Time and date
November 8, 2021 from 12:30 PM to 1:30 PM ET
About the Event
At this talk, Dr. Rebecca Sutton will discuss her new book, The Humanitarian Civilian. In international humanitarian law (IHL), the principle of distinction delineates the difference between the civilian and the combatant, and it safeguards the former from being intentionally targeted in armed conflicts. The Humanitarian Civilian explores how the idea of distinction circulates within and beyond IHL. Taking a bottom-up approach, the multi-sited study follows the idea of distinction from South Sudan to civil-military training spaces to Geneva and the Hague. Directing attention to international humanitarian actors—such as those working for the International Committee of the Red Cross, NGOs, and UN humanitarian agencies—the book shows that these actors seize upon signifiers of ‘civilianness’ in everyday practice. To safeguard their civilian status and to deflect any qualities of ‘combatantness’ that might affix to them, humanitarian actors strive to distinguish themselves from other international actors in their midst. The latter include peacekeepers working for the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) and soldiers who deploy with NATO missions. Crucially, some of the distinctions enacted cut along civilian-civilian lines, suggesting that humanitarian actors are longing for something more than civilian status — the “civilian plus.”
Dr. Rebecca Sutton is a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow at the University of Edinburgh Law School, where she teaches conflict resolution subjects and researches the role of emotions in International Humanitarian Law. Her scholarship appears in leading journals such as Leiden Journal of International Law and African Affairs. Her first book, The Humanitarian Civilian, was published by Oxford University Press in 2021. Rebecca has previously been a Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict, a SSHRC Post-Doctoral Researcher at McGill University, a Kathleen Fitzpatrick Fellow at Melbourne Law School, and a Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation PhD Scholar. She holds a PhD in International Law from the London School of Economics, a JD from the University of Toronto and an MSc in Violence, Conflict and Development from SOAS, University of London. Rebecca is a licensed Barrister and Solicitor in Canada, having been called to the Ontario Bar in 2014. She spent a decade working for humanitarian and human rights organizations and she has worked or conducted research in Darfur, Sudan; South Sudan; Ghana; South Africa; Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh; Indonesia; India; Central African Republic.
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