone” “attacked” its human operator when they interfered with the targeting objectives set for the drone. The story was later retracted when the US Air Force source clarified that the scenario described had been a “thought experiment”. But “drones” that integrate automated, autonomous and AI technologies in targeting and mobility functions already exist – for example, in the form of loitering munitions that have been used in many recent conflicts, such as those in Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh, Syria and Ukraine.
In this post, Dr. Ingvild Bode, Associate Professor at the Center for War Studies (University of Southern Denmark) and Dr. Tom Watts, Leverhulme Trust Early Career Research Fellow (Royal Holloway, University of London) argue that such loitering munitions set problematic precedents for human control over the use of force and underline the urgent need for legally binding rules on autonomous weapon systems (AWS).
Humanitarian organizations are facing increased incentives to collect and share disaggregated data about their operations. At the same time, they must ensure this data is only used for humanitarian purposes and does not cause harm to affected populations. Despite recent progress with sector-wide commitments and frameworks for data responsibility, there is an area in need of more specific guidance: data sharing between humanitarian organizations and the donors who fund their work.
In this post, ICRC’s Head of Data Protection Vincent Cassard, Stuart Campo from the OCHA Centre for Humanitarian Data, and Jonas Belina of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs outline the opportunities and challenges of this relationship and provide six guidelines to support more responsible data sharing practices between humanitarian organizations and donors, drawing on a new framework developed through the Humanitarian Data and Trust Initiative.
On 15 April 2023, the world watched the eruption of hostilities in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, which also spread to other parts of the country, notably Darfur. As in most conflicts fought in urban settings, civilians have been greatly affected by the fighting, in this case between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces. Multiple medical facilities and critical infrastructures have been damaged or destroyed, thousands of people are currently displaced and humanitarian organizations are facing difficulties to reach people in need.
In this post, ICRC legal advisers Julie Lefolle and Jelena Nikolic summarize the basic rules of international humanitarian law (IHL) that apply in situations of non-international armed conflicts, aiming to protect those who are not, or no longer fighting against the effects of hostilities, including persons deprived of their liberty, and medical and humanitarian personnel.
As humanitarian organizations broaden their mindset from saving lives in emergencies to making a more sustainable impact, they increasingly consider supporting existing social protection systems in order to increase the long‑term impact of their assistance. Doing so could help them complement the activities of development organizations, strengthen local capacities and durably reduce chronic needs arising from armed conflict. But this may come with additional pressure on principled humanitarian action.
In this post, ICRC policy adviser and operational researcher Colin Walch reflects on some of the challenges and opportunities that supporting social protection creates for principled humanitarian organizations. While linking social protection and humanitarian aid require reconciling differences in terms of principles and approaches, a more systematic engagement with existing social protection systems would strengthen sustainable humanitarian impact.
This month saw the successful conclusion to a year-long collaboration between the ICRC and the Swiss Data Science Centre – a joint venture between Switzerland’s two federal institutes of technology, EPFL[1] and ETHZ[2] – on a research project to track patterns of violence.[3] The collaboration produced an algorithm, developed to reclassify open-source data according to international legal norms and trained by machine learning, that will permit the ICRC to have deeper insights into patterns of violence by armed forces and armed groups. The project’s findings were launched during an event on the 9th of May at the ICRC Humanitarium.In this post, Fiona Terry, head of the ICRC’s Centre for Operational Research and Experience (CORE), and Fabien Dany, CORE adviser, describe the creation of this tool and how it will enable the ICRC to have faster and more accurate insights into who did what to whom and when, which will enhance its protection work and its analysis of violent events that threaten the safety of humanitarian personnel.
With 80 per cent of the world’s population living within 100 kilometers of a coastline, and maritime trade accounting for around 90 per cent of world trade, a significant percentage of world economic and human activity takes place in coastal areas. It is therefore evident that civilians and civilian infrastructure are likely to be affected by war in the littorals, more so than anywhere else in the world.In this post, retired Commodore Prashant Kahlon discusses the relevance of the principles and rules governing the conduct of warfare at sea to mitigate harm to civilians, in the context of means and methods of warfare in the littorals.Read the full blog post here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/
After the Second World War, countries came together to improve the legal protection available to certain categories of persons – including prisoners of war – many of whom had suffered greatly during the conflict. The provisions relating to the protection of prisoners of war are contained in the Third Geneva Convention that was adopted in 1949. The vast majority of the 143 articles of that Convention relate to the material conditions for the internment of prisoners of war.In this post, former ICRC Legal Adviser Yvette Issar discusses some of the key principles that run through the Third Convention, underpinning the rules that serve to protect prisoners of war who have been subjected to internment. These principles inform every facet of life for prisoners of war, from standards relating to accommodation, food, and clothing, to the penal and disciplinary regime which is applicable to them. Fuller treatment of these principles is contained in the ICRC’s recently updated Commentary on the Third Geneva Convention.Read the full blog post here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/
In armed conflicts across the globe, critical infrastructure enabling the delivery of essential services for the civilian population is subjected to repeated attack, incidental harm and misuse by warring parties, resulting in widespread service disruption. The humanitarian impact of this disturbing trend is immediate and long-term, ranging from mass displacement, hunger and food insecurity, energy insecurity, an increased risk of outbreak and spread of infectious disease, reduced livelihoods, and even death. The grave reverberating effects of essential service disruption are often long-lasting and can transcend borders.In this post, ICRC Legal Advisers Eirini Giorgou and Abby Zeith take a closer look at the limits imposed by international humanitarian law (IHL) to protect critical infrastructure enabling the delivery of energy to civilians against the danger of hostilities.
From the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north of Syria, from remote areas of Colombia to the Tigray region of Ethiopia: over the past decade, tens of thousands of people have found themselves detained by non-State armed groups. As part of its mandate, the ICRC works in all parts of the world to protect detainees by State and non-State parties to armed conflicts. Conscious of the unique insight this work provides, the ICRC is now publishing examples from over 80 non-State armed groups on how they have aimed to implement their international humanitarian law (IHL) obligations on the protection of detainees.In this post, legal adviser Tilman Rodenhäuser and detention adviser Eloïse Lefebvre present four key issues on the protection of detainees in the hands of non-State armed groups.
Today, more than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas. As the number of people living in cities increases, so does the prevalence of urban warfare, which inevitably entails devastating humanitarian consequences for civilians.In this post, ICRC Adviser Ruben Stewart and ICRC Associate Celia Edeline share some of the key findings of a new report they will launch on the 4th of April 2023, ‘Reducing Civilian Harm in Urban Warfare: A Handbook for Armed Groups’, as part of the organization’s broader efforts to reduce the civilian suffering caused by hostilities occurring in urban environments.
Worldwide, millions of people are already facing the harsh reality of climate and environmental crises, which act as a risk magnifier and compound the impacts of other global economic, health and food crises. Launched by the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement in 2021, the Climate and Environment Charter for Humanitarian Organizations guides the sectoral approach to the increasing risks of climate change and how to address its own carbon and environmental footprint.In this post, Dr. Alistair D. B. Cook, Coordinator of Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief for the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, draws from discussions during a recent workshop co-hosted by the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and the Movement on the state of play in climate action for humanitarian actors operating in Southeast Asia and the role the Charter has played so far in addressing current and future crises.
What drives restraint in armed conflict? Recent studies have examined different factors contributing to restraint behaviour, mainly focusing on strategic incentives, such as seeking legitimacy from international audiences or securing support from local communities.In this post, Henrique Garbino, Doctoral Candidate at the Swedish Defence University, and Matthew Bolton, Professor at Pace University, explore, instead, how traditional humanitarian norms protecting the innocent, the land, and the body may influence restraint on the use of landmines and similar explosive devices. They conclude that we should not perceive such norms as inadequate alternatives to international humanitarian law; instead, they may serve as a basis for extending global norms beyond the existing laws of war.
Humanitarian actors broadly agree on the humanitarian principles’ meanings and their utility in responses to armed conflict and disasters. But this consensus can oversimplify the principles’ origins and legal character.In this post, which is based on a longer article forthcoming in the International Review of the Red Cross, international law professor Marina Sharpe examines how the humanitarian principles diffused from the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement to NGOs and the UN, shedding light on their legal character and normative content.
Cyber operations have become a reality of today’s armed conflicts, and their use is likely to continue to grow in the future. In light of this trend, the ICRC has long maintained that international humanitarian law (IHL) governs – and limits – any use of cyber operations during armed conflicts. But what does that really mean in practice?In this post, ICRC legal advisers Kubo Mačák and Tilman Rodenhäuser provide concise explanations of when and how IHL – and especially its principles of humanity, necessity, distinction, and proportionality – apply to the use of information and communications technologies (ICTs) by States. With this post, they launch the ICRC’s new series of short papers on cyber operations during armed conflict.Read the full blog post here:
States have agreed on the principle that machines cannot be held accountable for violations of international humanitarian law (IHL), but how would accountability be ensured in practice? In this post, Vincent Boulanin and Marta Bo from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) argue that looking at how responsibility for IHL violations is currently ascribed under international law provides useful lessons for the regulation of AWS.Read the full blog post here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2023/03/02/three-lessons-autonomous-weapons-systems-ihl/
The deadly legacy of armed conflict continues to claim lives long after the fighting is over. As more and more conflicts take place in population centers, including large towns and cities, so does the grave toll of weapon contamination. Unexploded ordnance hamper movement and agriculture, block access to essential services and life-saving humanitarian assistance, and can reverse socio-economic development gains by decades.In this post, ICRC Legal Adviser Eirini Giorgou lays out the obligations under international humanitarian law (IHL) for States and non-State armed groups with regard to explosive remnants of war, along with recommendations for practical measures to ensure their effective implementation.
The international armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine has seen the involvement of several humanitarian organizations on the ground – including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) - working hard to alleviate the suffering of those caught up in hostilities.In this post, ICRC Legal Adviser Melina Fidelis takes a closer look at the role of the ICRC during times of international armed conflict, explaining the organization’s mandate, and the activities it can carry out.Read the full blog piece here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2023/02/16/war-law-humanity-icrc-international-armed-conflicts/
The international armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine has seen the involvement of several humanitarian organizations on the ground – including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) - working hard to alleviate the suffering of those caught up in hostilities.In this post, ICRC Legal Adviser Melina Fidelis takes a closer look at the role of the ICRC during times of international armed conflict, explaining the organization’s mandate, and the activities it can carry out.Read the full blog piece here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2023/02/16/war-law-humanity-icrc-international-armed-conflicts/
Humanitarian action involves words as well as deeds, influence as well as operations. Every year presents new influencing challenges for humanitarian diplomats and agency communications teams.With deepening crisis in Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar and Ukraine, and upcoming global meetings in 2023 on water, climate change, nuclear weapons and the future itself, University of Oxford Senior Research Fellow Hugo Slim reflects on five ancient and enduring forms of influencing that humanitarians can still use today.Read the full blog piece here:
The digital transformation has been a key vector of progress for the humanitarian sector. It is also a source of additional pressure on principled humanitarian action, triggering dilemmas and risks that tend to be understated or overlooked.In this post, ICRC Senior Policy Adviser Pierrick Devidal reflects on some of the challenges and opportunities that digitalization creates for humanitarian organizations’ ability to operate in line with the fundamental principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence.Read the full blog piece here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2023/02/02/back-to-basics-digital-twist-humanitarian-principles/
How can humanitarian actors better respond to the devastating impact of urban warfare and urban violence? The higher humanitarian stakes in cities – the cumulative impact on large numbers of people and the interconnected systems on which they depend – heighten both the challenges and the importance of putting into practice key hallmarks of effective humanitarian action. In this post, ICRC Policy Advisers Charles Deutscher and Chandni Dhingra overview a new policy paper which takes stock of the ICRC’s experience responding to the impact of war and violence in cities.Rea the full blog post here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2023/01/19/present-and-engaged-icrc-armed-conflict-violence-cities/
In line with its mandate, the ICRC engages with all parties to an armed conflict, including non-State armed groups. The ICRC has a long history of confidential dialogue with armed groups that has achieved tangible results. However, engagement has become increasingly complex. Accordingly, the ICRC undertakes an annual exercise to assess its current relationships with armed groups in order to both improve its engagement strategies and to determine trends that can impact future engagement.In this post, ICRC Adviser Matthew Bamber-Zryd discusses some of the findings from this year’s exercise, during which time the ICRC had contact with two-thirds of the 524 armed groups that are of humanitarian concern. The ICRC’s success in engaging an armed group is influenced by a group’s structure, the region in which it operates and the extent of its territorial control. However, the ICRC continues to face significant obstacles to such dialogue, emanating from both armed groups and States.Read the full blog post here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2023/01/12/icrc-engagement-armed-groups-2022/
Translation has often been regarded as an act of ‘betrayal’, for the impossibility of transferring the exact same messages between different languages. Yet, if seen for what it really is – the road to cross-cultural understanding and communication – translation can be valued for bridging the gaps between human beings. Translation as part of humanitarian response plays a crucial role in identifying and responding to the needs of affected populations. A ‘faithful’ translator to the humanitarian mission contributes to acceptance and humanitarian access.In this post, Rasha Mahmoud Abdel Fattah, Head of Arabic Translation at the ICRC Regional Communication Center in Cairo, challenges the claims of betrayal and infidelity of translators and examines the process of translating into Arabic in a conflict-stricken region that poses linguistic, communicative, and cultural challenges.
With increasing pressures on the humanitarian environment – shrinking space and shrinking funds first among them – the need to influence authorities and donors has never been greater. But how to do it to best effect?In this post, ICRC Diplomatic Adviser Nick Hawton takes a personal look at the lessons learned from the fields of communication and diplomacy and how to maximize the chances of influencing the decision-makers and power brokers of today.Read the full blog post here:
Armed conflicts have long-lasting repercussions on the population affected, even after the conflict has ended. Humanitarian organizations operating in these settings can alleviate the suffering and contribute to the enjoyment of human rights. To do this, their activities must be facilitated, and their personnel protected at all times.
In this post, part of our series ‘IHL in the aftermath’, ICRC Legal Associate Émilie Charpentier outlines the legal framework that applies to humanitarian activities during and after armed conflict and proposes legal solutions to the challenges humanitarian organizations face when trying to fulfill their mandate.
Read the full blog post here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2022/11/24/hostilities-suffering-remains-humanitarian-aftermath/
On the eve of the declaration of independence by the Republic of South Sudan in 2011, the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement welcomed the establishment of a new National Red Cross Society – the South Sudan Red Cross. One and a half years later, civil war broke out in the newly formed country.
For this post, as part of our series ‘Back to basics: humanitarian principles in contemporary armed conflict’, we sat down with John Lobor, the Secretary General of the South Sudan Red Cross Society, to discuss how the Fundamental Principles guided the South Sudan Red Cross in its initial setup and through the nascent country’s armed conflict.
Read the full blog post here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2022/11/17/humanitarian-principles-south-sudan-red-cross/
As the smoke clears, a range of challenges reveal themselves in the wake of battles and conflict. These issues impact civilians in different ways, according to their particular circumstances.
In this post, part of our IHL in the aftermath series and in support of the forthcoming edition of the International Review of the Red Cross, ICRC Legal Associate Victoria Riello looks at some of the specific challenges faced by persons with disabilities in armed conflict.
Read the full blog post here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2022/11/15/civilians-disabilities-aftermath/
Global attention is squarely focused on COP27 of the UN Framework Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC) now underway in Sharm El Sheikh. Parties to the convention are focusing on defining and operationalizing a Global Goal on Adaptation, the financing of loss and damage, and a new collective quantified goal on climate finance. Attention to people and situations affected by conflict is largely absent in the negotiating space at UNFCCC processes. However, there is increasing awareness in the periphery of climate discussions – notably by humanitarians, peacebuilders and donors whose funded operations cover both traditional humanitarian and climate concerns – of the huge blind spot of climate action in places affected by conflict.
In this post, ICRC Diplomatic Adviser Namita Khatri teases out this blind spot as a result of climate finance mechanisms that are not tailored for conflict situations. Writing from Sharm El Shiekh, she builds upon the ICRC’s work and a recent joint publication written together with Amir Khouzam, Yue Cao and Adriana Quevado on behalf of ICVA, MercyCorps, ODI, the RCRC Climate Centre, UNHCR and WFP to move the conversation towards concrete action with climate policy makers.
Read the full blog post here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2022/11/10/climate-finance-for-people-who-need-it-most/
Doctors who provide care for the war wounded and ICRC delegates who work in areas affected by armed conflict rely on a unique and universally recognized symbol of protection: the distinctive red cross or red crescent emblems. For over 150 years, these have conveyed a simple message: facilities, vehicles, or people displaying the emblem must not be attacked.
Today, medical facilities and humanitarian operations use digital technologies to respond to peoples’ needs more efficiently and effectively. This digitalization, however, exposes them to new threats. As armed conflicts digitalize, can digital technology be leveraged to strengthen the protection of medical facilities? Can we incorporate the century old idea that ‘hospitals, ambulances and evacuation parties … shall bear a red cross on a white ground’ into the digital environment? Is it technically possible, and what would be the benefits and risks of doing so?
Since 2020, the ICRC has partnered with the Centre for Cyber Trust, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, and, more recently, ITMO University St Petersburg and convened a global group of experts to assess the possible solutions, benefits, and risks associated with a ‘digital emblem’. Its new report launched today on ‘Digitalizing the Red Cross, Red Crescent and Red Crystal Emblems’ presents technological solutions, expert views on the benefits and risks, and possible ways forward. In this post, ICRC Advisers Tilman Rodenhäuser and Mauro Vignati answer five essential questions on the idea of a ‘digital emblem’.
Read the full blog post here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2022/11/03/digital-emblemfive-questions-law-tech-policy/
As the international armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine drags on, the international community continues to sound the alarm about the significant risks of a nuclear reactor accident as a result of protracted fighting around the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant – the largest nuclear power plant in Europe and among the ten largest in the world.
In this post, ICRC Legal Advisers Abby Zeith and Eirini Giorgou take a closer look at the limits imposed by international humanitarian law (IHL) to protect works and installations containing dangerous forces – such as nuclear electrical generating stations – against the danger of hostilities, and what is at stake.
Read the full blog post here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2022/10/18/protection-nuclear-power-plants-armed-conflict/
For decades, there has been consensus in the international community that in times of armed conflict, impartial humanitarian operations and the humanitarian personnel involved therein must not be targeted. In other words, you do not shoot at the truck that delivers food and medicine to civilians. This consensus must be respected online as well as offline, as recently affirmed in a resolution entitled ‘Safeguarding Humanitarian Data’ adopted by the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. The backbone of this consensus is enshrined in international humanitarian law (IHL).
In this post, the ICRC’s Tilman Rodenhäuser, Balthasar Staehelin, and Massimo Marelli explore how these rules impose limits on digital threats against impartial humanitarian organizations and propose legal, policy and operational measures to safeguard them against such threats.
Read the full blog post here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2022/10/13/safeguarding-humanitarian-organizations-from-digital-threats/
In international armed conflict, citizens of non-belligerent States can (and do) find their way onto the battlefield. Whether they arrive as volunteers, security company employees, or mercenaries, so-called third-country nationals test the common assumption that States fight wars with armies of their own loyal citizens. But foreign fighters are nothing new. They are a regular feature of war, and the law of armed conflict reaches and protects them like anyone else.
In this post, ICRC Senior Legal Adviser Ramin Mahnad explains what the Geneva Conventions and other sources of the law of armed conflict – international humanitarian law (IHL) – say about fighters who are not nationals of the belligerent States.
Read the full blog post here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2022/10/06/third-country-nationals-international-armed-conflict/
In areas marked by gender inequality, women and girls are particularly at risk of the compounding effects of armed conflict and climate change. Militaries should track these risks to ensure they develop a fuller picture of the human security situation in their areas of operations. To do this effectively, militaries require a different sort of staff tool than is currently produced using ordinary operational analysis methodologies.
In this post, part of our ongoing series on Gender and Conflict co-hosted by the ICRC and Just Security, a team of recent graduates from the University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources and their faculty partners propose a GIS mapping model with overlays showing the cumulative intensity of gender inequality, armed conflict, and climate change in the mission area, letting reliable data speak for itself through color.
Read the full blog post here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2022/09/29/gender-inequality-armed-conflict-climate-change-militaries-map-compounded-risk/
Why should parties to a conflict care about climate change and the environment? This is a question that is frequently raised when discussing the intersection of climate, conflict and the environment. The connection may not be obvious, but the case for environmental protection and considering climate change during conflict is only getting stronger and more relevant.
In this post, Sarah Gale, Technical Adviser with the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, explores climate and environment considerations for weapon bearers through some important considerations during situations of conflict, emphasizing the importance of respecting the rules of international humanitarian law around the protection of the environment and looking at some of the ways climate change considerations might feed into these rules.
Read the full blog post here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2022/09/22/climate-and-envi…n-armed-conflict/
The end of intense combat during armed conflict – whether permanent or temporary –does not automatically correlate with an end to human suffering. The last four posts in our series ‘IHL in the aftermath’ aimed to paint a scene of the human suffering in the aftermath of conflict, but also proposed some solutions.
In this fifth instalment, ICRC Chief Protection Officer Christian Cardon de Lichtbuer, ICRC Head of Operational Law Unit Thomas de Saint Maurice, and ICRC Senior Legal Adviser Kelisiana Thynne propose some concrete recommendations as to what can be done before, during and after conflict to reduce human suffering.
Read the full blog post here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2022/09/13/aftermath-battle…lenges-solutions/
‘What I know is that for me, for many, the war will not be over until more is done to restore us and our town to normality’. Conflict is not just about international humanitarian law (IHL) and how it is applied. During conflict and in its aftermath, the voice of the civilians affected should be considered.
In this post, the fourth in our ‘IHL in the aftermath’ series, ICRC Senior Legal Adviser Kelisiana Thynne addresses post-conflict challenges for individuals and their families through the fictional lens of someone living in the aftermath with her family.
Read the full blog post here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2022/09/07/fictional-aftermath-conflict/
The recently-launched ICRC blog series ‘Back to basics: humanitarian principles in contemporary armed conflict’ aims to inspire discussion and debate about the relevance of, and challenges to, the humanitarian principles in current times. For some, that phrasing might imply a worrying move back to a time when humanitarian action was conceptualized in its most simplistic form, and the complex interplay between such action and social dynamics like gender, diversity, race and structural discrimination was seen as beyond the responsibility of humanitarian actors.
In this post, ICRC Policy Adviser Ariana Lopes Morey reflects on what ‘back to basics’ means when it comes to gender and humanitarian action, arguing that in order to live up to the basic principles themselves we must strengthen our capacity to bring a gender lens to all aspects of the humanitarian endeavor.
Read the full blog post here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2022/09/01/gender-fundamental-principles/
Though it cannot be up to women alone to capture gendered impacts in treaty texts and outcome documents, their perspective has often helped to pave the way. Research shows that women’s participation in a negotiation process is more likely to lead to the inclusion of gender provisions.
In this post, part of a series on Gender and Conflict co-hosted by the ICRC and Just Security, ICRC Senior Arms Adviser Véronique Christory shares a personal reflection on how the involvement of women in disarmament negotiations has grown over the last 20 years, the tools that have helped spur this advancement, and the ups and downs along the way.
Read the full blog post here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2022/08/25/catching-curve-p…mament-diplomacy/
In seemingly a moment, a city can go from being prosperous and peaceful to completely ravaged by war. Depending on how a conflict plays out and how the parties fulfil their IHL obligations before, during or after battle, inhabitants of a city can experience the aftermath of war in very different ways.
In this post, part of the ‘IHL in the Aftermath’ series, ICRC Senior Legal Adviser, Kelisiana Thynne, paints this is cautionary tale, setting the scene for further discussion about the aftermath of conflict and the continuing IHL and other obligations States and parties to a conflict have.
Read the full blog post here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2022/08/16/a-tale-of-two-ci…termath-conflict/
Too often the term “prisoner of war” (PoW) conjures up black-and-white images of soldiers detained in the Second World War. Recent events have brought PoWs back into the fore of the public consciousness, in particular how they must be treated and what rights they are entitled to in contemporary conflicts. For example, what is the role of social media in respecting their dignity? What is the role of the ICRC’s Central Tracing Agency and States’ National Information Bureaux today? Given developments in international human rights law and international and domestic criminal law, may PoWs be tried for their conduct during hostilities and, if so, what guarantees are they entitled to?
In this post published to mark the anniversary of the 1949 Geneva Conventions Ellen Policinski, a legal adviser working on the ICRC’s project to update the Commentaries on the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols, highlights some aspects of the Third Geneva Convention (GCIII) that may be particularly relevant today, including some of the findings of the updated ICRC Commentary, and points readers towards some resources that digest the findings of this once-in-a-generation study.
Read the full blog post here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2022/08/11/prisoners-of-war…-its-negotiation/
As the armed conflict in Ukraine persists, rapidly unfolding events have entailed grave implications for civilians trapped in the crisis, such as death, injury and displacement from their homes and normal lives, to name but a few. In some areas in Ukraine, those who have remained in their homes have woken up to find that the areas in which they live are no longer under the control of the Ukrainian government but under the control of Russian forces.
In this post, ICRC Legal Adviser Mikhail Orkin and ICRC Senior Legal Adviser Tristan Ferraro take a closer look at how IHL regulates a situation of occupation and provides protections for the civilian inhabitants of an occupied territory.
Read the full blog post here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2022/07/25/armed-conflict-u…cupied-territory/
Silenced guns do not mend the lives of those who have survived the violence. Declarations of victory and the laying down of arms do not by themselves restore electricity and clean water; nor do they reconnect families with their missing or detained relatives; nor do they diffuse unexploded bombs; nor do they offer protection from the violent retribution of the victors.
In this post, part of our series ‘IHL in the aftermath’, ICRC Senior Legal Advisers Ramin Mahnad and Kelisiana Thynne outline the reality that many people remain vulnerable to harm long after the fighting has temporarily or permanently ended, and propose that there are already legal solutions to many of these problems that must be identified and applied.
Read the full blog post here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2022/07/21/silenced-guns-li…-end-of-conflict/
We have all seen the despair, dismay, and disaster of war. But what happens when the armed conflict appears to be over? It may be a time for peace, but there will often be pockets of hostilities, rogue forces, continuing damage, unexploded weapons that have not been removed, and lives that cannot go back to so-called normality.
In this post, ICRC Senior Legal Adviser Kelisiana Thynne and ICRC’s Head of Legal Advisers to Operations Thomas de Saint Maurice launch a new series, ‘IHL in the aftermath of conflict’ to raise the profile of relevant IHL obligations in post-conflict scenarios and highlight the humanitarian consequences of armed conflict in the aftermath of conflict that might be more challenging from a legal perspective.
Read the full blog post here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2022/07/11/ihl-aftermath-conflicts/
The uptake of gender considerations into military missions across the world has largely been uneven and incremental. This is likely due in part to the lack of an overarching theory of how gender is relevant to operations; a theory we could use to interrogate data sets and analysis to provide actionable intelligence. Operational risk is a promising candidate.
In this post, part of a series on Gender and Conflict co-hosted by the ICRC and Just Security, Jody M. Prescott, a lecturer at the University of Vermont, sets out the need to take a different approach to incorporating gender considerations in military operations, one that uses gender analysis not just to assess risk to gendered population groups such as women and girls, but risk to missions posed by the failure to consider gender.
Read the full blog post here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2022/07/07/militaries-theory-gender-operational-relevance/
Gender shapes an individual’s experience of armed conflict in complex ways, but trends can be predictable. In particular, women and girls contend with structural gender inequality, including in conflict contexts. Women and girls generally have fewer financial resources, less access to essential services and less representation in decision-making bodies. Military operations do not therefore take place on an ‘equal playing field’ for women and girls, and with this in mind, a gender perspective is a relevant tool for practitioners of international humanitarian law (IHL) as they seek to understand and reduce civilian harm.
In this post, Helen Durham, Cordula Droege, Lindsey Cameron and Vanessa Murphy launch the ICRC’s new report on Gendered Impacts of Armed Conflict and Implications for the Application of IHL. This kicks off a burst of posts co-hosted by the ICRC and Just Security as part of a series on Gender and Conflict. In the coming months, the series will feature contributions from a range of experts exploring the humanitarian, legal, and military implications of – and challenges raised by – the integration of a gender perspective into the interpretation and application of IHL.
Read the full blog here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2022/06/30/gendered-impacts…plication-of-ihl/
Recent media reports on prisoners of war (POWs) and deceased combatants have raised questions among journalists and the general public about how the Geneva Conventions regulate images and information related to military personnel in armed conflict.
In this post, ICRC senior legal adviser Ramin Mahnad offers a brief explanation of the basic tenets of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949 and its prohibition against exposing POWs to ‘public curiosity’. The ICRC calls on media outlets – in fulfilling their essential public service – to apply appropriate professional practices and exercise restraint to help ensure that captured and killed combatants benefit from the protections owed to them under the international law of armed conflict. It also calls on social media companies to take measures to prevent unlawfully disclosed images and information from circulating on their platforms.
The first prisoners of war (POWs) in the international armed conflict in Ukraine have been prosecuted and sentenced. These trials will herald hundreds, if not thousands more, as the sides to the conflict have stated their intention to hold POWs in their hands accountable for serious crimes: Russia has reportedly opened investigations into over 1,000 Ukrainian POWs, while the office of Ukraine’s chief prosecutor claims to have registered over 15,000 allegations of war crimes and to have initiated at least 80 proceedings against alleged perpetrators. At the same time, the International Criminal Court is pursuing its own investigations into the situation in Ukraine. At the beginning of what is likely to be an avalanche of legal proceedings, mostly against POWs, it is worth recalling the rules that apply to their trials.
In this post, ICRC Legal Adviser Yvette Issar outlines the fair trial guarantees that must be available to POWs if legal proceedings are instituted against them. These are contained in the Third Geneva Convention (GCIII) adopted in 1949, and now universally ratified. More comprehensive information on these rights is contained in the ICRC’s recently updated Commentary on the Third Geneva Convention.
Read the full blog: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2022/06/23/on-trial-geneva-…prisoners-of-war/
In this post – part of our new series ‘Back to basics: humanitarian principles in contemporary armed conflict’ and released in tandem with Just Security – Fiona Terry, head of the ICRC’s Centre for Operational Research and Experience (CORE) explains her conversion from a neutrality sceptic to a genuine believer in the purpose and utility of retaining a neutral stance in war, based on first-hand experience.
Read the full blog here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2022/06/21/taking-action-no…arian-neutrality/
As with many conflicts in the past, the Ukraine crisis has revived heated discussions on the humanitarian principles and their relevance in contemporary armed conflict. We have all been reminded how the principles, in particular the principle of neutrality, can lead to misunderstanding and even outrage – and why they nonetheless remain such a valuable compass and operational tool in highly polarized situations.
In this post, ICRC Director-General Robert Mardini carves out a space for debate with a new series: ‘Back to basics: humanitarian principles in contemporary armed conflict’, calling on partners to contribute to this important discussion.
As people continue to go missing in all regions of the world, thousands of families are left behind. They do not know whether their loved ones are alive or dead, and go through phases of ambiguous loss during their search. Aggravating this emotional turmoil, family members also often face economic hardship, especially if the missing person was the main breadwinner. Many States have adopted laws which address the situation of families of missing people, but their socio-economic needs remain predominantly unaddressed.
In this post, Grażyna Baranowska, Assistant Professor at Polish Academy of Sciences and Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at the Hertie School in Berlin, demonstrates that with regard to families of missing persons States typically apply either measures of reparation or measures of assistance. She argues that the two forms can and should coexist.
When international armed conflict breaks out and people find themselves in the power of belligerent States, the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 activate with full force. By requiring humane treatment and criminalizing abuse, the Conventions serve as a bulwark against cruelty and reaffirm the notion that, even in war, there are limits. But the focus on these universal prohibitions can obscure another central feature of how the Geneva Conventions operate: they manage to reach and protect all those in the power of the belligerents, not by treating everyone identically, but by explicitly taking their different situations into account.
In this post, ICRC Senior Legal Adviser Ramin Mahnad describes how the assignment of every individual to one or more categories set out under the Conventions forms the basis of an intricate legal system that determines how the parties must treat people who fall under their control.
Read the full blog here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2022/05/19/belligerents-status-protection-geneva-conventions/
“The scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a threat to human well-being and the health of the planet. Any further delay in concerted global action will miss the brief, rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future.”
The latest reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change present the most urgent and alarming calls to actions we’ve had to date. Its analysis on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability finds that climate change is driving and exacerbating humanitarian crises, and that climate impacts are perpetuating vulnerabilities as well as social and economic inequities. The science now confirms that climate change is not just a future humanitarian concern, but one having devastating impacts already, today – a crisis demanding a scaled-up humanitarian response, now. This is precisely what the Climate and Environment Charter for Humanitarian Organizations aims to do: urgently steer and galvanize a collective humanitarian response to the climate and environmental crises.
The 21st of May marks one year since the Charter was opened for signature. In this post, IFRC Climate Change Coordinator Tessa Kelly and ICRC Policy Advisers Catherine-Lune Grayson and Amir Khouzam highlight the good reasons we have for celebrating, as well as the need to maintain momentum and live up to our commitments.
Collateral damage is the unintended damage inflicted on humans, structures, animals and the natural environment that are not the target of the attack. The lack of precision in the delivery of explosive weapons may be the main source of collateral damage affecting the civilian population.
In this post, Ove Dullum, Principal Scientist at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, describes the sources of such inaccuracies and the tools available to reduce them.
Against a backdrop of decades of conflict and crisis, Afghanistan’s regime change in August 2021 once again propelled the need for humanitarian assistance to the forefront. Not only have needs spiked, but various sanctions mean that some vital assistance is no longer administered as needed. Further complicating the situation, the country’s complex ethnographic, cultural and religious landscape lays a fertile ground for discrimination in how assistance is distributed.
In this post, Ioanna Voudouri, ICRC’s Operational Legal Coordinator, and Ezat Gul and Yari Yar Mohammad, National Legal Advisers, write from Kabul on how international and Islamic law address these risks, with the aim of eliminating obstacles for humanitarian assistance so it can reach the people who need it.
Read the full blog here:https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2022/04/28/how-do-ihl-and-islamic-law-protect-and-ensure-humanitarian-assistance-in-afghanistan/
Even with one in seven people worldwide living with some form of disability, this group has been largely invisible in the implementation of international humanitarian law (IHL) on the conduct of hostilities. Despite increasing recognition and calls for mainstreaming of the multiple and intersectional barriers and risks affecting persons with disabilities in armed conflict, their specific risks have not yet been taken into account when planning and conducting military operations.
In this post, Dr Helen Durham, ICRC’s Director of Law and Policy, and Professor Gerard Quinn, UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities, explore how the complementarity between IHL and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities can be used to increase the visibility of persons with disabilities within IHL, and analyze particular measures that can be taken in the conduct of hostilities to enable a more disability-inclusive implementation of the law of armed conflict.
Over the past year, millions of people living in conflict-affected areas have faced severe and acute food insecurity, and the numbers continue to rise. For many, seasonal food shortages are an intractable reality, but the situation is exacerbated by the increasing intensity and frequency of climate shocks, the long-term economic impacts of COVID-19, as well as the disruptive nature of insecurity and armed conflict on global food systems.
In this post, Policy Adviser Ariana Lopes Morey, Associate Menty Kebede, and Legal Adviser Matt Pollard provide insight into the ICRC’s perspective on the legal, diplomatic and operational dimensions of efforts to prevent food insecurity and famine during conflict, as articulated in its upcoming policy brief. The authors reflect on how addressing the challenge of food insecurity and risk of famine in conflict is complex – requiring speed and long-term commitment, as well as the involvement of many actors – and highlight the ICRC’s three key asks.
Armed conflicts affecting all regions of the world today continue to result in the separation of families and in people going missing and dying. Such heart wrenching loss also occurs in other situations of violence, in disasters and along migratory routes. In 2021, the ICRC registered more than 29,000 new cases of missing people, bringing the current number of cases we are following in 2022 to 173,800 – a 75% increase over the past five years. Many decades-old cases remain unresolved the world over.
In this post, ICRC legal advisers Helen Obregón and Ximena Londoño shed light on some of the particularly rich – but not sufficiently known – rules of international humanitarian law, notably on the ICRC’s Central Tracing Agency and National Information Bureau, relevant to protecting people affected by international armed conflicts like the one taking place in Ukraine today. Taking action to implement these obligations on the ground today is essential to the prevention of greater suffering tomorrow.
Although internal displacement is a global problem, it has long been a particular concern for African governments. According to the most recent estimates, conflict and violence have uprooted 21.8 million people from their homes in sub-Saharan Africa, a rising trend driven each year by other factors such as natural hazard-induced disasters, climate risks, and a dearth of durable solutions.
In this post, Judith Oputu, Diplomatic Adviser for Africa working with the ICRC’s Policy and Humanitarian Diplomacy Division, reflects on displacement diplomacy in Africa and outlines five ways that African States can be better incentivized to take action.
For the past two weeks, the world has watched a humanitarian crisis unfold across Ukraine. Many of our readers have reached out to us directly with questions on how the rules of war – international humanitarian law (IHL) – apply to the conflict.
In this post, our Chief Legal Officer Cordula Droege outlines the key rules of IHL governing the conflict and emphasizes the ICRC’s call for all parties to fulfil their legal obligations to avoid further civilian suffering and loss of life.
The skies over the conflict in Ukraine are filled with identical-looking consumer drones piloted by combatants and civilians alike – aircraft that promise to be a regular feature of war in the future. Few methods exist for telling small drones apart in airspace: combatants, unable to distinguish between drones that are a threat and those that aren’t, may direct attacks at civilian drone pilots.
In this post, civilian drone researcher and consultant Faine Greenwood argues that the aid world must move quickly to better define where small consumer drones fit into international humanitarian law.
Since its creation in 2000, the Bruges Colloquium on International Humanitarian Law has been jointly organized by the ICRC and the College of Europe, bringing together government representatives, international organizations, military practitioners, academics and civil society to grapple with the most urgent issues relating to the law of armed conflict. Its 22nd edition, held in October 2021, examined the enduring relevance of international humanitarian law (IHL) and the update of the ICRC Commentaries.
In this post, ICRC legal adviser Mickey Orkin unpacks some of the key issues discussed during last year’s Colloquium – conversations between hundreds of participants online from 59 countries – and the key takeaways for the work of the ICRC Commentaries team.
With armed conflicts persisting in various parts of the globe and at risk of breaking out in others, it is crucial to take a step back.
In this post, Boyd van Dijk, a McKenzie Fellow at the University of Melbourne, revisits the making of the Geneva Conventions and demonstrates why this history still matters today.
This year marks the 160th anniversary of the publication of Henri Dunant’s classic text, ‘A Memory of Solferino’, in 1862. Dunant’s powerful book inspired the founding of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and the First Geneva Convention of 1864.
In this post, Hugo Slim, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, reflects on changes in warfare and humanitarian aid since Dunant’s legacy and makes three calls to action of his own.
On 22 December 2021, the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously to adopt a resolution on Afghanistan introducing, for the only the second time in 30 UN sanction regimes, an explicit humanitarian carve-out. For those providing humanitarian assistance and supporting basic human needs in Afghanistan, donors, and private partners, the exemption gives much-needed assurance that they can continue their operations in Afghanistan without fear they are running afoul of UN sanctions against members of the Taliban and associated persons and entities, as well as the Haqqani Network.
What is a humanitarian carve-out, why was it so urgently necessary in the first place, and where do we go from here? In this post, Helen Durham, ICRC Director of Law and Policy in Geneva, and Chris Harland, ICRC Operational Legal Coordinator in New York, unpack the most pressing issues.
The use of explosive weapons with a wide impact area in populated areas is one of the main causes of civilian harm in today’s armed conflicts. Despite their widespread and reverberating effects, they are the weapons predominantly in use in urban warfare today.
In this post, part of our urban warfare series and marking the launch of a new ICRC report, ICRC Legal Adviser Eirini Giorgou unpacks the deadly effects of these weapons on civilians and the challenges of using them in compliance with international humanitarian law. She fleshes out the ICRC’s call to action to avoid using heavy explosive weapons in populated areas, as a matter of policy, and impose restrictions and limitations on their use.
Debates concerning the regulation of choices made by States in conducting hostilities are often limited to the use of weapons . . . but our understanding of weapons is outdated. New technologies – especially those with embedded artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, even if non-weaponized – are significantly transforming contemporary warfare. The indirect influence of these technologies on warfare decisions is consistently underestimated.
In this post, Klaudia Klonowska, a researcher with the Asser Institute’s DILEMA project, calls for a dramatic shift in what we consider to be an important tool of warfare. Not weapons, but all technologies of warfare. She argues that we need to acknowledge that the choice of technologies may influence offensive capabilities just as much as the choice of weapons.
If the 2021 IPCC report is a code red for humanity, then humanitarian organizations are the first responders. Humanitarian organizations do not just deal with climate-related disasters, they also often work in regions where the combined impacts of climate change and conflict increase the challenges of both emergency relief and longer-term development.
In this post, Kheira Tarif, Research Assistant in the Climate Change and Risk Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) argues that new tools are needed in the humanitarian toolkit to make conflict analyses more climate-sensitive and anticipate climate-related security risks.
In conjunction with the movement to prevent the environmental impacts of armed conflict has come a growing recognition of the need to address the harm that has already occurred. Mine action, which aims to reduce the effects of landmines and explosive remnants of war (ERW), provides a valuable model for assisting victims of and remediating the environment contaminated by toxic remnants of war (TRW).
In this post, part of the War, Law and the Environment blog series with the Conflict and Environment Observatory, Bonnie Docherty of Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic and Human Rights Watch shows how mine action has influenced the positive obligations in the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) and argues that it should guide implementation of the TPNW and efforts to deal with TRW more broadly.
Environmental considerations are rightly gaining increased prominence and awareness. Environmental experts agree that unprecedented changes in climate and biodiversity are taking place, threatening nature and human livelihoods around the world. The humanitarian community increasingly understands the need to identify and assess how their operations affect the natural environment and to mitigate the negative environmental impacts wherever possible. The mine action sector is no exception.
In this blog post, and as part of the ICRC series on war, law and the environment, Alex Frost from Mine Action Review outlines the environmental impacts of explosive ordnance contamination and the impacts of survey and clearance of that ordnance, elements of regulatory frameworks and treaty commitments, and key mitigation measures for the sector.
Sexual violence is widespread and prevalent in many modern armed conflicts. Interviewing the people who have endured sexual violence is one of the most challenging tasks for any journalist.
In this post to mark the 30th campaign of the 16 Days of Action, Drew Ambrose – one of Al Jazeera English’s most experienced and awarded foreign correspondents – describes his experience and technique for reporting on these pervasive acts of brutality in conflict zones.
Despite clear legal prohibitions, sexual violence remains widespread and prevalent during armed conflicts and other situations of violence, with grave humanitarian consequences. Sexual violence is often utilized as a tactical or strategic means of overwhelming and weakening the adversary, whether directly or indirectly, by targeting the civilian population.
In this post to mark the 30th campaign of the 16 Days of Action, ICRC historian Daniel Palmieri examines ICRC inaction during the mid-20th century – and the Swiss cultural backdrop against which the organization operated at that time – to unearth contextual and structural factors that contributed to this glaring historical passivity.
The spectrum of misogynistic violence between incels (‘involuntary celibates’) and non-State armed groups using extreme violence against women is based around the desire to restore ‘traditional’ gender norms of male dominance and maintain systemic inequality between men and women. This often manifests in gender-based hate crimes before escalating into community violence and armed conflict.
In this post, part of the 16 Days of Action, Christie J. Edwards, Deputy Head of the Tolerance and Non-Discrimination Department at the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, encourages governments and policy makers to ensure effective criminal justice responses to gender-based hate crimes and all other forms of violence against women in order to address and prevent violence and armed conflict, as well as build sustainable peace.
Thirty years ago today, 23 women launched the ‘16 Days of Action’ against gender-based violence.[1] Each year, this campaign begins on the 25th of November (International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women) and ends on the 10th of December (Human Rights Day) to symbolically link these two days. In the three decades since, much has been achieved – we now have many international commitments and plans of action to eliminate gender-based violence. A critical component of these is the modification of domestic legislation.
In this post to mark the 30th campaign of the 16 Days of Action, Rachael Kitching, Vanessa Murphy and Kelisiana Thynne of the ICRC legal division unpack the ICRC’s Checklist on the Domestic Implementation of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) Prohibiting Sexual Violence. The Checklist sets out State responsibilities regarding the criminal repression of sexual violence as a war crime, as well as examples of good practice for service accessibility and special measures of protection. It presents easy-to-follow guidance to assist States and the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement to identify and address legislative gaps.
The term ‘human shields’ describes a method of warfare prohibited by international humanitarian law (IHL), during which the presence of civilians or the movement of the civilian population, whether voluntary or involuntary, is used to shield military objectives from attack, or to shield, favour or impede military operations. Human shields are always protected from attack unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities.
While the law is clear, the reality can be blurred by the discursive use of human shields. In this instalment of our urban warfare special series, Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini – authors of ‘Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire’ – build upon Zoi Lafazani’s post and discuss what they refer to as ‘proximate shields’, whereby humans are framed as shields merely due to their proximity to belligerents.
Human shields constitute part of the reality of contemporary armed conflicts, primarily fought in urban contexts. As such, they pose a host of complex legal issues, notably for destabilizing the traditional categorizations of international humanitarian law.
In this post, part of our special series on urban warfare, Zoi Lafazani, PhD candidate and researcher in international law, describes the current state of affairs within international humanitarian law when it comes to human shields and indicates why a legal vocabulary can often be inappropriate and obscure the political dimension of human shielding.
Intergovernmental discussions on the regulation of emerging technologies in the area of (lethal) autonomous weapon systems (AWS) are back on track in Geneva after more than a year of COVID-19 related disruptions. A critical task facing States is to further clarify how international humanitarian law (IHL) applies: what limits does it place on the development and use of AWS and, perhaps most importantly, what does it require from humans in the use of force?
In this post, Laura Bruun from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), reflects on whether IHL provides sufficiently clear guidance as to how humans and machines may interact in use of force decisions. Building on the findings of a recent SIPRI study, she argues that clarification may be warranted and provides concrete suggestions on how States may further identify what IHL compliance requires in the development and use of AWS.
The ‘Great Move’ to communication in the virtual world has been underway for some time. Spurred on by the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us have switched to the medium of a screen, raising questions as to what is lost and what is gained. This is of critical importance to the humanitarian sector, especially when carrying out negotiations which can have a life or death impact.
At the heart of any negotiation is how to attain sufficient trust between the parties. But how do you build trust in a virtual environment? Following their first post on influence and persuasion in the virtual world, ICRC diplomatic advisers Nicholas Hawton and Shahrokh Shakerian now look to the issue of building trust in virtual diplomacy and humanitarian negotiations.
Communities enduring conflict are on the frontlines of the climate crisis. Paradoxically, they are also among the most neglected by climate action. It is increasingly urgent to act. The climate crisis is deeply unsettling, as it forces people to reinvent their ways of life. This reality needs to drive the conversation and lead to more and faster action.
In this post – ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) and part of our special series on climate change, conflict and humanitarian action – ICRC Policy Advisor Catherine-Lune Grayson calls on us all to step up our collective efforts to support conflict-affected populations in adapting to growing climate risks.
Within a complex and growing threat landscape, the cyber arms race is ramping up, underscoring the need for reasonable and realistic constraints on the development and use of cyberweapons. To minimize the direct or indirect harm to civilians, cyber arms development should bolster technological development safety and cybersecurity measures, and offensive cyberspace operation execution should choose the most viable course of action to achieve the specified operational effect in line with the applicable law and rules of engagement.
In this post, part of our special series on avoiding civilian harm during military cyber operations, Dr. Bernhards Blumbergs, Senior Researcher at CERT.LV (Information Technologies Security Incident Response Institution in Latvia) presents forward-looking considerations from the offensive cyberspace operation execution technical and operational perspective, based on the author’s practical experience.
The destruction of nature and the world’s ecosystems presents an unprecedented challenge for humanity. With one million species on the brink of extinction – the 6th mass extinction event in world history – nature loss also has a profound impact on international peace and security.
In this post – part of a special series on war, law and the environment co-hosted with the Conflict and Environment Observatory (CEOBS) – Florian Titze, Policy Advisor for International Biodiversity Policy for WWF-Germany, makes a case for the UN Security Council to acknowledge the nexus between nature and security, arguing that today’s conflicts can no longer be viewed in isolation from the natural environment in which they take place.
When international law addresses a particular issue of concern, ultimately the intention is to have some kind of real impact on that issue. In the case of armed conflict and the environment, the aim is to enhance the protection of the natural environment from the negative effects of war.
In this post, which is part of a special series on war, law and the environment co-hosted with the Conflict and Environment Observatory (CEOBS), Jani Leino, legal advisor for the Finnish Red Cross, examines the nuts and bolts of effective domestic implementation of international humanitarian law (IHL) in Finland and identifies six corresponding ingredients for success.
Alongside the urbanization of armed conflict lies a second trend: the increase in the use of technology to augment methods of warfare. Although some may claim that the integration of technological solutions – such as increasing the precision of munitions or reliance upon enhanced data and surveillance collection and analysis tools – can reduce civilian harm, contemporary urban conflict demonstrates that more should be done to ensure that new weapons technologies incorporate additional measures to minimize civilian harm when deployed in urban environments.
In this post, part of a special series on urban warfare, Damian Copeland and Lauren Sanders, both senior research fellows at the University of Queensland Law and Future of War Project, propose that enhancing existing IHL obligations in reviewing weapons, means and methods of warfare, by adopting a cooperative approach between industry and States, promises to help bridge this gap. The result is both business efficiency in the design and development of new technology, but more importantly – harmonization and increased compliance with IHL for new technologies likely to be fielded during urban warfare.
For almost eight years now, the international community at the United Nations (UN) has been discussing the various ethical, legal and security-related issues surrounding autonomy in weapons systems. The Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) in Geneva is the focal point of this exchange. Since 2017, a CCW Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) has been busy deliberating the structure and content of a possible ‘normative and operational framework’ for regulation.
In this post, Frank Sauer – a long-term observer and participant in the CCW process as well as the wider debate on weapon autonomy – examines the current state of the debate and charts a possible way forward for the discussion within the CCW framework.
Digital technologies and the always-on communications that underpin the internet have transformed our world in many positive ways, but have also enabled behaviors contrary to the public interest and even threatened the continued stability of the internet. The transformation has been technology-driven but carried out in a larger commercial, social, and legal environment that shapes how the technologies are developed and used. As part of that effort, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) has partnered with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to investigate technical solutions for identifying protected missions in the digital domain.
For several years, APL has been studying approaches to assuring a stable internet through norms, laws, and technologies. In this post, continuing a discussion on the viability of a ‘digital emblem’, Antonio DeSimone, APL Principal Professional Staff, Brian Haberman, APL Principal Professional Research Scientist, and Erin Hahn, APL Principal Professional Staff, present an overview of technical approaches that may help.
Warfare increasingly takes place in cyberspace. Consequently, the question arises how a digital analogy of the protective emblems, the red cross, red crescent and red crystal, could be realized. How could such an emblem be part of computer-to-computer communication? And how could its usage be limited to legitimate parties?
In this post, continuing the discussion on the viability of a ‘digital emblem’, Felix E. Linker and David Basin from ETH Zurich present an overview of ADEM – an ‘Authenticated Digital EMblem’ – and how it would operate in an armed conflict.
The use of digital technology in armed conflict is rising sharply. Such developments come with risks, but they may also provide opportunities. For example, could new technologies help digitally signal that certain infrastructure and assets enjoy protection under international humanitarian law? For 150 years, the red cross and red crescent, and more recently the red crystal, have performed this function in the physical world. Would it be feasible, and advisable from a cyber-security point of view, to mark the digital assets of protected entities in times of armed conflict?
In this post, Tilman Rodenhäuser, Legal Adviser at the ICRC, Laurent Gisel, Head of the Arms and Conduct of Hostilities Unit at the ICRC; Larry Maybee, Legal Adviser at Australian Red Cross; Hollie Johnston, Senior Adviser at Australian Red Cross; and Fabrice Lauper, Technology Adviser at the ICRC present the main concepts and ideas of the ICRC’s research project on the digitalization of the red cross, red crescent, and red crystal emblems.
When biometrics enters the news cycle, it is usually in the context of a critical discussion on the risks versus the benefits – an ethical debate, as evidenced by recent events in Afghanistan, that can be a matter of life and death. Taking a step back to a more technical level, fundamental questions arise: what is the purpose of collecting biometrics, and is it possible to process it in a way that is fit for purpose?
In this post, ahead of the upcoming DigitHarium discussions on biometrics, ICRC strategic technology advisers Vincent Graf Narbel and Justinas Sukaitis investigate how modern techniques in information security can – or cannot – be applied to the unique nature of biometrics data in the humanitarian context.
Preventing persons from going missing, clarifying the fate and whereabouts of those who do and supporting their loved ones, including in their quest to know what happened and to seek justice for serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law, are as important as ever.
Looking towards the International Day of Victims of Enforced Disappearance, ICRC legal advisers Ximena Londoño and Helen Obregón Gieseken provide key elements on how the law protects victims of enforced disappearance and other missing persons and on how the ICRC contributes to the broader global, regional, national and local efforts to prevent and address enforced disappearances as part of its work.
As the world faces simultaneous disasters and burgeoning risks, humanitarian actors need to develop more efficient ways of delivering aid to vulnerable populations. One current trend involves the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to process large amounts of data quickly to inform – and even autonomously undertake – decision-making processes. While these processes have the potential to facilitate faster and better anticipatory humanitarian action, they can pose unforeseen challenges if left unregulated and unchecked.
In this post, Christopher Chen, Associate Research Fellow at the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, explores the promise and perils of using artificial intelligence and machine learning in the context of anticipatory humanitarian action. Building on insights gleaned from a data governance and protection workshop co-hosted by the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and the ICRC, he highlights some of the implications of the use of new technologies in humanitarian action and how the principle of ‘do no harm’ can be applied in a digital age.
The rules and standards of war are not self-correcting. Contradictions, gaps, and ambiguities often endure until an external pressure makes them salient. This is particularly true of the laws governing military technology. In order to regulate new weapons, ‘shock’ is sometimes needed – a practical demonstration of harm that clarifies the morally and legally problematic status of the technology, and the urgency of a regulatory response. When used effectively, shock can galvanize a humanitarian campaign. When used carelessly, it can help undermine one.
In this post, Senior Researcher at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy, Neil Renic, explores the difficulty of using without abusing shock in the context of emerging military technology.
Drones are an increasingly common tool in humanitarian aid, but issues revolving around public perception and trust continue to slow their global rollout during disaster. Humanitarians can use new technologies that make it easier to tell drones apart from one another in flight to justify trust in the technology: they will also benefit from more research into why people distrust drones, and how the data that drones collect is being used in the communities that they serve.
In this post, drone technology researcher Faine Greenwood describes how the international aid community and private industry can address the long-standing problem of drone distrust with a combination of improved technology, expanded research into public opinion, and a better grasp of the risks that drone technology may present to the public.
No country or sector has been spared the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Gaza Strip has certainly been no exception. In this post, Professor Moamin Aljaro, Professor of Law at the University of Palestine, outlines the three main digital challenges lecturers and students of international humanitarian law have faced since the onset of the pandemic.
Over the past decade, there has been a large and growing demand for digital services – such as ‘connectivity as aid’. Such services can be of great help to people affected by conflict, including by helping connect families that have been separated, or to access legal rights. At the same time, unsafeguarded connectivity points can expose already vulnerable individuals and populations to increased risks, including targeting killing, exploitation and other harms.
In this post, Rakesh Bharania, director of humanitarian impact data at Salesforce.org, and Mark Silverman, strategic advisor in the ICRC’s Office for Digital Transformation and Data, argue that connectivity as aid is important and should be provided, and that it needs to be designed to be secure and protective for populations receiving humanitarian assistance from the outset.
In the spring of 2021, the ICRC and Geneva Academy jointly organized a student essay competition on the protection of civilians against the dangers posed by military cyber operations. Students from nearly 30 countries and all continents of the world contributed short essays answering the question: ‘Which measures – technical, policy, legal, or other – should States put in place to avoid or at least reduce the risk of civilian harm from military cyber operations during armed conflicts?’
Today, we are delighted to publish Isabelle Peart’s winning essay. In the words of one of the chairs of the jury, ICRC’s Laurent Gisel, Isabelle’s essay ‘impressed us by the maturity of the presented thoughts as well as by the well-argued suggestions on how to reduce the risk of harm to civilians that is posed by military cyber operations’. The essay adapts the IHL concept of demilitarized zones to the cyber context, and on that basis presents an argument for the establishment of international digital safe havens.
Over the past decade, several States have begun to develop military cyber elements capable of both defending their national interests, as well as projecting their national power, by capitalizing on a vast, borderless, interwoven internet. By applying lessons learned from recent history, a clear case emerges for governments to assess the risk of civilian harm resulting from current cyber operations; and to evaluate how to minimize these risks as we move toward a future characterized by the proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and the emergence of artificial intelligence.
In this post, part of the ICRC’s series on avoiding civilian harm during military cyber operations, Pete Renals, a Principal Researcher within the Cybersecurity Industry and a Technology Fellow with the Tech, Law, & Security Program at American University, Washington College of Law – considers future developments in military cyber operations and their impact on the risk of civilian harm.
How can countries at war assess the potential harm that cyber operations may cause to civilians? In this post, part of our series on avoiding civilian harm during military cyber operations, Ellie Shami argues that while it is clear States must implement measures to minimize the harm caused by any means and methods of warfare during armed conflicts, the unique characteristics of cyberspace as a warfare domain set new challenges in doing so.
As we mark World Refugee Day this year, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has announced new and staggering figures, ones that have been growing steadily over the past ten years. By the end of 2020, 82.4 million people had been forced to flee their homes, among them 26.4 million refugees. Within these sobering statistics, three countries with a predominantly Muslim population held undesirable top rankings: Syria, with the highest number of refugees, Turkey, where most refugees were hosted, and Lebanon, which hosted the highest number of refugees relative to its population size[1]. More generally, the data confirms that, at least in the near future, the displacement crisis is unfortunately unlikely to ease up in these regions.
In this post, Dr. Ahmed Al-Dawoody, ICRC’s legal adviser on Islamic law and jurisprudence, and Dr. Tilman Rodenhäuser, ICRC legal adviser, explore the roots and scope of protection against refoulement in Islamic law. The authors share the view that an ‘indigenous, culturally viable Islamic protection framework’ can reinforce and complement the international law principle of non-refoulement.
As the global geo-political landscape continues to experience increasing fragmentation, cyberspace grows in importance as a future conflict domain. Military-strategic understandings of cyber warfare – and its value, risks and rewards – are still at a nascent stage. This creates the potential for miscalculation and mistrust. The adversarial nature of cyberspace and its largely civilian infrastructure increases the likelihood of harm and damage to non-combatants in future cyber conflict. These developments demand renewed international cooperation and commitment to ensuring stability and accountability in cyberspace. In this post, part of the ICRC’s series on avoiding civilian harm during military cyber operations, Noëlle van der Waag-Cowling – Cyber Program Lead at the Security Institute for Governance and Leadership in Africa, Stellenbosch University – considers contemporary and future military conflict in cyberspace and possible societal risks.
The world’s strategic paradigm has shifted. Escalating global fragmentation is dismantl
In today’s armed conflicts, cyber operations are increasingly used in support of and alongside kinetic operations. Several States have publicly acknowledged such use, and many more are developing military cyber capabilities. In parallel, cyber incidents – primarily outside armed conflicts – have resulted in damage and disruption to civilian services, including hospitals, water and electrical infrastructure, and nuclear and petrochemical facilities. They offer a chilling warning about the potential humanitarian impact of military cyber operations in contemporary and future armed conflicts.
If the risk of civilian harm from military cyber operations is to be reduced, it is necessary to consider how it can be assessed and measured. In this post, Kubo Mačák, ICRC Legal Adviser, and Ewan Lawson, ICRC Military Cyber Adviser, introduce the new ICRC report from an expert meeting convened by the ICRC in January 2020 to discuss these issues. Their post also launches a new blog series on the theme of avoiding civilian harm during military cyber operations, which will feature contributions by several international experts as well as the winning essay from this year’s ICRC/Geneva Academy competition on the same theme.
The International Law Commission’s long-running project to codify and progressively develop the legal framework protecting the environment in relation to armed conflicts is nearing completion. But the process is unlikely to conclude in a treaty. Because of this, States, with the support of civil society and other actors, will have a vital role to play in ensuring the framework is implemented, and a decade’s gains are further solidified.
This post, which is part of a series on war, law and the environment co-hosted with the Conflict and Environment Observatory (CEOBS), looks ahead to what should come after the Commission’s draft principles are adopted in 2022. In it, CEOBS’ Doug Weir and Stavros Pantazopoulos examine the vital role that civil society organizations can play in promoting and strengthening implementation of norms, encouraging State engagement on environmental protection, and monitoring implementation.
Protecting the environment during armed conflict is garnering renewed attention in light of the ongoing climate and environment crisis. At its root, however, this is not a new phenomenon. It can be seen in the deliberations of Muslim jurists as far back as the 7th and 8th centuries. Some shared questions between modern day international humanitarian law (IHL) and these historical debates include the basis on which the natural environment is protected, from which other legal elements stem.
In this post, part of the War, Law and the Environment blog series with the Conflict and Environment Observatory, ICRC’s Dr. Ahmed Al-Dawoody, legal advisor on Islamic law and jurisprudence, and Sarah Gale, ICRC Delegate, confirm the civilian character of the natural environment under IHL and Islamic law and that these bodies of law share similarities in the obligations of parties to a conflict to protect the environment. Such a comparison between IHL and Islamic law demonstrates the compatibility and importance of drawing on multiple legal traditions to enhance and promote the protection of the environment during armed conflict.
Every military operation conducted within a city is likely to affect the people living there, a reality reflected in the law of war rules that oblige the taking of precautionary measures to spare the civilian population, civilians, and civilian objects. Central to those rules is the concept of feasibility – the requirement that parties do everything that is practically possible to avoid, and in any event minimize, civilian harm. Yet the complex characteristics of cities make them the most demanding combat environment within which to implement precautionary measures. The cluttered and congested terrain might preclude the employment of a preferred means of attack, for instance, just as the unique humanitarian considerations of urban warfare might mandate military commanders to impose constraints upon the methods of attack that would be unnecessary in other theatres of combat.
In this post, concluding the first installment of our urban warfare series, Major Jon Griffiths introduces the particular obligation to take precautions in attack and the corresponding complexities posed by the characteristics of urban warfare. He concludes that although the practical possibility of taking precautionary measures during attacks is situational, it is important to understand and apply the concept of feasibility in good faith, if practitioners are to preserve the delicate balance between military necessity and humanity.
A digital revolution through a myriad of earth observation data and open-source investigations is reshaping our understanding of the environmental causes and consequences of armed conflicts. From spatio-temporal analysis to near-real time monitoring of conflicts and resulting harm from scorched earth tactics, environmental data can quickly be incorporated in humanitarian action and reconstruction efforts. In other words, the scope and severity of environmental damage in conflict is now better understood and more foreseeable. How can this transformative development influence military conduct to strengthen the protection of civilians and the environment in armed conflict?
In this post and as part of the ICRC series on war, law and the environment, Wim Zwijnenburg, project leader on Humanitarian Disarmament at PAX and contributor to Bellingcat, outlines how remote environmental data collection and field research is used and incorporated in international advocacy to boost the momentum for mainstreaming a robust environmental, peace and security agenda and ultimately reduce environmental damage in conflict.
Environmental effects of armed conflicts do not only result from the conduct of hostilities but also from toxic or hazardous remnants of war, excessive exploitation of conflict resources, unsustainable survival strategies of affected populations, or institutional collapse. In addition to the recently released ICRC Guidelines, the International Law Commission’s (ILC) work on protection of the environment in relation to armed conflicts contributes to updating the international legal response to conflict-related environmental harm.
In this post and as part of our War, Law and the Environment blog series, Ambassador Marja Lehto, Special Rapporteur of the ILC, argues that there is still no coherent legal framework for the protection of the environment in and in relation to armed conflicts. The work that has been pursued over the years by the ICRC and the ILC nevertheless reveals the potential for a more coherent reading of the applicable rules.
Armed conflicts from Kuwait to Vietnam continue to remind us that the environment can be deeply scarred by war, a reality that climate risks now magnify for many dependent communities. But while a certain amount of environmental damage may be considered inherent to war, the destruction must and does have limits.
This post by ICRC legal advisers Vanessa Murphy and Helen Obregón, which launches a series on war, law and the environment co-hosted with the Conflict and Environment Observatory, provides an overview of the ICRC’s updated Guidelines on the Protection of the Natural Environment in Armed Conflict and sets out measures to accelerate better respect for international humanitarian law (IHL) rules protecting the natural environment.
Today’s climate and environmental crises threaten the very survival of humanity. The Climate and Environment Charter for Humanitarian Organizations, the result of a collective effort across a wide range of humanitarian organizations and climate and sustainability experts, sets out seven commitments aiming to galvanize and steer collective humanitarian action in response to these crises.
In this post, IFRC Climate Change Coordinator Tessa Kelly and ICRC Policy Advisors Catherine-Lune Grayson and Amir Khouzam describe the collective commitments outlined in the Charter, why it matters, and signal to organizations across the humanitarian sector that it is open for their signatures.
Implementing international humanitarian law’s (IHL) precautionary measures for both defending and attacking forces is a challenge in urban conflict. Urban battles pose heightened risk to civilians and critical infrastructure and much is needed to prepare forces to engage military objectives only and avoid incidental civilian harm.
In this post, part of our special series on urban warfare, Sahr Muhammedally, Director for MENA & South Asia at the Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC), outlines a checklist on ways to protect civilians for commanders preparing for urban operations.
Protecting family links and helping to prevent and, whenever possible, resolve cases of missing persons requires action during armed conflict and other situations of violence but also in peacetime and post-conflict. Families of missing persons bring special insight into the long-term impact of conflict and violence on individuals, on the fabric of society and on the relationship between citizens and the State.
As we mark the 150th anniversary of the Central Tracing Agency, Eva Svoboda, ICRC Deputy-Director for Law and Policy, and Filipa Schmitz Guinote, ICRC Policy Advisor, reflect on what the shared experience of families of missing persons can teach us about war and about some of the factors which are important for peace, such as trust and inclusion.
Military legal advisers today play a key role during various military operations, including aerial targeting in urban areas, and State militaries will likely increasingly rely on them as warfare becomes more urbanized. By providing legal advice to commanders on a range of issues, military lawyers help to ‘operationalize’ international humanitarian law (IHL), transforming the rules of war into realities on the ground. But what does legal advice during aerial targeting look like and what is really at stake?
In this latest post in the urban warfare special series, author of The War Lawyers and Lecturer in Political Geography at Newcastle University Dr. Craig Jones explains how the risk to civilians during aerial targeting is significant even when legal advisers are ‘in the loop’, and that good faith interpretations of IHL rules on the conduct of hostilities must be applied in order to protect civilians during military operations in urban areas.
As long as there have been cities, wars have been staged within them. While the term ‘urban warfare’ conjures more recent images of hollowed buildings and human suffering from Mosul and Mekelle, its history dates back several millennia.
In this post, part of our blog series on urban warfare, ICRC’s historian Daniel Palmieri takes us through the archives of war and the city.
Urban warfare is not a new phenomenon; cities have featured as a stage for violence since humans began building them, and images in recent years – from Aleppo, Mosul, and Sana’a to Marawi, Mogadishu, Donetsk, and Mekelle – leave little room for doubt that towns and cities will remain primary battlegrounds for future armed conflicts. We can expect belligerents to continue using traditional methods such as sieges, tunnels, booby traps, artillery, mortars and snipers and complement these with modern capabilities such as new technologies of warfare and precision. Against this evolving backdrop, we must reflect urgently and in earnest about the ways in which contemporary urban conflicts are fought and the devastating humanitarian consequences they cause to cities and their populations.
In this post, Laurent Gisel, Head of the Arms and Conduct of Hostilities Unit, Pilar Gimeno, Head of the Protection of Civilians Unit, Ken Hume, Head of the Armed and Security Forces Unit, and Abby Zeith, Legal Adviser, launch a new series on urban warfare. In the coming months and years, the series will feature contributions from a diverse range of experts debating and exploring the humanitarian, legal, military and other challenges raised by urban warfare, such as the choice of means and methods of warfare during urban combat, the practices of non-State armed groups, the role of law and military lawyers, siege tactics, underground warfare, precautionary measures, human shields, and lessons learned from recent urban operations.
Contemporary non-international armed conflicts are increasingly fought by a myriad of non-State actors, often engaging in hostilities against a common enemy and at times operating under the same coalition. These complex situations raise pivotal challenges for classification purposes, whereby applying traditional criteria might be unfeasible or lead to conclusions that do not reflect the reality on the ground.
In this post, a reply to last year’s blog on the subject, Chiara Redaelli – Research Fellow at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights and Visiting Professor at Lille Catholic University, Law School – analyses the possibility to aggregate the intensity of violence of groups that fight a common enemy in a geographical and temporal continuum.
The digital transformation of humanitarian operations raises (at least) two existential issues: one, how do humanitarians preserve what is unique about their work amidst growing dependence on uncontrolled commercial partners; and two, how do humanitarians avoid being exploited for their qualified immunity? The answer is to make an implicit assumption in humanitarian law explicit: humanitarian organizations have a duty to integrity.
As part of a growing debate around the humanitarian use of digital cash assistance, Sean Martin McDonald, CEO of FrontlineSMS and co-founder of Digital Public, highlights the importance of organizations’ responsibility to ensure that partners operating under their license abide by their humanitarian duties.
Misinformation, disinformation and hate speech (MDH) has become a ubiquitous feature of the ‘information’ or ‘digital’ age. In conflict settings, so-called ‘fake news’ can lead to death, injury, imprisonment, discrimination or displacement. It can, directly or indirectly, fuel vicious cycles of violence and further entrench already protracted conflicts.
Ahead of a discussion on ‘information disorders’ in the humanitarian sector, Sandrine Tiller, Strategic Adviser at Médecins Sans Frontières, Pierrick Devidal, ICRC Policy Adviser, and Delphine van Solinge, ICRC Digital Risk Adviser, discuss how harmful information online or MDH is a growing yet overlooked risk in humanitarian settings, with potentially far-reaching implications for people affected by armed conflict and other situations of violence.
Equitable access to safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines will be the defining global issue of 2021. Working to ensure that people in areas affected by armed conflict and violence are part of equitable access not only makes moral, epidemiological and economic sense; the unprecedented momentum surrounding COVID-19 also represents an opportunity to eliminate other preventable diseases and strengthen our collective readiness for future pandemics.
Most debate has understandably focused on vaccine distribution between countries. In this post, ICRC Policy Adviser Charles Deutscher offers three considerations for equitable access within countries affected by armed conflict and violence.
As humanitarian organizations become more active in and reliant upon new technologies and the digital domain, they evolve from simple bystanders to full-fledged stakeholders in cyberspace – able to build on the advantages of new technologies but also vulnerable to adverse cyber operations that can impact their capacity to protect and assist people affected by violence or armed conflict.
The 2020 cyberattack on SolarWinds, a major US information technology company, demonstrated the chaos a hack can cause by targeting digital supply chain components. What does the hack mean for the humanitarian cyberspace, and what can we learn from it? Massimo Marelli, ICRC’s Head of Data Protection Office, draws out some possible lessons and the way forward by exploring the notion of ‘digital sovereignty’.
Cyber operations have become a reality of today’s armed conflicts, and their use is likely to continue to increase in the future. In response to this trend, the ICRC has long maintained that international humanitarian law (IHL) governs – and limits – any use of cyber operations during armed conflicts. But what is really at stake?
In this post, ICRC legal advisers Tilman Rodenhäuser and Kubo Mačák explain that the risk of harm to humans is significant, and that the seemingly technical issue of IHL applicability in cyberspace makes a difference in the real world.
In 2020, the ICRC counted 614 armed groups of concern to the organization’s humanitarian operations around the world. As part of its impartial humanitarian work, the ICRC had contact with roughly three quarters of these groups – irrespective of the countries in which they operate, their ideology, religion, motivation or any other characteristic.
The ICRC recently published a position paper elaborating the main reasons for the organization’s engagement with armed groups, with a focus on non-State armed groups (NSAGs) that are parties to armed conflicts, and some of the challenges of such engagement. In this post, Jelena Pejic, ICRC senior legal adviser, Irénée Herbet, Head of Global Affairs & Non-State Armed Groups, and Tilman Rodenhäuser, ICRC legal adviser, highlight some of the paper’s findings.
Cash has been an exceptional vector of progress in humanitarian action, empowering people, protecting dignity, mitigating the negative secondary effects of in-kind assistance, improving accountability to affected populations, increasing participation in humanitarian and development responses, supporting local economies and, last but not least, boosting operational efficiency, which in turn saves some humanitarian cash.
But what happens when cash goes digital, bringing with it the risks of exclusion, discrimination, or surveillance? In this post, ICRC Policy Advisor Pierrick Devidal opens an honest conversation as to whether and how humanitarians should continue using digital cash.
Even in the midst of a pandemic, during a seemingly endless cascade of events, climate change remains a defining issue. Its effects are even more severe for people affected by conflict and violence, who find themselves navigating the collision of war and environmental crises. How can the humanitarian community work with affected people to design policies and practices that have an impact?
In this post, Malvika Verma, a project development officer for ACTED Sri Lanka and India, argues that to strengthen climate action in conflict settings, a solid understanding of people’s vulnerabilities and adaptive capacities must be informed by the bigger picture – an analysis of pre-existing circuits of power and political relationships.
The destruction of cultural heritage in recent years has been the most significant since the Second World War, affecting movable and immovable property as well as intangible cultural heritage, archives, and documentary heritage. In many armed conflicts, the damage is no longer just collateral; cultural property is also deliberately targeted.
Nearly two years on since the milestone International Conference on the 20th anniversary of the 1999 Second Protocol of the 1954 Hague Convention, Jonathan Cuénoud, Legal Advisor for the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, and Benjamin Charlier, Legal Advisor for the ICRC, revisit the achievements and challenges facing the implementation of the Second Protocol and encourage UNESCO Member States to become party to the 1999 Second Protocol if they have not already done so.
Protracted conflict and unprecedented levels of displacement have broken down the barriers between development and humanitarian work, prompting humanitarian organizations to engage more with social protection systems. While this presents another entry point to support affected populations in the medium- and long-term, it also stresses the importance of the principles of neutrality, impartiality, independence, and humanity in humanitarian action (NIIHA) which, if compromised, could impact the trust of parties to a conflict or affected populations, as well as access to the latter.
In this post, ahead of the ICRC Digitharium’s ‘Digital Dilemmas’ virtual debate on social protection systems, Cristina Quijano Carrasco from the Yale Jackson Institute for Global Affairs explains why it is essential – particularly in this digital age of interoperable systems – that humanitarian organizations consider these challenges in assessing their engagement in social protection programs.
As the world faces more frequent and intense crises—driven in part by climate change, political and social conflict, cyber attacks, and disease outbreak—humanitarians are working to protect vulnerable people beyond the initial shock of each new emergency. While coordinating efforts between humanitarian programmes and social protection systems may help support individual and community resilience, it also creates the risk of new threats to data protection.
In this post, ahead of the ICRC Digitharium’s ‘Digital Dilemmas’ virtual debate on social protection systems, Jill Capotosto from the Yale Jackson Institute for Global Affairs reviews one of the key data protection concerns of combining – or ‘mosaicking’ – humanitarian and social protection data systems: the risk of revealing new information, or ‘data revelation’. Particularly in fragile environments, the unintentional revelation of new information may expose both beneficiaries and humanitarian organizations to unanticipated harm.
In the humanitarian sector, bureaucracy has been faulted for everything from ageism and the suppression of talent to a bloated and inefficient response, as examined by Hugo Slim on this blog last year.
But when you examine three of the main issues currently plaguing the sector — sexual misconduct, corruption and fraud, and the politicization of resource allocation — the case for watering down humanitarian bureaucracy weakens, argue Dr. Aaron Clark-Ginsberg and Mary Kate Adgie, researchers at the nonprofit nonpartisan RAND Corporation. Instead, as they outline below, what might be needed is more bureaucracy, not less.
The extent to which States have legal responsibilities under international humanitarian law in relation to the conduct of others has long been contested. Under general international law, the law on State responsibility does set out certain circumstances in which States have negative and positive obligations arising from others’ wrongful conduct, yet these are heavily restricted.
In this post – part of a joint blog symposium with Opinio Juris exploring the ICRC Commentary on the Third Geneva Convention (GCIII Commentary) – Lawrence Hill-Cawthorne, an Associate Professor in Public International Law at the University of Reading, considers the relationship between the ICRC’s interpretation of common Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions and the general rules on State responsibility. He shows that the ICRC’s approach is grounded in, yet expands in important respects, the general international law rules that place obligations on States in relation to the wrongful conduct of others.
While ratification of the Geneva Conventions is a relatively recent phenomenon, warfare has always been subject to certain principles and customs. Two thirds of today’s armed conflicts are taking place in Muslim contexts, wherein some arms carriers cite Islamic law as a reference.
In this post – part of a joint blog symposium with Opinio Juris exploring the ICRC Commentary on the Third Geneva Convention (GCIII Commentary) – Ahmed Al-Dawoody, ICRC’s legal advisor on Islamic law, examines the religious texts for insight on the treatment of prisoners of war.
While ratification of the Geneva Conventions is a relatively recent phenomenon, warfare has always been subject to certain principles and customs. International humanitarian law has its roots in the rules of ancient civilizations and religions, and the teachings of Buddhism are highly relevant in this regard.
In this post – celebrating the launch of the new ICRC Religion and Humanitarian Principles website and part of a joint blog symposium with Opinio Juris exploring the ICRC Commentary on the Third Geneva Convention (GCIII Commentary) – three eminent Buddhist scholars examine religious texts for insight on the treatment of prisoners of war.
Misinformation is on the rise, and the humanitarian sector has not escaped the consequences. The misinformation environment not only sustains itself in a vicious cycle, but also increases data protection challenges and disrupts humanitarian protection and assistance work.
In this post, Rachel Xu from the Yale Jackson Institute for Global Affairs overviews some key characteristics of a fertile misinformation environment, the challenges these pose for data protection, and the implications of misinformation for humanitarian operations.
In generalizing groups as homogeneously ‘vulnerable’, we risk closing our eyes to existing spheres of power, diversity and capacity that exist among populations affected by armed conflict and other situations of violence. By going beyond broad monolithic categorizations and instead accounting for the specific needs, risks and capacities of affected people through an intersectional framework, we can tailor our humanitarian activities and include affected populations as active agents with dimensions beyond their vulnerability.
In this post, Ahmed Al-Dawoody, the legal adviser for Islamic law and jurisprudence at the ICRC, and Saman Rejali, Thematic Editor at the International Review of the Red Cross, explore intersectionality between gender and Islam, drawing on the works of prominent Islamic female scholars and leaders to profile how Muslim women affected by conflict go beyond the mould of ‘vulnerable women’ and exercise power and agency over their lives.
While a woman’s experience in a prisoners of war (POW) camp may not differ drastically from men in all cases, the Third Geneva Convention (GCIII) operates to ensure equal treatment in a number of ways where experiences do diverge.
In this post – part of the 16 days of activism against gender-based violence, as well as the ‘GCIII Commentary’ blog series marking the ICRC’s updated Commentary on the Third Geneva Convention – ICRC legal advisors Heleen Hiemstra and Vanessa Murphy outline GCIII’s relevance for captured women in 21st century international armed conflicts.
While disability inequalities have long been observed, the global COVID-19 crisis has deepened and exposed the problem of exclusion, which renders work on disability inclusion urgent and imperative. As such, the theme for this year’s International Day of Persons with Disabilities is “Building Back Better: toward a disability-inclusive, accessible and sustainable post COVID-19 World”.
In this post – marking the International Day and as part of the 16 days of activism against gender-based violence – ICRC’s Disability Inclusion Advisor NG’AA Michael Mwendwa examines how the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated cases of sexual violence among persons with disabilities and proposes possible solutions to these challenges for people living in armed conflict by introducing the ICRC’s Vision 2030 on Disability.
Three months into the pandemic, the ICRC’s Head of Addressing Sexual Violence published a call to humanitarian agencies to urgently address the risk of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) rising in the shadow of COVID-19. She called on ICRC and others to bolster efforts to ensure continued service delivery for survivors of sexual violence.
It is now clear that the COVID-19 pandemic has enabled two opposing trends: new sexual violence in places affected by conflict and violence, and fewer services available for victims and survivors. Marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and the start of the 16 days of activism against gender-based violence, ICRC’s Addressing Sexual Violence Advisor, May Maloney, outlines the challenges and how international humanitarian law (IHL) can help address them.
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare workers in conflict zones and peaceful countries alike have faced countless challenges, including shortages of protective equipment and insufficient protocol to treat the new virus. Some doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers and other healthcare professionals have experienced stigmatization within their own communities, triggered by an intense anguish and an often-disproportionate fear of infection. As a result, not only are those affected by COVID-19 blamed as ‘plague spreaders’, but the healthcare staff providing for them also face discrimination.
In this post, ICRC Health Care in Danger delegate Paola Forgione reflects on the role that society plays in either supporting or stigmatizing people affected by the virus and healthcare workers, based on her professional research as well as her own personal and recent experience as a COVID-19 patient.
As countries struggle to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, the world’s focus is on developing a vaccine. While the virus itself affects all countries and people without discrimination, containing the pandemic carries specific challenges in armed conflict situations.
Once a vaccine does become available, how can we ensure that everyone – including people living in war zones – have equal access to it? And what are the obligations towards the healthcare professionals and facilities involved in administering them? In this post, ICRC legal advisor Alexander Breitegger looks to international humanitarian law for guidance.
In an era in which a number of developed nations have been accused of ill-treating or unlawfully killing captured persons or persons under their control, the need for international bright lines has never been more important.
In this post – part of a joint blog symposium with Just Security and EJIL:Talk! exploring the new ICRC Commentary on the Third Geneva Convention (GCIII Commentary) – Royal New Zealand Air Force Wing Commander Tim Wood explains the importance of the GCIII Commentary based on his firsthand experience as a military lawyer and a peer reviewer.
The object and purpose of the Third Geneva Convention is to ensure that prisoners of war are humanely treated at all times, while allowing belligerents to intern captured enemy combatants to prevent them from returning to the battlefield. But what happens when, in a concrete situation, these two overarching considerations point in different directions?
In this post – part of a joint blog symposium with Just Security and EJIL:Talk! exploring the new ICRC Commentary on the Third Geneva Convention (GCIII Commentary) – ICRC legal advisor Kubo Mačák explores when, and on what legal grounds, a resource-strained Detaining Power might be required to release the prisoners of war in its power. He draws together the legal analysis provided in several articles of the GCIII Commentary and positions it against the backdrop of the applicable rules of international humanitarian law and general international law.
The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown countries into confusion, devastated economies and caused major disruption to almost every aspect of our lives. The world of diplomacy has not been spared the chaos. Politicians, ambassadors and officials have scrambled to adapt to changing circumstances and learn the tricks and techniques of virtual diplomacy. So how do you negotiate, persuade and influence in a virtual world? ICRC Diplomatic Advisers Nicholas Hawton and Shahrokh Shakerian look at the lessons learned so far and make recommendations for the future.
With an ever-increasing number of non-State armed groups and a growing tendency for non-international armed conflicts (NIAC) to be fought by coalitions, it is crucial that our interpretation of international humanitarian law (IHL) continues to reflect realities on the ground.
In this post, ICRC legal advisors Jelena Nikolic, Thomas de Saint Maurice, and Tristan Ferraro suggest that in situations where there is evidence that non-State armed groups (NSAGs) have objectively and effectively adopted a collective approach to fighting against a common enemy, the intensity criterion required by IHL for determining the existence of a NIAC should be assessed on the basis of the aggregation of the military actions carried out between all the NSAGs fighting together and their common enemy, rather than requiring that each bilateral relationship of violence meets the criterion on its own.
The international community agrees that international law applies in cyberspace. But how does it apply? Interpreting established concepts of international law such as sovereignty, countermeasures, combatancy or perfidy in the novel context of cyberspace can be particularly challenging.
In this post, the editors of the Cyber Law Toolkit, an interactive online resource on international law and cyber operations, introduce some of the pressing legal questions raised by the hostile uses of information and communications technologies. The 2020 annual update of the Toolkit – released this week – offers some solutions while highlighting the need for further research.
As the world grapples with new security challenges, it is pertinent now more than ever for global leaders to uphold the rules and principles of international humanitarian law in ensuring that weapons with catastrophic humanitarian consequences, such as nuclear weapons, are eliminated from the earth.
In this post, Fatima Alkali, an Associate Professor of international humanitarian law who currently works in Nile University in Abuja, Nigeria, argues that the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons presents an opportunity to achieve that goal and calls on all States to fulfill their commitment to nuclear disarmament by becoming parties to it.
Jess Markt, ICRC Disability Sport & Inclusion Advisor, is an internationally-acclaimed wheelchair basketball coach who has travelled across the world to help the ICRC train and establish new players and teams — including in India, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Palestine, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Syria, among others. The success of this inspiring work is testimony to the difference the opportunity to play sports can make in the lives of persons with disabilities and to the way society views them. In this blog, Markt underscores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the lives of persons with disabilities. He elucidates the setbacks its socio-economic consequences could have on their independence, employability, and inclusion — especially in countries that are already dealing with armed conflict and violence.
Efforts to protect students, teachers, and schools during times of armed conflict will get extra attention this week due to the inaugural UN International Day for the Protection of Education from Attack and a dedicated UN Security Council meeting on the topic.
Concrete action to protect education from attack is particularly urgent now as COVID-19 further endangers students’ schooling, argues Bede Sheppard, child rights deputy director at Human Rights Watch.
The Third Geneva Convention (GCIII) provides a framework of rules for the protection of prisoners of war, including that they are ‘entitled in all circumstances to respect for their persons and their honour’ (Article 14). The obligation to respect a prisoner of war’s honour – like the Geneva Conventions as a whole – draws upon the highest notions of humanity. It reminds us that even in the drudgery, the violence, and the darkness of war, there is something innate in every person that is worthy of respect and entitles them to protection.
Interpreting what ‘honour’ means, however, has its challenges. In this post, part of the ‘GCIII Commentary’ blog series marking the ICRC’s updated Commentary on the Third Geneva Convention, ICRC detention delegate Jemma Arman explores why honour and prisoner of war protection are so fundamentally intertwined, as well as some of the challenges of finding modern meaning for the term.
Today’s 71st anniversary of the 1949 Geneva Conventions is an opportunity to recall once more the vital role of international humanitarian law (IHL) in upholding human dignity in situations of armed conflict. While the Conventions, and IHL more generally, frame crucial limits on the suffering that may be inflicted in armed conflict, it is only through faithful dissemination, implementation and respect of IHL that better protection for victims of armed conflicts can be achieved.
In this blog post – a joint contribution by customary law experts and researchers from the ICRC and the British Red Cross – the authors reflect on the role of the Geneva Conventions and wider IHL in the regulation of contemporary armed conflicts, and on the contribution that one IHL tool in particular, the customary IHL database, which shares the August 12th birthday with the Conventions, aims to make.
The testimonies of the victims and survivors of nuclear weapons prompt us to imagine the unimaginable, think the unthinkable and give voice to the unspeakable suffering caused by atomic bombs.
Marking 75 years this week since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Magnus Løvold, Policy Adviser in the Arms Unit of the ICRC’s Legal Division, calls on us to honor and remember the testimonies of survivors exposing nuclear weapons for what they really are: Nothing more – and nothing less – than horrific and unjustifiable tools of war that must be prohibited and eliminated.
The Third Geneva Convention is the most comprehensive legal framework protecting prisoners of war. Adopted in 1949 against the backdrop of immense suffering during the Second World War, it was a remarkable multilateral achievement, with additional and stronger protections than had ever been agreed upon for prisoners of war. Today, it is universally ratified.
In this post, Cordula Droege, Chief Legal Officer of the ICRC, outlines ten of the most important protections that the Convention affords prisoners of war, and how they can be understood today in light of the recently updated Commentary.
In the wake of the murder of George Floyd in the United States, and the protests that have swept parts of the world since, we find ourselves face-to-face with a long overdue racial reckoning. We are now at the stage where institutions are transitioning from hearing out employees’ experiences to deciding what they will publicly commit to doing in order to combat discrimination and systemic inequities. But what does it mean to operate equitably and be anti-racist? And how do these terms apply to humanitarian action?
In this post, Saman Rejali, Thematic Editor at the International Review of the Red Cross and lead for the ICRC’s Gender, Diversity and Inclusion Committee[1], argues that by acknowledging the role neo-colonial legacies continue to play in the humanitarian sector, and interpreting the humanitarian principles to account for equitable treatment, over equal treatment, the humanitarian sector can tailor its operational and institutional systems to better serve people affected by armed conflict and other situations of violence.