Sophie Orr oversees International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) operations in North, Central and South America (the ICRC Americas Region), providing strategic steering for the organization's response and contributing to humanitarian diplomacy efforts at different levels. The delegations and missions in the region work on addressing a wide range of needs of people affected by present and past situations of conflict and armed violence. Prior to her appointment as Regional Director for the Americas, Ms Orr worked in many different and often complex environments, first as a foreign affairs producer and journalist with the UK's Channel 4 News. She has previously worked for the ICRC in several countries, mainly in protection and management positions, and later at headquarters, first as Strategic Adviser to the Director of Operations from 2012 to 2016 and then leading the ICRC's operational cooperation with National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and their International Federation.
Every so often, a book comes along that engages in a uniquely thoughtful and in-depth way on an issue of pivotal contemporary importance. Russell Buchan and Asaf Lubin’s recently published edited volume, The Rights to Privacy and Data Protection in Times of Armed Conflict, is one such book. The book, published in June 2022, aims to address the unique threats posed by contemporary armed conflict to the rights to privacy and data protection. The editors and the chapter authors they have convened address the many – and everchanging – technological advances in surveillance, data analytics, artificial intelligence and more, and how these advances fundamentally alter the landscape and nature of military operations in the modern world. Even more to the point, the book delves into the gaps in existing law and policy that, as they stand, In this new series called “Beyond the Literature”, the Editorial Team of the International Review of the Red Cross selects a recently published volume in the field of humanitarian law, policy and action and convenes a discussion on the book among experts, in an effort to foster constructive engagement on some of the most promising recent literature in the field.
In this iteration of the Review's “Beyond the Literature” series, we have invited Ezequiel Heffes to introduce his recent book Detention by Non-State Armed Groups under International Law, before then posing a series of questions to Tilman Rodenhäuser, René Provost, Mariana Chacón Lozano and Katharine Fortin, who have agreed to serve as discussants of the book. Tilman Rodenhäuser is a Legal Adviser at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), with particular expertise in non-State armed groups (NSAGs) and detention. René Provost is the James McGill Professor of Law at McGill University and has written extensively on public international law, including his recent monograph Rebel Courts: The Administration of Justice by Armed Insurgents.1 Mariana Chacón Lozano has served as the Operational Legal Coordinator for the ICRC in Colombia since October 2020 and has worked for the ICRC since 2011. Katharine Fortin is Associate Professor at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights within the Faculty of Law, Economics and Governance of Utrecht University. The Review team is grateful to all four discussants, and to Ezequiel, for taking part in this engaging conversation.
Dr Marja Lehto is Ambassador for International Legal Affairs at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, and Adjunct Professor of International Law at the University of Helsinki. She was a member of the United Nations (UN) International Law Commission (ILC) and served as the Special Rapporteur for the topic “Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflicts” from 2017 to 2022. Dr Lehto is also a member of the Council of the International Institute of Humanitarian Law since 2019. She has formerly served, inter alia, as Legal Adviser to the Finnish UN Mission in New York (1995–2000), as Head of the Unit for Public International Law (2000–09), and as Finland's Ambassador to Luxembourg (2009–14). For most of her career, she has worked on issues related to international peace and security, including international criminal justice and international humanitarian law (IHL), and she has published on a broad range of international legal questions related to the law of the sea, international environmental law (IEL), State succession, use of force, armed conflicts, terrorism and cyber security.
Mirjana Spoljaric Egger is President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), commencing in October 2022. Prior to taking up the presidency, from August 2018 Spoljaric served as the United Nations (UN) Assistant Secretary-General, Assistant Administrator of the UN Development Programme, and Director of the Regional Bureau for Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Spoljaric previously had many years of distinguished service with the Swiss Diplomatic Corps. More recently she served as Ambassador and Head of the United Nations and International Organizations Division of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA), where she was instrumental in shaping coherent Swiss policies and priorities in all main UN organs and conferences, represented Switzerland in multilateral processes, and had responsibility for International Geneva and Switzerland’s host country policy.
This article seeks to demonstrate the nexus between agent-related technology and the protection of the environment in armed conflicts, looking at how agent-based modelling and simulation (ABMS) can be used as a tool to protect the environment in armed conflicts. It further analyzes the precautionary principle and due regard, as relevant rules, and explains the legal benefits of deploying ABMS to protect and preserve the natural environment. The article argues that the deployment of ABMS helps States to better understand the environmental effects of conflicts, reassess their military activities and comply with the relevant applicable rules and norms.
AbstractBoth gender and the environment have traditionally been positioned at the periphery of international humanitarian law (IHL). In recent decades, there has been important progress in moving both concerns closer to its centre; to date, however, an understanding of the intersection of gender and the environment in the legal regulation of armed conflict remains largely underdeveloped. Nevertheless, as the present article documents, there are important similarities in strategies pursued to advance both gender and the environment from the periphery to the mainstream of IHL, namely: first, a focus on sources of IHL, in particular concretizing arguably limited specific treaty content with interpretive guidance and implementation frameworks; second, a conceptual critique of prevailing definitions of “harm” in IHL; and third, advancing, through close empirical documentation and household-level analysis of conflict's effects, understandings of harm that capture so-called “second-round” effects of conflict. Recognizing these important affinities between gender and environment work in IHL, this article draws on these insights to propose a typology of gendered environmental harm in conflict. The article concludes with proposals for enhancing the legal and operational capture under IHL of the gender–conflict–environment nexus.
Protected areas safeguard biodiversity of global ecological importance, even throughout armed conflicts. The International Law Commission's Principles on Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflicts propose that certain ecologically important areas could be designated as protected zones during armed conflicts. This article uses a geospatial analysis of armed conflicts and Key Biodiversity Areas and three case studies to inform recommendations on how the protection of ecologically important areas could be enhanced through visibility, local actors and international stakeholders as part of a broader interpretation of a protected zone.
This article outlines and evaluates the US perspective on how treaty and customary international law protect the natural environment during international armed conflict. It surveys the relevant treaties to which the United States is a party and examines US views on their pertinent provisions. It then assesses claims that the environmental obligations residing in the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva Conventions have attained customary status, outlines the United States' rejection of those claims, and evaluates the reasonableness thereof. Finally, it highlights ambiguities in certain US environmental positions, the resolution of which would bring much-needed clarity to the law.
AbstractFifty-two years ago, in 1971, President Nixon declared the “War on Drugs”, identifying drug abuse as a public enemy in the United States. Since then, US drug policy has been militarized and, more recently, privatized. Every year, the US government increasingly contracts private military and security companies to provide intelligence, logistical support and training to armed forces in drug-producing or drug-transit States. In Latin America, this militarization and privatization has increased the intensity of violence and has complexified domestic situations, to the extent that the existing international legal regimes now seem inappropriate to respond to the challenges posed by the War on Drugs. On the one hand, human rights law does not adequately address situations where the State faces organized crime groups that are able to control territory. On the other hand, international humanitarian law (IHL) was not created to address law enforcement situations, which the War on Drugs and the fight against organized crime ostensibly are.This article examines the situation in Latin America, looking at examples of different types of situations through the lens of intensity and organization of the group involved and, in some cases, the group's control over territory. It discusses the application of IHL and human rights law (focusing on the inter-American system of human rights) in these situations and their complementarity, and debates how these bodies of law are adapting or may need to be adapted.
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by the 2000 United Nations Convention on Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC) describes organized crime in generic terms as consisting of a structured group of three or more people involved in coordinated activities with the intention of seeking material benefits.1 On this score, organized crime certainly delivers the goods: all told, criminal actors generate at least $9 trillion in earnings every year, depending on who’s counting.2 Not surprisingly, organized crime is also detrimental to peace and security. In some cases, armed criminal groups fighting with State actors or with one another generate exceedingly high levels of violence and casualty rates far exceeding those occurring in some war zones. The human costs of violent criminality are catastrophic, including hundreds of thousands of lives lost and disappeared, tens of millions of ruined livelihoods, far-reaching restrictions on access to health and educational services and the corrosion of State and societal institutions. This issue of the Review features a carefully curated slate of articles examining the intersections between organized crime, armed conflict and other situations of violence. A particular focus of legal scholars is on the applicability of international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law to organized crime groups in settings that are categorized as non-international armed conflicts or that fall just below that threshold. Other social scientists and humanitarian practitioners, in turn, emphasize the insidious collusion between organized crime and other State and non-State actors, and the opportunities available to mitigate its effects on the delivery of protection and assistance. A vexing question for lawyers, humanitarians, police and military alike is whether and when organized criminals fall under the provisions of IHL. Resolving this query is especially pressing in settings already beset by armed conflict or other situations of violence. Several contributors to this issue believe that criminals may be automatically excluded from IHL, since only groups pursuing political motives can be party to a conflict and thus be subject to that body of law. Others take an opposing view, arguing that it is pointless to impute
AbstractAerial visuals play a central – and increasing – role in military operations, informing military decision-makers in real time. While adding relevant and time-sensitive information, these visuals construct an imperfect representation of people and spaces, placing additional burdens on decision-makers and creating a persuasive – yet misleading – virtual representation of the actual conditions on the ground. Based on interdisciplinary analysis of critical security studies, behavioural economics and international law literature, as well as rich data from US and Israeli military investigations into four military operations spanning from 2009 to 2021, this article identifies three types of challenges stemming from the mounting reliance on aerial visuals to inform military operations: technical challenges, relating to the technical capabilities and features of aerial vision technologies; cognitive challenges, relating to decision-making biases affecting human decision-makers; and human-technological challenges, relating to the human–machine interaction itself. The article suggests ways to mitigate these challenges, improve the application of the law of armed conflict, and protect people, animals and the environment during armed conflicts.
In 2020, the International Committee of the Red Cross's work on the protection of the natural environment under international humanitarian law (IHL) produced the Committee's Guidelines on the Protection of the Natural Environment in Armed Conflict (ICRC Guidelines), an update of their 1994 predecessor. The ICRC Guidelines consist of thirty-two rules and recommendations under IHL, each accompanied by a commentary explaining their legal basis and providing guidance for interpretation. This article presents an overview of the context surrounding the Guidelines, certain key legal content, and practical implications for the conduct of parties to armed conflict as they fight.
Given the increasing size and functions of United Nations (UN) peace operations (POs) and the fact that they often operate in contexts where natural resources are degraded, POs have repercussions on the environment. Yet, there is not much literature on their obligations regarding the protection of the environment in relation to armed conflicts. This article provides insights into the obligations of POs in relation to armed conflict. First, it highlights POs' customary international environmental law obligations. Second, it delves into their environmental obligations under the UN's internal rules and the host State's laws. Third, it explores obligations that arise from their mandates. In each of these sections, the article highlights the relevance and application of these obligations in armed conflicts. The last section examines the obligations of POs to protect the natural environment under international humanitarian law.
Since its launch in 2021, the Climate and Environment Charter for Humanitarian Organizations (the Charter) has been signed by hundreds of humanitarian actors across the world, including local and national organizations, United Nations agencies, National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and large international NGOs. The Charter's development grew out of a sector-wide recognition that humanitarians have a role to play in addressing the crises of climate change and environmental degradation, and that fulfilling this role would entail changing how they work. Two years into its existence, the Charter has helped build momentum towards this change and has provided a useful measurement tool for how much remains to be done.This paper traces the origins, inspiration and process of the Charter from the perspective of the present authors, who co-led the Charter's development. The article highlights some of the challenges that we faced and how these were addressed. In taking stock of progress towards the Charter's goals, the article flags areas where further effort is needed to adequately strengthen the humanitarian response to the climate and environmental crises.
Potential harm to human rights and the environment, including by corporate actors, is amplified in situations of conflict. This article focuses on applying the right to a healthy environment in relation to armed conflicts and corporate responsibility. In particular, it analyzes and compares due diligence requirements in the European Union Conflict Minerals Regulation and the International Law Commission's Draft Principles on Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflicts and examines how these align with the right to a healthy environment.
AbstractThe protection of the environment during warfare attracted significant attention in the 1990s, especially after the 1990–91 Gulf War. It became clear at that time that the few rules provided by international humanitarian law (IHL) aimed specifically at protecting the environment were insufficient. Various studies have since been undertaken with the aim of strengthening that protection from an IHL perspective. It is only recently that scholars and institutions like the International Law Commission have started to reflect on how to better protect the environment in armed conflict through the lens of another branch of international law, namely, international environmental law (IEL). Such an approach has involved examining the interplay between IHL and IEL, and scholars have subsequently proposed and then elaborated on frameworks in that respect. This paper intends to identify common trends of those frameworks and to critically appraise them, with the aim of providing a suitable approach to the interplay between IHL and IEL.
AbstractAround 50 million people across the world are affected by urban warfare. When conflict occurs in cities, the natural environment has historically been relegated to an afterthought, but both the immediate and long-term environmental consequences of urban warfare are serious. This article looks at actions that can be taken to protect the natural environment – and through this, the population – against the effects of urban warfare when fighting in urban areas. It is intended to be a part of the conversation about what parties to armed conflict can and should do to give effect to their legal obligations under international humanitarian law and international law more broadly, with a specific focus on the natural environment when fighting in urban areas.
Over the last decade, social and behaviour change strategies have increasingly been used to address human rights and child protection concerns, including harmful practices such as child marriage, female genital mutilation and violent discipline. Social and gender norms have also been recognized as key drivers of child recruitment. Nonetheless, the use of social and behaviour change strategies to prevent and respond to the recruitment and use of children in armed conflict has not yet been systematically explored or applied. Building on academic and practical sources, including findings from studies by the International Committee of the Red Cross and United Nations University, social and behavioural science theory, experiences from the Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism on grave violations against children, and academic literature, this article explores how social and behaviour change approaches can inform prevention of and response to the recruitment and use of children in armed conflict. The article concludes that social and behaviour change approaches can effectively inform prevention and reintegration efforts and can facilitate responses that bridge the humanitarian, development and peace nexus. Using social and behaviour change approaches can help to reveal why children are recruited from the perspective of key actors and entities across the socio-ecological framework in order to prevent the practice from becoming more accepted.
