Current and Upcoming Harvard Law School Courses with HLS PILAC Faculty

Prof. Gabriella Blum

Prof. Naz Modirzadeh

Engagement Activities

We collaborate with student researchers, scholars, and practitioners to engage with states, intergovernmental organizations, U.N.-system actors, and NGOs through an array of activities aimed at advancing knowledge of international law concerning peace and armed conflict.

Research Briefings at United Nations Missions

Through briefings provided by Professor Modirzadeh to legal advisors to Missions to the United Nations in New York, we lead a series of informal working lunches on themes and topics concerning international law, armed conflict, and protection of civilians based primarily on our ongoing research. The series began in 2016. As of 2022, we conduct the series in collaboration with the Missions of Belgium, Liechtenstein, Mexico, Norway, Sierra Leone, Switzerland, and Vanuatu.

Workshops

We regularly convene workshops to identify, explore, and understand contemporary challenges concerning armed conflict and international law. Beginning in 2016, for example, we have co-sponsored a series of workshops — on detention, outer space, artificial intelligence, partnered warfare, and urban sieges — with the International Committee of the Red Cross Regional Delegation for the United States and Canada and military academic institutions.

CASE-STUDy Simulation ExercisES

In collaboration with the HLS Case Studies Program, we develop real-world-based case studies. In each exercise, students act as senior-level decision-makers to resolve legal and policy dilemmas that arise in armed conflicts. Our two sets of simulation exercises concern protection of civilians in partnered warfare and humanitarian aid in Somalia.

LACMO Research Network

We are a founding member of the LACMO international research network. Initiated by the Amsterdam Center for International Law, the network is a consortium of research centers and research groups within universities and military staff colleges and academies in Europe, North America, Asia, and the Pacific, which are engaged in academic research in the areas of the law of armed conflict, military operational law, and military dimensions of cyber security and related disciplines.

WORKING GROUP

We host and convene the Counterterrorism and Humanitarian Engagement Project’s Senior Law and Policy Working Group, which comprises over 150 senior humanitarian, counterterrorism, and human rights practitioners, policy advisers, directors, and general counsel. Our researchers regularly provide the Working Group with information and knowledge resources on enduring and emerging issues concerning respect for humanitarian action in relation to counterterrorism contexts.

Activities write-up last updated: October 2023.

Videos

Briefing to the United Nations Security Council on Safeguarding Humanitarian Action • Prof. Naz Modirzadeh • April 1, 2019 • UNHQ, New York

Recent Events

Law and the Future of War, Episode 20: War Algorithms, University of Queensland’s School of Law (June 16, 2022), https://www.buzzsprout.com/1403818/10705281-war-algorithms-dustin-lewis (with Dustin Lewis).

Humanity in War, Episode 1: Humanitarian Values in a Counterterrorism Era, International Review of the Red Cross (May 18, 2022), https://soundcloud.com/user-134233261/humanitarian-values-in-a-counterterrorism-era (with Naz Modirzadeh and Dustin Lewis).

Partnering for Comprehensive Protection: National Implementation of Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflicts, Center for Civilians in Conflict (Jan. 26, 2022), https://civiliansinconflict.org/partnering-for-comprehensive-protection/ (with Naz Modirzadeh).

2021 Stockholm Security Conference “Battlefields of the Future,” The AI Conundrum: Algorithms and Human Responsibility in Armed Conflicts, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Dec. 15, 2021), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LusTdJ6blWA (with Dustin Lewis).

Jus Cogens: The International Law Podcast, Implications of State Silence concerning the Right to Self-Defense, Jus Cogens (Nov. 23, 2021), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBYvlqnjz28&ab_channel=JusCogens (with Naz Modirzadeh).

Lethal Autonomous Weapons, Episode 6: Who Is Responsible for Lethal Autonomous Weapons?, Lethal Autonomous Weapons: 10 Things We Want to Know (Oct. 13, 2021), https://laws10.simplecast.com/episodes/episode-6-who-is-responsible-for-lethal-autonomous-weapons-b96wrAPW (with Dustin Lewis).

Implications of the Diversity of the Rules on the Use of Force for Change in Law, American Society of International Law (Sept. 27, 2021), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhKJZpEM73s&ab_channel=asil1906 (with Naz Modirzadeh).

Annual Cyber Conference: Trends and Challenges in Regulation of Quasi-Sovereign Powers in the Face of New Technological and Cyber Developments, Panel on Challenges in the Regulation of Artificial Intelligence and Cyber Capabilities in the Battlefield, The Federmann Cyber Security Center Law Program (May 13, 2021), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1Kl2tVdbmE (with Dustin Lewis)

Richard Atwood and Naz Modirzadeh, Hold Your Fire!, International Crisis Group (Sept. 3, 2020), https://www.crisisgroup.org/hold-your-fire-podcast (with Naz Modirzadeh).

Episodes with Naz Modirzadeh:

Season 1

• Episode 1: Israel, the UAE, and Normalisation

• Episode 2: Afghan Peace Talks: Dealing with the Taliban

• Episode 3: Ethiopia's Political Crisis

• Episode 4: Libya's Proxy War

• Episode 5: President Trump’s Off-the-Rails Foreign Policy

• Episode 6: What’s Behind the Fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh

• Episode 7: Turkey Flexes Its Foreign Policy Muscles

• Episode 8: What Makes Peace? Colombia’s Ex-President Santos Says It’s Harder than War

• Episode 17: 10 Conflicts to Watch in 2021

• Episode 18: Social Media and the U.S. Capitol Events

• Episode 19: U.S. Sanctions: An Overused Foreign Policy Tool?

• Episode 20: Syria’s Frozen Conflict  

• Episode 21: Africa in 2021

• Episode 22: Latin America’s Tough Year Ahead

• Episode 24: The War in the Sahel

• Episode 25: A Dangerous New Turn in Yemen’s War

• Special Episode: Gender and Conflict

• Episode 26: The War on Drugs in Colombia’s Countryside

• Episode 27: Good News in Libya?

• Episode 29: Tshisekedi Consolidates Power in DR Congo

• Episode 30: How Afghanistan Views the U.S. Troop Drawdown 

• Episode 31: Is the Gulf Dispute Actually Over?

• Episode 32: Rising Russia-Ukraine Tensions and the West 

• Episode 33: What Déby’s Death Means for Chad and the Region

• Episode 34: Delayed Palestinian Polls, Israeli Politics and U.S. Middle East Policy

• Episode 35: UN Security Council Crankiness and Antonio Guterres' Re-election

• Episode 39: COVID-19, Inequality and Protests in Colombia 

• Episode 40: Iran: the Vote and the Bomb

• Episode 41: Biden in Europe

• Episode 42: A Dramatic Turn in Ethiopia’s Tigray War

• Episode 43: Ten Years of South Sudanese Statehood

• Episode 46: Iraq: Protests, Iran’s Role and an End to U.S. Combat Operations

Season 2

• Episode 1: Afghanistan: the Islamic State, Still No Taliban Government and a Looming Humanitarian Catastrophe

• Episode 2: Al-Qaeda and ISIS Twenty Years after 9/11

• Episode 3: License to Kill: Lawyering in the War on Terror

• Episode 4: Avoiding Another Afghanistan: Could Al-Shabaab Seize Power in Somalia? 

• Episode 5: Could Talking to Mali's Jihadists Bring Peace?

• Episode 6: Lebanon is Falling Apart 

• Episode 7: Cameroon's Forgotten Anglophone Conflict 

• Episode 9: The Military’s Dangerous Power Grab in Sudan 

• Episode 11: Bosnia Unravelling? 

• Episode 12: Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte: Populist or Peacemaker?

• Episode 13: Western Policy and Afghanistan’s Humanitarian Devastation. 

• Episode 16: Can the U.S. Address Migration’s “Root Causes” in Central America?

• Episode 17: Will the Iran Nuclear Deal Survive and What Happens if Not?

• International Women’s Day Special Episode: Can War Be Feminist?

• Episode 24: France’s Troop Withdrawal from Mali

• Episode 27: Can a “Humanitarian Truce” Help End Ethiopia’s Civil War?

• Episode 28: Can a Truce and New Government Help End Yemen’s War?

• Episode 32: Taliban Rule in Afghanistan

CyFy 2018, Algorithms, AI and Armed Conflict, Observer Research Foundation (Oct. 15, 2018), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8gLoIRvAfI (with Dustin Lewis).

Advanced Practitioner Series, Counterterrorism Laws and Their Impact on Humanitarian Action, Professionals in Humanitarian Assistance and Protection (May 12, 2017), https://phap.org/PHAP/Events/OEV2017/OEV170512.aspx?EventKey=OEV170512 (with Naz Modirzadeh).

Online Expert Briefing, War Algorithms and International Law: Accountability for Technical Autonomy in Armed Conflict, Professionals in Humanitarian Assistance and Protection (Nov. 1, 2016), https://phap.org/PHAP/Events/OEV2016/OEV161101.aspx?EventKey=OEV161101 (with Naz Modirzadeh and Dustin Lewis).

Up Close, Twisting the Law on the Way to the Battlefield: How the US Stretches International and Domestic Laws to Wage War on Non-State Islamist Forces, and How Those Forces Invoke Islamic Law to Justify Their Own Actions, Pursuit (Sept. 9, 2016), https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/podcasts/twisting-the-law-on-the-way-to-the-battlefield (with Naz Modirzadeh).

Online Expert Briefing, The Humanitarian Exemptions Debate, Professionals in Humanitarian Assistance and Protection (July 19, 2016), https://phap.org/PHAP/Events/OEV2016/OEV160719.aspx?EventKey=OEV160719 (with Naz Modirzadeh and Dustin Lewis).

PHAP Expert IHL Briefing, International Law at the Vanishing Point of War, Professionals in Humanitarian Assistance and Protection (Feb. 23, 2016), https://phap.org/PHAP/Events/OEV2016/OEV160223.aspx?EventKey=OEV160223 (with Naz Modirzadeh and Dustin Lewis).

PHAP Expert IHL Briefing, Suppressing Foreign Terrorist Fighters and Supporting Principled Humanitarian Action, Professionals in Humanitarian Assistance and Protection (Dec. 17, 2015), https://phap.org/PHAP/Events/OEV2015/OEV151217.aspx?WebsiteKey=8052120b-9239-4731-a3ab-1336a529e920 (with Naz Modirzadeh and Dustin Lewis).

Online Expert Briefing, Medical Care in Armed Conflict: IHL and State Responses to Terrorism, Professionals in Humanitarian Assistance and Protection (Nov. 3, 2015), https://phap.org/PHAP/Events/OEV2015/OEV151103.aspx?WebsiteKey=8052120b-9239-4731-a3ab-1336a529e920 (with Naz Modirzadeh and Dustin Lewis).

The Lawfare Podcast, A Band-Aid for a Bomber: Is Medical Assistance to Terrorists Protected Under IHL?, Lawfare (Sept. 12, 2015), https://www.lawfareblog.com/lawfare-podcast-band-aid-bomber-medical-assistance-terrorists-protected-under-ihl (with Gabriella Blum and Dustin Lewis).

PHAP Online Briefing, Islamic Law, Terrorism, and Counterterrorism, Professionals in Humanitarian Assistance and Protection (Dec. 16, 2014), https://phap.org/PHAP/Events/OEV2014/OEV141216.aspx?WebsiteKey=8052120b-9239-4731-a3ab-1336a529e920 (with Naz Modirzadeh) (recording available to members only).

GISF Webinar: The Impact of Counter-terrorism Legislation on Humanitarian Operations and Security Risk Management, Global Interagency Security Forum (Nov. 20, 2014), https://gisf.ngo/eisf-webcast-the-impact-of-counter-terrorism-legislation-on-humanitarian-operations-and-security-risk-management/ (with Naz Modirzadeh).