Event

Just and Unjust Violence: Examining Grounds for Use of Force in relation to Non-International Armed Conflicts — A Talk by Anthony Dworkin

Date and Time

March 5th, 2018 from noon to 1:00 p.m. • Lunch will be provided

Location

Hauser Hall 101 (Borenstein Meeting Room), Harvard Law School

Background

Military campaigns against overseas armed groups have, in many respects, been the subject of enormous controversy since September 11, 2001, particularly over use of drone strikes and detention of alleged terrorists. The debate has focused largely on whether an armed conflict exists between the State and the group whose members it targets, how far that conflict extends geographically, and how long it continues temporally. There has been relatively less attention paid to the question of when a State’s use of force in non-international armed conflicts is justified and when it is not justified.

In this talk, Anthony Dworkin will present an alternative way of thinking about the legal and normative framework for military action against non-state groups — one based on the justification for use of force in non-international armed conflict rather than on the rules on the conduct of hostilities. The talk will look at the role of human rights law in determining the justification for use of force against non-state groups. It will explore what this means for the relationship between human rights and the laws of war, and look at the implications for when States may and may not lawfully kill or detain members of non-state armed groups.

Anthony Dworkin is a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, leading the organization’s work in the areas of human rights, democracy, and justice. He is also a visiting lecturer at the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po. He has published several papers for ECFR on European and United States counter-terrorist campaigns, most recently “Europe's New Counter-Terror Wars” (ECFR, 2016). His article titled “Individual, Not Collective: Justifying the Resort to Force against Members of Non-State Armed Groups” was published last year in International Law Studies.

Image credit: United Nations Photo, “Scene from MINUSMA Camp in Timbuktu,” Flickr, License: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.