International Humanitarian Law Archives

Interview
Symposium
International Law and the Political

Global Histories of International Law’s Practice in Wartime

04.06.2024

Boyd van Dijk Hendrik Simon

While we talked about the making of the 1949 Geneva Conventions in Part I of our interview with Boyd van Dijk, the second part is about more global histories of...

Interview
Symposium
International Law and the Political

Ordering the Power to Protect and Destroy Civilian Lives

03.06.2024

Boyd van Dijk Hendrik Simon

The four 1949 Geneva Conventions – the most important rules ever formulated for regulating warfare – were shaped by liberal humanitarianism and the idea of progress through international law. In...

Article

Settler Violence Through the Lens of State Responsibility

24.04.2024

Moritz Rhades

Since 7 October 2023, public attention partially shifted away from the situation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. However, UNRWA has released alarming numbers: 444 civilians have been killed...

Article

Is the Harmonisation of IHL and IHRL Eroding?

18.03.2024

Tabriz Musayev

Editor's note: a two-part rebuttal to this piece by Mischa Gureghian Hall has been published on Völkerrechtsblog (see Part I and Part II). On 19 December 2023, the European...

Bofaxe
Symposium
Women in International Law Vol. 3

A Much-Needed Queer Look at International Humanitarian Law

04.03.2024

Hannah Nieratzky

People with diverse sexual orientations and gender identities (SOGI) are particularly vulnerable in times of conflict. However, due to the gender binary it is based on, international humanitarian law (IHL)...

Symposium
Interview
International Law and the Political

Fetishizing the State: Gentili and the Myth of the Modern Laws of War

21.11.2023

Claire Vergerio Hendrik Simon

According to international humanitarian law, the answer to the question of who is considered a legitimate actor of force is primarily the following: sovereign states. This state-centred answer is often...

Bofaxe

Trojan Horses with Emergency Lights

16.05.2023

Lisa M. Cohen

Medical impartiality, the principle that during armed conflicts or civil unrest, no one should interfere with the access to or delivery of medical services, is of utmost importance for effective...

Bofaxe

Prisoner of War Videos on Facebook

14.04.2023

Pierre Thielbörger Jan-Phillip Graf

When violent clashes between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces reignited the international armed conflict (IAC) in Nagorno-Karabakh last year, social media was flooded with videos allegedly portraying the mistreatment of prisoners...

Article

Does International Law Close Open Borders for Humanitarian Aid?

28.02.2023

Ansgar Münichsdorfer

The humanitarian catastrophe in north-west Syria, caused by the protracted war and exacerbated by the recent earthquakes, is once again drawing international attention to Turkish-Syrian border crossings. The dichotomy between...

Article

Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by Peacekeepers in the Central African Republic

06.09.2022

Sophie Timmermans

On the difficult path from conflict to peace, peacekeepers can unfortunately become perpetrators of violence against the populations they seek to secure. Peacekeeping has been accused of occasionally creating a...

Bofaxe

Imploding Protection Through Exploding Norms?

12.08.2022

Will Wright

On August 4th 2022, Amnesty International published a report criticising the tactics of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) for endangering civilians by launching attacks and placing military targets in populated...

Bofaxe

No Purchase, No Requisition, No Seizure

27.07.2022

Tillmann Lindner

Grain plays a crucial role in the war in Ukraine. Not only is Russia blocking Ukrainian grain exports and thereby causing a risk of a world-wide food crisis. In addition,...

Bofaxe

(Don’t) Call ‘Em Mercenaries

20.07.2022

Lorenz Rubner Lisa M. Cohen

Much like the invasion of Iraq did two decades ago, the attack on Ukraine has yanked legal terminology and arguments from international law to the public forum, prompting legal academics...

Article

Not Making the Cut

08.04.2021

Mariam Bezhanishvili

On 21 January 2021, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (the Court or ECtHR) adopted its judgement on the inter-state case Georgia v Russia (II). The judgement concerns...