ICRC Humanitarian Law and Policy Blog

In today’s armed conflicts, cyber operations are increasingly used in support of and alongside kinetic operations. Several States have publicly acknowledged such use, and many more are developing military cyber capabilities. In parallel, cyber incidents – primarily outside armed conflicts – have resulted in damage and disruption to civilian services, including hospitals, water and electrical infra...

The International Law Commission’s long-running project to codify and progressively develop the legal framework protecting the environment in relation to armed conflicts is nearing completion. But the process is unlikely to conclude in a treaty. Because of this, States, with the support of civil society and other actors, will have a vital role to play in ensuring the framework is implemented, and...

Protecting the environment during armed conflict is garnering renewed attention in light of the ongoing climate and environment crisis. At its root, however, this is not a new phenomenon. It can be seen in the deliberations of Muslim jurists as far back as the 7th and 8th centuries. Some shared questions between modern day international humanitarian law (IHL) and these historical debates include t...

Every military operation conducted within a city is likely to affect the people living there, a reality reflected in the law of war rules that oblige the taking of precautionary measures to spare the civilian population, civilians, and civilian objects. Central to those rules is the concept of feasibility – the requirement that parties do everything that is practically possible to avoid, and in an...

A digital revolution through a myriad of earth observation data and open-source investigations is reshaping our understanding of the environmental causes and consequences of armed conflicts. From spatio-temporal analysis to near-real time monitoring of conflicts and resulting harm from scorched earth tactics, environmental data can quickly be incorporated in humanitarian action and reconstruction...

Environmental effects of armed conflicts do not only result from the conduct of hostilities but also from toxic or hazardous remnants of war, excessive exploitation of conflict resources, unsustainable survival strategies of affected populations, or institutional collapse. In addition to the recently released ICRC Guidelines, the International Law Commission’s (ILC) work on protection of the envir...

Armed conflicts from Kuwait to Vietnam continue to remind us that the environment can be deeply scarred by war, a reality that climate risks now magnify for many dependent communities. But while a certain amount of environmental damage may be considered inherent to war, the destruction must and does have limits. This post by ICRC legal advisers Vanessa Murphy and Helen Obregón, which launches a se...

Today’s climate and environmental crises threaten the very survival of humanity. The Climate and Environment Charter for Humanitarian Organizations, the result of a collective effort across a wide range of humanitarian organizations and climate and sustainability experts, sets out seven commitments aiming to galvanize and steer collective humanitarian action in response to these crises. In this po...

Implementing international humanitarian law’s (IHL) precautionary measures for both defending and attacking forces is a challenge in urban conflict. Urban battles pose heightened risk to civilians and critical infrastructure and much is needed to prepare forces to engage military objectives only and avoid incidental civilian harm. In this post, part of our special series on urban warfare, Sahr Muh...

Protecting family links and helping to prevent and, whenever possible, resolve cases of missing persons requires action during armed conflict and other situations of violence but also in peacetime and post-conflict. Families of missing persons bring special insight into the long-term impact of conflict and violence on individuals, on the fabric of society and on the relationship between citizens a...

Military legal advisers today play a key role during various military operations, including aerial targeting in urban areas, and State militaries will likely increasingly rely on them as warfare becomes more urbanized. By providing legal advice to commanders on a range of issues, military lawyers help to ‘operationalize’ international humanitarian law (IHL), transforming the rules of war into real...

As long as there have been cities, wars have been staged within them. While the term ‘urban warfare’ conjures more recent images of hollowed buildings and human suffering from Mosul and Mekelle, its history dates back several millennia. In this post, part of our blog series on urban warfare, ICRC’s historian Daniel Palmieri takes us through the archives of war and the city.

Urban warfare is not a new phenomenon; cities have featured as a stage for violence since humans began building them, and images in recent years – from Aleppo, Mosul, and Sana’a to Marawi, Mogadishu, Donetsk, and Mekelle – leave little room for doubt that towns and cities will remain primary battlegrounds for future armed conflicts. We can expect belligerents to continue using traditional methods...

Contemporary non-international armed conflicts are increasingly fought by a myriad of non-State actors, often engaging in hostilities against a common enemy and at times operating under the same coalition. These complex situations raise pivotal challenges for classification purposes, whereby applying traditional criteria might be unfeasible or lead to conclusions that do not reflect the reality on...

The digital transformation of humanitarian operations raises (at least) two existential issues: one, how do humanitarians preserve what is unique about their work amidst growing dependence on uncontrolled commercial partners; and two, how do humanitarians avoid being exploited for their qualified immunity? The answer is to make an implicit assumption in humanitarian law explicit: humanitarian orga...

Misinformation, disinformation and hate speech (MDH) has become a ubiquitous feature of the ‘information’ or ‘digital’ age. In conflict settings, so-called ‘fake news’ can lead to death, injury, imprisonment, discrimination or displacement. It can, directly or indirectly, fuel vicious cycles of violence and further entrench already protracted conflicts. Ahead of a discussion on ‘information disord...

Equitable access to safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines will be the defining global issue of 2021. Working to ensure that people in areas affected by armed conflict and violence are part of equitable access not only makes moral, epidemiological and economic sense; the unprecedented momentum surrounding COVID-19 also represents an opportunity to eliminate other preventable diseases and strengthen...

As humanitarian organizations become more active in and reliant upon new technologies and the digital domain, 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 violence or armed conflict. The 2020 c...

Cyber operations have become a reality of today’s armed conflicts, and their use is likely to continue to increase in the future. In response to this trend, the ICRC has long maintained that international humanitarian law (IHL) governs – and limits – any use of cyber operations during armed conflicts. But what is really at stake? In this post, ICRC legal advisers Tilman Rodenhäuser and Kubo Mačák...

In 2020, the ICRC counted 614 armed groups of concern to the organization’s humanitarian operations around the world. As part of its impartial humanitarian work, the ICRC had contact with roughly three quarters of these groups – irrespective of the countries in which they operate, their ideology, religion, motivation or any other characteristic. The ICRC recently published a position paper elabora...

Cash has been an exceptional vector of progress in humanitarian action, empowering people, protecting dignity, mitigating the negative secondary effects of in-kind assistance, improving accountability to affected populations, increasing participation in humanitarian and development responses, supporting local economies and, last but not least, boosting operational efficiency, which in turn saves s...

Even in the midst of a pandemic, during a seemingly endless cascade of events, climate change remains a defining issue. Its effects are even more severe for people affected by conflict and violence, who find themselves navigating the collision of war and environmental crises. How can the humanitarian community work with affected people to design policies and practices that have an impact? In this...

The destruction of cultural heritage in recent years has been the most significant since the Second World War, affecting movable and immovable property as well as intangible cultural heritage, archives, and documentary heritage. In many armed conflicts, the damage is no longer just collateral; cultural property is also deliberately targeted. Nearly two years on since the milestone International Co...

Protracted conflict and unprecedented levels of displacement have broken down the barriers between development and humanitarian work, prompting humanitarian organizations to engage more with social protection systems. While this presents another entry point to support affected populations in the medium- and long-term, it also stresses the importance of the principles of neutrality, impartiality, i...

As the world faces more frequent and intense crises—driven in part by climate change, political and social conflict, cyber attacks, and disease outbreak—humanitarians are working to protect vulnerable people beyond the initial shock of each new emergency. While coordinating efforts between humanitarian programmes and social protection systems may help support individual and community resilience, i...