In December 2014, President Obama said that the United States “combat mission in Afghanistan is ending, and the longest war in American history is coming to a responsible conclusion.” Yet over a year later hostilities continue. What are the stakes for humanitarian organizations in the ongoing application—or not—of international humanitarian law (IHL) in Afghanistan and in other contemporary armed conflicts? Does international law provide sufficient guidance for humanitarians and other battlefield actors to discern when today’s armed conflicts end? At this PHAP online IHL expert briefing, Naz Modirzadeh and Dustin Lewis, of the Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict (PILAC), will discuss initial PILAC research on the “end” of armed conflict under IHL. Among the issues they will explore are:
- What are the IHL criteria pertaining to the end of armed conflict?
- Who benefits, and who is disadvantaged, from a presumption of the continued application of IHL—both its more permissive and its more restrictive elements?
- What is at stake for humanitarian actors, for the parties to the conflict, and for affected civilian populations?
Read more at the Harvard PILAC website.
Discussion resources
- Marko Milanovic, “The end of application of international humanitarian law,” International Review of the Red Cross (2014), 96 (893), 163–188.
- Rosa Brooks, “There’s No Such Thing as Peacetime,” Foreign Policy Online, March 13, 2015.
- International Committee of the Red Cross, “Scope of the law in armed conflict: The challenge of determining the end of armed conflict [video],” February 19, 2015.
Event time
Tuesday, 23 February 2016
New York: 08:00 - 09:00
London: 13:00 - 14:00
Geneva: 14:00 - 15:00
Amman: 15:00 - 16:00
Nairobi: 16:00 - 17:00
Bangkok: 20:00 - 21:00
Manila: 21:00 - 22:00
To see when the live session will take place in your time zone, click here.
Target audience and event access
This event is open to the public but targeted to legal experts and senior humanitarian practitioners in the PHAP membership. In order to join the event, please register in advance at phap.org/OEV-23Feb2016/register.
Photo credit: Gonzalo Alonso, “150916-A-NJ230-447,” Flickr, License: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.