Novyi Bug is a town with a population of more than 15,000 residents. It is situated in the Bashtan district of the Mykolaiv region, in Ukraine. The situation in Novyi Bug remains very unpredictable. At the end of May 2022 there were attacks on the town of Novyi Bug and the Mykolaiv region was hit by rockets and missiles. Many civilian infrastructures, including inclusive resource centers, houses and hospital premises were either destroyed or damaged.

Born in Amman on 11 June 1965, His Royal Highness Prince Mired Raad Zeid Al-Hussein earned his BA degree from Tufts University in 1987 and his MA degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1995, with a specialization in international relations/strategic studies. He continued his education at Cambridge University, England, where he received an MPhil in historical studies in 1998. In addition, Prince Mired attended the British Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in 1990 and served for several years in the Jordanian Armed Forces, reaching the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

Upon leaving the military, Prince Mired decided to continue serving his country by other means, dedicating his life to humanitarian and social causes. He has been the Chairman of the National Committee for Demining and Rehabilitation since 2004, and from November 2007 to November 2008 he was President of the Eighth Meeting of States Parties to the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention. He has also served as the Special Envoy of the Convention since 2009 and has had the honour and privilege of travelling the world advocating for further accession by countries that have not yet acceded to the Convention, as well as calling for the implementation of the Convention's articles by the States that have done so.

Prince Mired is also President of the Hashemite Commission for Disabled Soldiers, a position he has held since 2000. Over the course of the last two decades, the Commission has been able to provide a wide variety of different services, acting as a support network to all servicemen and servicewomen with disabilities in the Kingdom.

In addition, from 2008 through to 2013, Prince Mired served as Vice-President of the Higher Council for the Affairs of Persons with Disabilities, and in 2014 he was appointed by Royal Decree to serve as its President, succeeding his father, HRH Prince Raad Bin Zeid. In 2017, with the passing of groundbreaking new legislation calling for the rights of persons with disabilities, the Council was renamed as the Higher Council for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Prince Mired also served a short stint as President of the Jordanian Paralympic Committee from 2017 to 2018.

On 28 February 2021, in addition to all his aforementioned responsibilities, Prince Mired was appointed by Royal Decree as Chief Chamberlain to His Majesty King Abdullah II Ibn Al-Hussein of Jordan.

Prince Mired is married to HRH Princess Dina Mired. They have three children, Shirin, Rakan and Jafar.

HE Pekka Haavisto is the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Finland. He was a Member of Parliament in 1983–95 and was returned to Parliament in 2007. He served as Minister of Development and the Environment in 1995–99, and as Minister for International Development in 2013–14. In 1993–95 and 2018–19, he was Party Leader of the Greens in Finland. He has also served several years as a member of the Helsinki City Council. He stood as a candidate in the presidential election in Finland in 2012 and in 2018.

He has gained wide experience of various areas of foreign policy, for example while chairing the UN Environment Programme Task Forces on environmental impacts of war in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, Liberia, the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Sudan. He has also worked as the EU Special Representative for Sudan and Darfur, Special Adviser for the UN (ASG) in the Darfur peace process, and Special Representative to the Minister for Foreign Affairs in African crises. In addition, he has served in several positions of trust, including President of the Board of the European Institute of Peace in 2016–19, Chair of the Board of the Finnish Federation of Settlement Houses in 2014–19, and Chair of WWF Finland's Board of Trustees.

Mr Haavisto has worked as Editor-in-Chief of several publications, including Vihreä Lanka magazine. Additionally, he has authored many books, the most recent one, Eurooppa raiteilla (Europe on Rails), in 2018. He lives in a registered partnership, and his main interests are books, cycling, wooden boats and cultural backyards.

Gerard Quinn is the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he founded and directed the Centre for Disability Law & Policy at the National University of Ireland for many years. He sat as a member of the Council of Europe's treaty body on social rights and served as a civil servant in the European Commission, where he drafted European Union disability policies. He has conducted many large studies for the UN, including a 2002 Study that helped launch the drafting of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. He led the delegation of Rehabilitation International during the drafting of the treaty. He has received many lifetime awards for his work on international disability law from the US International Council on Disability, the European Association of Service Providers for Persons with Disabilities and Rehabilitation International. He was conferred with an honorary doctorate for his worldwide disability law work by Lund University in 2022. He has held honorary positions at the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR; Hyderabad, India), Wuhan University (China), Fudan University (Shanghai), University of New South Wales (Sydney), Deakin University (Melbourne), Harvard Law School and Haifa University (Israel). He served on the Council of State in Ireland where he advised the President on constitutional law matters. His hobbies include folk music and storytelling.

A window into the history of international humanitarian law scholarship, the ICRC Library's collections capture over 150 years of debates and developments related to the branch of international law that protects those who do not, or no longer, take part in hostilities. Yet, among the 41,000 references in the Library's collections, only a handful of recent publications focus on how this protection applies to persons with disabilities. In this article, two ICRC reference librarians take stock of this gap in their collections and consider its implications.

The adoption of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) represents an important and (potentially) progressive development in the protection framework under international humanitarian law (IHL). Article 11 of the CRPD specifically obliges States to protect persons with disabilities from harm in situations of risk, including armed conflict, consistent with IHL and human rights law. The CRPD framework signals the need to address the traditional framing of disability under IHL and to draw from human rights concepts in the CRPD in order to inform the protection accorded to persons with disabilities in armed conflict.

This article is divided into four main parts: the first three address three main lines of inquiry, while the fourth is forward-looking. The first part analyzes the framing and construction of disability in IHL and the implications of such framing for the protection of persons with disabilities. The second part analyzes fundamental IHL rules in an effort to demonstrate how the framing of disability and the protection framework of the CRPD can be used in the application of IHL. The third part identifies some specific problem areas ripe for further disability scoping and harmonization of the CRPD and IHL. Looking forward, the fourth part identifies entry points for focused action and research aimed at bringing about the kind of dynamic treaty practice envisioned by Article 11 of the CRPD.

While persons with disabilities are protected under existing international humanitarian law (IHL), the specific risks and barriers to which these persons are exposed during armed conflict must be better factored into the interpretation and implementation of these rules. The complementarity between IHL and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) may make an important contribution towards a more disability-inclusive implementation of IHL. This article focuses on two major areas addressed by IHL – namely, the conduct of hostilities and detention – against the backdrop of the concept of and agency associated with disability enshrined in the CRPD. This analysis is based on the lived experiences shared by persons with disabilities in consultations co-organized in 2022 by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Disability Forum, the European Disability Forum and the Diakonia IHL Centre.

Initial drafts of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) did not include any significant reference to the obligations of States to protect their citizens with disabilities during armed conflict or other emergency situations; international documents dealing with disability up until that point had not considered persons with disabilities as rights holders during armed conflict either. But early in the negotiations for the CRPD, disabled persons’ organizations made it clear that they wanted to see the protections of the Convention extend to times of risk, emergency and armed conflict.

This study focuses on Article 11 of the CRPD. The negotiating history of Article 11 demonstrates that although there were some disagreements over the scope of the article, support for a clear statement of States’ obligations during armed conflict and other emergencies was broad-based and came from all regions.

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has brought about a major shift in our understanding of and approach to disability, not least in terms of its implications for other frameworks of international law. Yet, considerations with regard to disability in the context of international humanitarian law (IHL) remain the exception, meaning that persons with disabilities in practice often do not benefit from the same degree of protection as others who find themselves in situations of armed conflict. These shortcomings can be further exacerbated by an interplay between impairment and other individual characteristics such as gender and age, resulting in at times exceptional disadvantages faced by women and girls with disabilities. The present article therefore aims to propose ways in which our modern-day understanding of disability may inform the interpretation and application of IHL, as well as to showcase how the interaction between disability and other characteristics such as gender and age will shape said interpretation and application.

In armed conflicts and crises, children with disabilities face serious threats to their lives and safety, including those related to their inability to flee attacks, risk of abandonment, lack of access to assistive devices, lack of access to basic services and denial of education as well as experiences of stigma, abuse, psychological harm and poverty. Children with disabilities experience multiple and intersecting forms of human rights violations based on their disability and age. Since 2015, Human Rights Watch has documented the impact of armed conflict on children with disabilities in Afghanistan, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Gaza Strip in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen. While international human rights specifically call for the protection of children with disabilities in situations of armed conflict, the United Nations, governments, parties to the conflict and humanitarian actors have long neglected their specific rights and needs. There is an urgent need for the United Nations and governments to increase efforts to protect children with disabilities as part of their international commitments to protect all children impacted by hostilities. Their attention and investment in those most at risk of violence during armed conflicts will in turn enhance protection measures for everyone.

Persons with disabilities are entitled to certain protections under international law, including in the context of armed conflict. These individuals are especially vulnerable in a crisis situation. Too often, when emergency humanitarian relief is provided, these protections are afforded inadequately or not at all, due to personal prejudice, lack of resources or training, or because there is no systemic requirement to do so. This paper uses a narrative-based approach to illustrate typical lived experiences of persons with disabilities both as workers in the area of humanitarian relief, and recipients thereof. It illustrates the challenges and inadequacies of a system that fails to recognize the rights that should be provided to those with physical and/or neurodevelopmental differences. It highlights the discrepancy between legal rights and actual provision of service and the different needs of those with disabilities in the circumstance of armed conflict. The article points to specific areas of failure, and the need for an inclusive approach in programming.

This study analyses the situation of persons with disabilities caught up in armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in particular in North Kivu Province. The study goes beyond the few statistics available – which show the vulnerability of persons with disabilities during humanitarian crises – to identify the obstacles to taking persons with disabilities into account in humanitarian action in North Kivu. As a result, the study provides practical recommendations to overcome these obstacles, fill in the gaps in humanitarian action and improve the situation of persons with disabilities by ensuring efficient and effective protection in times of armed conflict.

Despite progress in recent years, including UN Security Council Resolution 2475 of 2019, there remains a significant gap in our awareness of the disability dynamics of armed conflict and the barriers that persons with disabilities experience in accessing the protections of international humanitarian law (IHL). This brief article will consider the protective purpose of IHL and the diversity of civilian populations, and, focussing on the principle of proportionality as an example, demonstrate how IHL must be interpreted, implemented and monitored in a manner that is inclusive and reflects the reality that civilian populations are diverse.

The establishment of victim assistance as a core element of humanitarian disarmament emerged from three treaties: the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty (MBT), the 2006 Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM). The MBT introduced the concept of victim assistance, and the CPRD created a framework of human rights that influenced its evolution. Drawing on its predecessors, the CCM made victim assistance a robust and rights-based legal obligation. This article analyses the negotiating history and content of the treaties to show how victim assistance evolved, particularly in the areas of inclusion and human rights. It examines the treaties’ implementation, which reveals that while the CRPD set standards for victim assistance, the MBT and CCM's victim assistance programmes have benefitted persons with disabilities in practice. Finally, it offers lessons from the MBT, CRPD and CCM for implementation and interpretation of victim assistance obligations under the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The article concludes that the three treaties have collectively established assisting victims as a feature of disarmament law, helped persons with disabilities realize their rights, and laid the groundwork for adapting victim assistance to new challenges.

Autonomous weapons systems have been the subject of heated debate since 2010, when Philip Alston, then Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions, brought the issue to the international spotlight in his interim report to the United Nations (UN) General Assembly 65th Session. Alston affirmed that “automated technologies are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and artificial intelligence reasoning and decision-making abilities are actively being researched and receive significant funding. States’ militaries and defence industry developers are working to develop ‘fully autonomous capability’, such that technological advances in artificial intelligence will enable unmanned aerial vehicles to make and execute complex decisions, including the identification of human targets and the ability to kill them.”1 Later, in 2013, Christof Heyns, who was Special Rapporteur for Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions at the time, published a report that elaborated further on the issues raised by what he called “lethal autonomous robotics”.2 Following a recommendation by Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters at the UN General Assembly 68th Session, the Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects, as amended on 21 December 2021, started discussing autonomous weapons systems in 2014. Then, the Group of Governmental Experts on Emerging Technologies in the Area of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (GGE on LAWS)3 was created in 2016 to focus on this issue.4 While the group has kept meeting since then, no clear steps have been taken yet towards a normative framework on autonomous weapons as of September 2022.

In all these years, persons with disabilities – including conflict survivors – have not been included in discussions, nor has the disability perspective been reflected in international debate on autonomous weapons. Only recently has there been any effort to consider the rights of persons with disabilities when examining ethical questions related to artificial intelligence (AI). In this article, we will examine how and why autonomous weapons have a disproportionate impact on persons with disabilities, because of the discrimination that results from a combination of factors such as bias in AI, bias in the military and the police, barriers to justice and humanitarian assistance in situations of armed conflict, and the lack of consultation and participation of persons with disabilities and their representative organizations on issues related to autonomy in weapons systems.

This article studies the economic and social rights of people with disabilities in times of armed conflict. While hostilities prevent them from accessing the essential goods and services that they rely on to enjoy these rights, the topic has attracted little attention to date. Calling upon international human rights law, the article applies the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, with a view to complementing the provisions of international humanitarian law. It focuses on the requirements above the provision of medical care and examines the legal obligations attached to economic and social rights.

This contribution analyses Article 12 of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Africa (the Protocol). It examines the purpose, scope and contribution of this Article to the legal protection of persons with disabilities in armed conflict and its implementation. The analysis is divided into four parts. The first part will start by identifying and analysing the background to this provision, which provides specific protection to persons with disabilities in armed conflict. The second part will examine Article 12 in the light of other similar regional instruments and of the protection challenges that persons with disabilities face during conflict. This will highlight the specific nature of the Article's provisions, together with its shortcomings and its progressive aspects. Part three will look at the interaction between Article 12 and equivalent rules of international humanitarian law, and how Article 12 contributes to the development of legal protection for persons with disabilities in armed conflict. Finally, the fourth part will examine the challenges to the implementation of Article 12. It will also propose ways of overcoming those challenges and hence of enabling Article 12 to have its intended effect.

Article 11 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities requires that the rights and protections of the Convention not be derogated or suspended during “situations of risk, including situations of armed conflict”. Even so, persons with disabilities are still often the group most disproportionately impacted by armed conflict. This reality is not due to a failing of international humanitarian law to protect and consider persons with disabilities; rather, it is due to a failure to mainstream disability into the application of and approach to existing protection frameworks. Impactful mainstreaming of disability necessitates the inclusion of all relevant mutually reinforcing legal frameworks and traditions. By examining four main areas – military operations, evacuation, humanitarian assistance, and long-term assistance and services – this paper argues that the protection of persons with disabilities in armed conflict, and specifically within Muslim contexts, will be enhanced through the inclusion and consideration of Islamic law.