Episodios

  • Verses of mercy: how Somali oral traditions can mitigate conflict and support IHL

    Verses of mercy: how Somali oral traditions can mitigate conflict and support IHL
    Jun 5 2025
    The universality of international humanitarian law (IHL) assumes that its principles transcend cultural, geographical, and political boundaries. However, this presumption is challenged by the complexities of how IHL is perceived and implemented across different sociocultural contexts. Bridging the gap between theoretical universalism and practical application requires strategies that are sensitive to local cultural and normative particularities. In this post, part of the Emerging Voices series, Ayan Abdirashid Ali explores how Somali literary traditions, particularly Sugaanta Soomaaliyeed, offer a unique and effective means of aligning IHL’s ethical framework with local cultural narratives, thereby enhancing its legitimacy and effectiveness. By weaving together legal and cultural perspectives, she highlights how such traditions can serve as powerful tools for fostering peace and reconciliation in conflict-prone regions.
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    13 m
  • Reaffirming IHL’s specific protection of hospitals

    Reaffirming IHL’s specific protection of hospitals
    May 27 2025
    In today’s armed conflicts, hospitals are increasingly being attacked or misused for military purposes, undermining one of international humanitarian law’s most fundamental protections. These strikes have devastating consequences for the people who rely on hospitals for life-saving care, from patients and medical staff to entire communities. When hospitals are damaged or forced to shut down, critical services like paediatric care or intensive care treatment vanish, often with fatal results. Despite clear legal safeguards granting protection to hospitals, cases indicate that hospitals are at times misused for military purposes and attacks regularly ensue. In many cases, core IHL principles are either deliberately ignored or applied in a permissive manner, threatening the very idea that hospitals must be specifically protected as neutral sanctuaries by all sides to a conflict. In this post, ICRC Legal Advisers Supriya Rao and Alex Breitegger explore how IHL’s specific protection of hospitals is both robust and comprehensive, grounded in a presumption of neutrality that can only be lost in narrowly defined cases. Even when misuse occurs, parties are required to issue a warning and give time for it to stop, striking as a last resort only if the hospital meets the definition of a military objective – and even then, the rules of proportionality and precautions apply to limit the harm. Upholding this framework is essential to ensuring that the wounded and sick can access care, and that humanitarian principles endure, even amid the horror of war.
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    19 m
  • Eighty years on: honouring memory, upholding humanity

    Eighty years on: honouring memory, upholding humanity
    May 23 2025
    This year marks eight decades since the Holocaust, a defining moment of human suffering and moral failure. The memory of six million murdered Jews, and millions of others persecuted and killed, remains a solemn imperative. It compels not only remembrance, but a reaffirmation of collective responsibility. The 1949 Geneva Conventions were born to serve as a legal and moral bulwark against such atrocities. Yet memory fades, and with it, vigilance. As civilians continue to suffer in today’s wars, the legacy of the Holocaust urges both commemoration and action: against dehumanization, against silence, and in defence of the rules meant to protect life and human dignity in conflict. This audio recording captures a discussion recently held at ICRC headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, as part of an institutional event to mark the 80th anniversary of the Holocaust – a moment of remembrance and reflection. Thirty years ago, the ICRC publicly acknowledged its failure during the Holocaust: silence in the face of mass extermination. While not an exhaustive account of the ICRC’s actions and inactions, the conversation confronts a number of difficult truths to inform present and future action. It is not intended to offer comfort, but clarity. By revisiting parts of this painful history, the ICRC reaffirms its commitment to transparency, accountability, honoring victims, and the enduring relevance of international humanitarian law.
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    53 m
  • The shifting battlefield: technology, tactics, and the risk of blurring lines in warfare

    The shifting battlefield: technology, tactics, and the risk of blurring lines in warfare
    May 22 2025
    The accelerating integration of emerging technologies into armed conflict is transforming not only the tools of war, but its tactics, geography, participants and impact. Technological developments – from commercial drones to artificial intelligence, electronic warfare to the military use of civilian infrastructure – risk undermining boundaries between military and civilian domains. These changes challenge long-held assumptions about the character and conduct of warfare, how wars are fought in practice, while raising legal and humanitarian concerns for the protection of civilians and the preservation of the principle of distinction. In this post, Ruben Stewart, ICRC Adviser on New Technologies of Warfare, explores the drivers and implications of this transformation. He focuses on how evolving technologies and trends are influencing the conduct of hostilities and impacting the protection of civilians. He underscores the urgent need to uphold legal norms amid these shifts, particularly the principle of distinction, ensuring that complexity does not become a pretext for non-compliance. At the heart of his analysis is a call to reckon with the profound humanitarian consequences these changes impose on those caught in conflict.
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    18 m
  • Complying with IHL in large-scale conflicts: detention operations in international armed conflicts

    Complying with IHL in large-scale conflicts: detention operations in international armed conflicts
    May 15 2025
    Large-scale detention operations in international armed conflicts (IACs) pose significant humanitarian, legal, and operational challenges. International humanitarian law (IHL) provides detailed rules governing the treatment and protection of persons deprived of liberty, whether they are prisoners of war, other persons interned for security reasons, or other protected persons. These obligations, enshrined primarily in the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions, require not only compliance once the armed conflict begins, but advance planning during peacetime. Without the appropriate institutions, infrastructures, and trained personnel in place beforehand, states risk falling short of their legal obligations when hostilities erupt, to the detriment of detainees’ rights and dignity. In this post, ICRC Legal Advisers Sylvain Vité and Isabelle Gallino explore what it takes to comply with IHL in large-scale detention operations during IACs, focusing on the preparatory measures that states must undertake long before the first capture. Building on the previous post in this series, they highlight the critical need to establish functioning legal and administrative mechanisms, ensure the availability of adequate facilities and resources, and embed IHL training across relevant personnel.
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    19 m
  • From “total war” to “total defence”: tracing the origins of civilian involvement in armed conflict

    From “total war” to “total defence”: tracing the origins of civilian involvement in armed conflict
    Apr 30 2025
    When states adapt “total defence” strategies that mobilize entire populations in preparation for armed conflict, the line between civilian and combatant can become dangerously blurred. This raises pressing legal, ethical, and humanitarian questions about the risks to civilians in warfare. In this post, Ruben Stewart, ICRC Adviser on Technology in Warfare, traces the roots of “total defence” to the Napoleonic Wars, when conscription, guerrilla resistance, economic blockades, and propaganda drew civilians into the machinery of war. Through this historical lens, he shows how involving civilians in defence efforts – then and now – can expose them to harm, complicate their legal protection, and increase the burden on states to safeguard those not taking direct part in hostilities.
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    18 m
  • The imperative to protect water and water systems during armed conflict

    The imperative to protect water and water systems during armed conflict
    Apr 24 2025
    Amid the complexities of contemporary armed conflicts, damage to water infrastructure and the use of water as a means or method of warfare have devastating consequences for both civilian populations and the environment. Despite existing legal protections, gaps in compliance and enforcement leave water systems vulnerable, exacerbating humanitarian crises and ecological harm. Addressing these challenges requires a renewed focus on legal frameworks, accountability, and practical measures to strengthen the protection of water in conflict settings. In this post, part of the Emerging Voices series, Tadesse Kebebew, Researcher and Project Manager at the Geneva Water Hub, examines the severe consequences of attacks on water systems and the weaponization of water in armed conflicts. He assesses the strengths and limitations of current international legal protections and offers concrete recommendations to enhance safeguards for freshwater resources, emphasizing the need for stronger compliance with international humanitarian law.
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    20 m
  • Addressing landmine pollution: how the 'polluter pays' principle can help

    Addressing landmine pollution: how the 'polluter pays' principle can help
    Apr 17 2025
    Landmines, a persistent threat in post-conflict zones, pose severe risks to both human lives and the environment. These explosive devices, often buried underground, remain dormant for years, contaminating soil and water and causing long-term ecological damage. While robust legal frameworks governing landmines exist under international humanitarian law (IHL), landmine instruments have only recently begun to incorporate more explicit environmental protections. In this post, and as part of the Emerging Voices series, Goran Sandić, Researcher at the University of Belgrade and Coordinator of the Belgrade International Law Circle, argues that the “polluter pays” principle – originally formulated in international environmental law – can serve as an interpretive lens to reinforce the responsibility of states and other actors for environmental harm arising from landmine use. By weaving this principle into existing processes, we can more effectively address the ongoing costs of landmine remediation and underscore the responsibility of parties that violate fundamental obligations under IHL. This approach aims to support environmental justice while enhancing the legal framework for armed conflicts, which could influence post-conflict recovery efforts and mine action globally.
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    20 m
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