As an emerging and largely unfamiliar form of cultural heritage, digital cultural property remains something of an enigma. Under the law of armed conflict, States are bound to protect cultural property from harm, yet the rules applicable to traditional cultural property do not transfer neatly to digital works. It is unclear, for example, how the twin obligations to safeguard and respect cultural property, as outlined in the 1954 Hague Cultural Property Convention, should apply to digital creations – or even what digital material appropriately qualifies as cultural property. Can only new digital creations, otherwise known as “born-digital” material, be cultural property? What about high-quality copies of existing works, such as an extremely high-resolution image of the Mona Lisa? Does it matter whether a digital work has been reproduced in large quantities? Given the ubiquity of digital media and the growing popularity of digital art and other works, protecting digital cultural property in the event of armed conflict will require States to consider and resolve as-yet undecided questions concerning the nature of digital creations and the reasons why certain works should be preserved.

This paper explores how the general obligation of the Detaining Power to exercise the greatest leniency towards prisoners of war may be used in interpreting the provisions of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949 (GC III) related to the sanction regime to fulfil the obligation of humane treatment and to preserve the persons and honour of prisoners of war. The International Committee of the Red Cross updated Commentary on GC III is placed at the core of the arguments of this research.

Peter Maurer served as President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from 2012 to 2022. During his time as President, Maurer prioritized strengthening humanitarian diplomacy, engaging States and other actors for the respect of international humanitarian law, and improving the humanitarian response through innovation and new partnerships. Meanwhile, he oversaw an historic budget increase and organizational expansion. Prior to his role at the ICRC, Mr Maurer served as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in Switzerland and headed the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs. Earlier, Mr Maurer held various positions representing Switzerland at the United Nations (UN) in New York, including Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Switzerland to the UN, Chairman of the UN's Fifth Committee, and member of the UN Peacebuilding Commission. Mr Maurer had first joined the Swiss diplomatic service in 1987, through which he held various positions in Bern, Pretoria and New York. Maurer was born in Thun, Switzerland in 1956. He studied history and international law in Bern, where he also earned a doctorate.

Theodor Meron has been a Judge and, between March 2012 and January 2019, was the President of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (the Mechanism). He was also a Judge of the Appeals Chambers of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda from November 2011 until the closure of those tribunals. He served a total of four terms as President of the ICTY and three terms as President of the Mechanism. A leading scholar of international humanitarian law, human rights and international criminal law, Judge Meron is the author of thirteen books on international law and chivalry in Shakespeare and more than 100 articles, including some of the books and articles that helped build the legal foundations for the international criminal tribunals. His most recent book is Standing up for Justice (Oxford University Press, 2021).

He is a member of the Institute of International Law and of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the recipient of numerous awards, honours and medals, such as the Hudson Medal (American Society of International Law) and the Haskins Prize (American Council of Learned Societies). He is also an Officer of the French Legion of Honour, Grand Officer of the French National Order of Merit, Officer of the Order of Merit of Poland and Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (United Kingdom). A past honorary President of the American Society of International Law and past Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of International Law and Visiting Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, he is Charles L. Denison Professor of Law Emeritus at NYU Law School and, since 2014, a Visiting Professor of Law at Oxford University. He is a Visiting Fellow at Mansfield College, an Academic Associate of the Bonavero Human Rights Institute and an Honorary Fellow at Trinity College.

Data-driven artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are progressively transforming the humanitarian field, but these technologies bring about significant risks for the protection of vulnerable individuals and populations in situations of conflict and crisis. This article investigates the opportunities and risks of using AI in humanitarian action. It examines whether and under what circumstances AI can be safely deployed to support the work of humanitarian actors in the field. The article argues that AI has the potential to support humanitarian actors as they implement a paradigm shift from reactive to anticipatory approaches to humanitarian action. However, it recommends that the existing risks, including those relating to algorithmic bias and data privacy concerns, must be addressed as a priority if AI is to be put at the service of humanitarian action and not to be deployed at the expense of humanitarianism. In doing so, the article contributes to the current debates on whether it is possible to harness the potential of AI for responsible use in humanitarian action.

Emily Crawford is an Associate Professor at the University of Sydney Law School, where she teaches and researches in international law, international humanitarian law and international criminal law. She has published widely in the field of international humanitarian law, including three monographs (The Treatment of Combatants and Insurgents under the Law of Armed Conflict (Oxford University Press, 2010), Identifying the Enemy: Civilian Participation in Hostilities (Oxford University Press, 2015) and Non-Binding Norms in International Humanitarian Law (Oxford University Press, 2021)), and a textbook (International Humanitarian Law (with Alison Pert, 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press, 2020)). She is an associate of the Sydney Centre for International Law, and a co-editor of the Journal of International Humanitarian Studies.

This article examines the extent to which international law protects international organizations (IOs) from hacking operations committed by States. First, it analyzes whether hacking operations undertaken by member States and host States breach the privileges and immunities granted to IOs by their constitutive treaties, headquarters agreements, and conventions on privileges and immunities concerning the inviolability of their premises, property, assets, archives, documents and correspondence. The article also explores the question of whether hacking operations carried out by non-member States breach these provisions on the basis that they have passed into customary international law or because they attach to the international legal personality of IOs. Second, the article considers the question of whether hacking operations breach the principle of good faith. In this regard, it discusses the applicability of the principle of good faith to the relations between IOs, member States, host States and non-member States, and then considers how hacking operations impinge on a number of postulates emanating from good faith such as the pacta sunt servanda rule, the duty to respect the legal personality of IOs, the duties of loyalty, due regard and cooperation, and the duty not to abuse rights. Finally, the article examines the question of whether the principle of State sovereignty offers IOs indirect protection insofar as hacking can breach the sovereignty of the host State or the sovereignty of the State on whose cyber infrastructure the targeted data is resident.

Dr Eirini Giorgou is a Legal Adviser in the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Arms and Conduct of Hostilities Unit, where she works, among other issues, on explosive weapons in populated areas and on nuclear weapons. She has several years’ experience in multilateral disarmament and arms control diplomacy and negotiations outside the ICRC. She is a licensed lawyer and holds a PhD in international law from the University of Geneva.

Transitional justice systems generally aim to achieve two goals. One is to bring the perpetrators of past atrocities to justice to ensure that they do not go unpunished, which involves the State fulfilling its duty to investigate, prosecute and punish serious human rights violations and breaches of international humanitarian law (IHL). The other is to bring about reconciliation to heal a divided society and achieve peace and stability. This normally requires the adoption of measures of clemency, such as granting amnesty, so that those who took part in the country's violent past can return to civilian life. The use of IHL is relevant in attaining both these goals because its complex nature means that it provides the legal basis for their implementation. However, this very complexity can mean that there are contradictions or complementarities between its characteristics. This article looks at the case of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) in Colombia, showing how this transitional jurisdiction has used IHL as a legal basis both for investigating, prosecuting and punishing serious violations committed during the Colombian armed conflict and for granting amnesty to those who took part in the hostilities. These different uses by the JEP demonstrate that IHL is a flexible tool that can facilitate the process of delivering both justice and peace after a conflict has ended.

This essay explores how the drafters of international humanitarian law (IHL) incorporated the past into their work between 1860 and 2020, and how they approached time, memory and history as indicators for this view of the past. Its sources consist of the complete series of general conventional and customary IHL instruments as well as the leading commentaries on them. For the IHL view of time, the impact of legal principles on the perception of time is scrutinized. Balancing nonretroactivity against customary international law and the humanity principle broadens the temporal scope towards the past, while balancing legal forgetting against imprescriptibility and State succession broadens it towards the future. For the IHL view of memory, dead persons and cultural heritage are seen as crucial vectors. Attention to the fate of the dead has been a constant hallmark of IHL, while care for cultural heritage has an even longer pedigree. For the IHL view of history, the essay highlights that the International Committee of the Red Cross has consistently advocated State duties to the war dead and has organized an archival infrastructure to satisfy the need – later converted into a right – of families and society to search for the historical truth about them.

Furthermore, the responses of IHL drafters to five major historical challenges are examined. First, while in the realm of war crimes impunity prevailed for most of history, after World War II a system of war crimes trials was mounted, culminating in the International Criminal Court. Second, soul-searching about the atrocities of World War II, including the Holocaust, helped create Geneva Convention IV of 1949, which protects civilians in wartime. Third, the human rights idea was not fully embraced by IHL treaty drafters until 1968. Fourth, the IHL approach to civil wars was slow and incomplete, but its appearance in 1949 and coming of age in 1977 were breakthroughs nevertheless. Fifth, colonial conflicts were not recognized as international wars in 1949, when this could have had considerable impact, but only in 1977, when decolonization was largely over. In all cases, the responses to these historical challenges came after long delays. Clearly, the IHL view of the past has to be assessed on a transgenerational scale.

A recent report by the Australian Defence Force arrived at a conclusion that further investigation was not warranted of commanders regarding their responsibility for failing to investigate suspicious behaviour of subordinates in Afghanistan, who were accused of violations of international humanitarian law. This troubling conclusion calls for a better analysis and understanding of command responsibility in international law and gaps in the law of command responsibility. This article identifies the conflicting precedents and scholarship regarding the law of command responsibility, which create uncertainty, and proposes a clarification of that law, with a special focus on the “reason to know” standard that triggers responsibility for failing to prevent or punish war crimes. It refutes the popular claim that commanders must act wilfully, and it rejects the common dichotomy between a commander who orders or otherwise directly participates in the war crimes of subordinates and one who unwittingly fails to prevent or punish such crimes. Using the empirical psychological literature, the article further explains how commanders can insidiously signal toleration of war crimes without giving direct orders. Finally, the article argues that international law, by absolving commanders who fail to properly train their subordinates to respect the law of armed conflict, misses a rare opportunity to deter war crimes, and offers some suggestions to fill this gap in the law.

Over the last few decades, an extraordinary amount has changed in our understanding of the history of international humanitarian law (IHL). This article addresses the latest findings in this new historiography, placing contemporary IHL issues in a broader historical context and sharing the author's own experiences as a researcher exploring the discipline's practice from a historical perspective. Ultimately, he makes a passionate case for history – by showing why this discipline has a lot to offer for practitioners of international law.

As humanitarian organizations become more active in the digital domain and reliant upon new technologies, they evolve from simple bystanders to full-fledged stakeholders in cyberspace, able to build on the advantages of new technologies but also vulnerable to adverse cyber operations that can impact their capacity to protect and assist people affected by armed conflict or other situations of violence. The recent hack of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement's Restoring Family Links network tools, potentially exposing the personal data of half a million vulnerable individuals to unauthorized access by unknown hackers, is a stark reminder that this is not just a theoretical risk but a very real one.1

The 2020 cyber operation affecting SolarWinds, a major US information technology company, demonstrated the chaos that a hack can cause by targeting digital supply chain components. What does the hack mean for the humanitarian cyberspace, and what can we learn from it? In this article, Massimo Marelli, Head of the International Committee of the Red Cross's Data Protection Office, draws out some possible lessons and considers the way forward by drawing on the notion of “digital sovereignty”.

In an effort towards better explaining the authority of international humanitarian law (IHL) on the African continent, the Regional Delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Pretoria recently examined the relationship between African traditional customs and modern-day principles of IHL. Evidence of a clear correlation would illustrate a respect for the law of war on the African continent. The outcome of the research conducted by the ICRC was the creation of the “Tool on African Traditions and the Preservation of Humanity during War”, which illustrates eleven African traditions and the related principles of contemporary IHL. The Tool is a living project, which will continue to be updated, and which is presented in various formats that can be used for both pedagogical and operational outreach.

Animals are the unknown victims of armed conflict. They are regularly looted, slaughtered, bombed or starved on a massive scale during such hostilities. Their preservation should become a matter of great concern. However, international humanitarian law (IHL) largely ignores this issue. It only indirectly, and often ambiguously, provides animals with the minimum protection afforded to civilian objects, the environment, and specially protected objects such as medical equipment, objects indispensable for the survival of civilian population or cultural property. This regime neither captures the essence of animals as sentient beings experiencing pain, suffering and distress, nor takes into account their particular needs during wartime. To address these challenges, two strategies are possible: the first strategy would be to apply existing IHL more effectively to animals, if necessary by creative interpretation in line with the animals’ needs. This strategy comprises two options: animals could be included into the categories of combatant/prisoners of war or of civilians. Animals would thus benefit from many guarantees given to human beings in armed conflict. Alternatively, and perhaps more realistically, animals could be equated with “objects” under IHL, while the relevant rules would be reinterpreted to cater for the fact that animals are living beings, experiencing pain, suffering and distress. The second strategy, which could be envisaged as a long-term objective, would be to adopt a new international instrument specifically aimed at granting rights to animals, notably in relation to prohibiting the use of animals as weapons of war.

This article aims to determine what important new developments have emerged in reparation for victims of serious violations of international humanitarian law (IHL). Our hypothesis is that there have been significant new developments in this area of particular relevance to IHL and that reparation for victims of serious violations of IHL is increasingly being incorporated into this body of law as one of its key components. It is submitted that the following developments are evidence of this gradual transformation of IHL: (i) broad recognition of the right of victims of serious violations of IHL to reparation; (ii) extension of the scope of the obligation to provide reparation under IHL to include non-State armed groups and individuals as well as States; (iii) the existence of innovative domestic reparation mechanisms complemented or supervised by regional courts, as evidenced by experiences in Latin America; and (iv) the reparation system of the International Criminal Court as a global mechanism.

Little is known about how international humanitarian law has developed around the world, other than in Europe and the USA. However, it is a topic worth researching, as it may reveal new connections, causalities and the previously unknown origins of legal institutions. Mexico is a good example of how the rules of war developed differently in different countries, since – as early as 1871 – it incorporated the law of war in its domestic criminal law. This article will explore how the idea of criminalizing violations of the laws of war flourished in nineteenth-century Mexico. A combination of factors including foreign interventions, civil wars, the liberal convictions of the drafters of the Mexican Criminal Code and their will to achieve the rank of “civilized nations” led to the creation of the crime “violations of the duties of humanity”. This development was a milestone in the history of pursuing individual criminal responsibility for violations of the laws of war and, therefore, is a missing piece in its history.

In 1899, the delegates at the first Hague Peace Conference outlawed the use of expanding bullets in warfare. Also known as “dum-dum” bullets, their prohibition was largely the product of a media spectacle that evolved around their use in British colonial warfare, a spectacle that focused particularly on the ghastly nature of the wounds these bullets inflicted. This article revisits the “dum-dum” controversy of the 1890s as it played out in the Anglo-European public sphere. It argues, firstly, that there was nothing all that innovative about employing the principle of expansion in rifle ammunition. Secondly, it shows that controversies around bullets and their wounds had existed since the invention of industrially produced military rifles – and soft-lead ammunition – in the 1850s. In 1868, the St Petersburg Declaration outlawed the use of exploding projectiles for many of the same reasons for which expanding ammunition would also be banned in 1899. The article also shows that many of the ideas mobilized in the early 1890s to promote a new range of cordite-powered full-metal-jacket bullets because of the supposedly “clean” and “humanitarian” wounds that they inflicted offer an important context in which to read and explain the prohibition of “man-slaying” expanding ammunition. Above all, the article highlights how powerful racist thinking and imperial imperatives were to the framers of the laws of war at the turn of the twentieth century.

Nowadays, human rights law significantly impacts the regulation of armed conflict through two main processes: the “interpretation process”, whereby international humanitarian law is interpreted in light of human rights law's norms or concepts, and the “application process”, whereby human rights law applies in armed conflict alongside international humanitarian law. These processes raise complex problems with respect to the interplay between the two branches of international law. The aim of this paper is to propose an elaborated theoretical framework, based on legal theories of normative coherence, in order to address that interplay and to overcome the shortcomings of the formal mechanisms usually referred to in practice and legal scholarship. It is demonstrated that such a coherency-based approach recommends adapting the outcomes of the interpretation and application processes, either by modulating or displacing the inappropriate norm or regime, in light of substantial considerations.