• Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict (map)
  • 1557 Massachusetts Avenue
  • Cambridge, MA, 02138
  • United States

Co-convenors

The Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict (HLS PILAC), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Regional Delegation for the United States and Canada, and the Lieber Institute for Law & Warfare of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point

Dates

March 23–24, 2023

Summary

On March 23–24, HLS PILAC, the ICRC, and the Lieber Institute will convene a private workshop at Harvard Law School titled “Legal Roles and Responsibilities concerning Large-Scale Combat Operations.” The workshop will take place under the Chatham House Rule.

Background

Large-scale combat operations (LSCOs) involve widespread, devastating violence, usually on a vast scale, creating significant, competing demands on increasingly strained state resources. LSCOs impact significantly on civilian populations, armed forces, humanitarian actors, and the environment. Modern LSCOs may take place across all operational domains, including space and cyber. These operations are also increasingly likely to be affected by the involvement of a broad range of actors. International law will apply to these complex operations, and, once the threshold of armed conflict is met — be it an international armed conflict or a non-international one — international humanitarian law/law of armed conflict (IHL/LOAC) will be applicable.

Preparing for the possibility of LSCOs raises complex questions of international law. This workshop will provide a forum in which to share views from military, humanitarian, diplomatic, and academic perspectives on select legal and policy issues concerning LSCOs. 

The two-fold question that frames the workshop is: which actors are responsible for upholding respect for international law, notably IHL/LOAC, in connection with LSCOs; and what are the legal permissions, prohibitions, and requirements that affect those actors? For each session, participants will explore a specific set of issues — ranging from the conduct of military lawyers, to provision of humanitarian services, to the end of an armed conflict — that raise challenging questions as to responsibilities. 

The workshop aims to help ascertain which categories of actors bear responsibility for securing compliance with international legal obligations and the linkages between those actors and other actors in the political, military, legal, humanitarian, and civilian spheres. Additionally, the workshop will examine the content and scope of key obligations and areas of interpretive concern. A premise underlying the workshop is that identifying and evaluating this cross-section of issues will help to generate a deeper understanding of what is required for states — and other actors — to establish and maintain a systematic approach to upholding respect for the law in relation to LSCOs.

Workshops

In previous years, HLS PILAC co-convened senior workshops — on detention at Guantánamo Bay, military activities in outer space, artificial intelligence in war, partnered warfare, and urban sieges — with the International Committee of the Red Cross Washington Delegation and military academies.