“Forced to Flee” was a multidisciplinary two-day conference on internal displacement, migration and refugee crises, jointly organized by SOAS University of London, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the University of Exeter, the British Red Cross and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). It brought together some sixty researchers, independent and UK government policy-makers, and senior humanitarian practitioners.

In light of the growing complexity of humanitarian crises today and the continued need for effective cooperation among humanitarian actors, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) launched a consultative process in September 2016 to collect operational practices with regard to maintaining the civilian and humanitarian character of sites and settlements for internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees. Exchanges with field staff from both organizations targeted five ongoing operations – in the Central African Republic (CAR), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Iraq, Nigeria and South Sudan – and included a one-day workshop in Geneva on 20 April 2017 in which the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) also participated. A wider set of stakeholders was consulted as well, during a roundtable organized under the auspices of the Global Protection Cluster (GPC) on 21 April.

How Does Law Protect in War? Online is a platform adapted from the original reference Casebook published by the ICRC. It was originally intended to support teaching of international humanitarian law (IHL) in universities in an interactive way, based on contemporary practice. The section on “The Law” features a general outline presenting IHL in fourteen chapters. It contains comprehensive bibliographic resources and links each theme to a range of related case studies and documents. The section on “The Practice” comprises more than 300 case studies and documents regrouped by theme, region or type of document. They allow practice-oriented learning of IHL rules and interactive discussions through a series of questions. The “Pedagogical Resources” section provides useful advice on how to teach IHL, as well as twenty-nine model course outlines and other useful resources. The “A to Z” section presents 422 notions linked to IHL, their legal sources, the case studies where they are addressed, and bibliographic resources for delving further into those notions. A search engine allows users to find rapidly the relevant pedagogical material they need on the platform.