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.

This article addresses the situation of Mexican cartels in relation to the applicability of international humanitarian law (IHL). The analysis starts with a theoretical examination of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia criteria on intensity of violence and level of organization established for assessing the existence of an organized armed group in the context of a non-international armed conflict. The article further examines legal and non-legal literature with the purpose of providing elements to consider the rightness of applying IHL to criminal organizations, also considering similar scenarios in Latin America. The aim of this assessment is to provide additional elements for the consideration of whether IHL is suitable when addressing confrontations between certain criminal gangs and States. Additionally, the article assesses how the commercial purposes of these groups affect their organization and the nature of the violence in which they engage.

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.

Throughout history, armed conflicts have frequently seen serious harm committed against the natural environment. From the early 1960s to 1971, the United States used Agent Orange to defoliate large tracts of Vietnamese forests. In the 1990s, Saddam Hussein vengefully ordered the burning of Kuwaiti oil wells, resulting in massive pollution to the air, land and surrounding seas. More recently, ecocentric harm has been documented in the Colombian civil war, by the so-called Islamic State group, and in the Ukraine conflict, among others. Whilst international humanitarian law (IHL) contains several prohibitions against environmental harm, the most striking is Article 55(2) of Additional Protocol I, whereby “[a]ttacks against the natural environment by way of reprisals are prohibited”. Although this provision appears absolute and unconditional, critical questions persist regarding its status under customary international law and its applicability in non-international armed conflicts. Moreover, its criminalization has not been explored in the jurisprudence of international courts or in the relevant scholarly literature, despite the fact that penal sanctions against individuals are an important factor for enforcement of environmental protections.

To fill the lacuna, the following analysis examines the prohibition and criminalization of reprisals against the natural environment. It reviews conventional and customary international law to determine the current status of a putative criminal prohibition and its potential as lex ferenda. Importantly, it also assesses the relevance of reprisals against the natural environment for prosecutions under existing war crimes, such as attacks on civilian objects and destruction of enemy property. It generates novel insights for the application of international law to ecocentric harm, including that (1) reprisals against the natural environment are not criminal per se, but (2) conceptualizing the environment as a civilian object opens up clear paths for prosecuting attacks, including reprisals, against it; (3) the inherently intentional nature of reprisals has far-reaching implications for their prosecution; (4) reprisals can significantly impact the pivotal test of military necessity which arises in criminal prohibitions such as that found in Article 8(2)(b)(iv) of the Rome Statute; and (5) situations of reprisals could impact the application of the proposed definition of ecocide.

Traversing IHL and international criminal law (ICL), the article identifies ways in which these traditionally anthropocentric bodies of law can be reoriented to accommodate ecocentric values. This reconceptualization is significant, as the prospect of criminal sanctions is critical for deterring potential perpetrators and potentially adds a basis for reparations designed to remediate damage to the environment. The assessment redresses the fact that the natural environment has been seen as a peripheral matter under both IHL and ICL and has remained under-explored despite the ongoing destruction wrought on nature including during armed conflict. It seeks to elevate the environment to a core protected value under these legal regimes, as a reflection of our increasing awareness that the natural environment is critical for the well-being of current and future generations and our growing appreciation of the intrinsic importance of protecting nature.

The idea that Rio de Janeiro has been plunged into an actual “war” against organized crime is widely discussed and is supported by an ever-increasing number of people in Brazil. Not surprisingly, such discourse has led to less protection for the civilian population, particularly in the so-called favelas, while allowing security forces to carry out operations with even greater relative impunity. This article argues that although urban violence in Rio de Janeiro is indeed a serious problem, it does not reach the threshold required to be considered a non-international armed conflict.

Fifty-two years ago, in 1971, President Nixon declared the “War on Drugs”, identifying drug abuse as a public enemy in the United States. Since then, US drug policy has been militarized and, more recently, privatized. Every year, the US government increasingly contracts private military and security companies to provide intelligence, logistical support and training to armed forces in drug-producing or drug-transit States. In Latin America, this militarization and privatization has increased the intensity of violence and has complexified domestic situations, to the extent that the existing international legal regimes now seem inappropriate to respond to the challenges posed by the War on Drugs. On the one hand, human rights law does not adequately address situations where the State faces organized crime groups that are able to control territory. On the other hand, international humanitarian law (IHL) was not created to address law enforcement situations, which the War on Drugs and the fight against organized crime ostensibly are.

This article examines the situation in Latin America, looking at examples of different types of situations through the lens of intensity and organization of the group involved and, in some cases, the group's control over territory. It discusses the application of IHL and human rights law (focusing on the inter-American system of human rights) in these situations and their complementarity, and debates how these bodies of law are adapting or may need to be adapted.

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.

The growth of access to the internet, wide availability of smart phones and increased public access to remote sensing data from hundreds of satellite systems have spurred a revolution in tracking the linkages between armed conflict and environmental damage. Over the last decade, a growing community of open-source investigative experts, environmentalists, academics and civil society groups have applied these methods to document war crimes, human rights violations and environmental degradation. These developments have created new opportunities for building accountability and transparency. The wealth of data on conflict-linked environmental damage has already been successfully leveraged to address acute and long-term environmental health risks and inform humanitarian response and post-conflict environmental assessments in Iraq, Syria and Ukraine. There are, however, larger questions on how to best make use of these data streams and information layers, and how to navigate the opportunities and limitations of these developments. This article will outline the new developments in this field and provide recommendations to ensure that data is used responsibly and effectively to strengthen accountability for environmental damages as a result of armed conflict.

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.

Violent conflicts involving non-State armed groups challenge conventional perceptions of war and armed conflict. Criminal enterprises (transnational organized criminal groups including gangs and cartels) are involved in violent competition for both profit and territorial control in many parts of the world. This paper examines the situation in Mexico and Brazil as case studies to assess the legal challenges to criminal armed violence when criminal groups battle among themselves and the State. The paper focuses on the operational challenges and considerations facing police, military, and security forces and justice institutions to illuminate the legal challenges.

The law of belligerent occupation permits the Occupying Power to administer and use the natural resources in the occupied territory under the rules of usufruct. This provision has no counterpart in the provisions of humanitarian law applicable to non-international armed conflicts, which may suggest that any exploitation of natural resources by non-State armed groups is illegal. The International Committee of the Red Cross's updated 2020 Guidelines on the Protection of the Environment in Armed Conflict did not touch on this issue, and nor did the International Law Commission in its 2022 Draft Principles on the Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflicts, where it applied the notion of sustainable use of natural resources instead of usufruct. The present paper aims to fill this gap. It first reviews the development of the concept of usufruct and then studies whether the current international law entitles non-State armed groups with de facto control over a territory to exploit natural resources. By delving into the proposals raised by some commentators to justify such exploitation for the purpose of administering the daily life of civilian populations, the paper advocates for a limited version of this formula as the appropriate lex ferenda. In the final section, the paper discusses how situations of disaster, as circumstances which may preclude the wrongfulness of the act, may justify the exploitation of natural resources by non-State armed groups in the current international legal order.

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.

Given the increasing size and functions of United Nations (UN) peace operations (POs) and the fact that they often operate in contexts where natural resources are degraded, POs have repercussions on the environment. Yet, there is not much literature on their obligations regarding the protection of the environment in relation to armed conflicts. This article provides insights into the obligations of POs in relation to armed conflict. First, it highlights POs’ customary international environmental law obligations. Second, it delves into their environmental obligations under the UN's internal rules and the host State's laws. Third, it explores obligations that arise from their mandates. In each of these sections, the article highlights the relevance and application of these obligations in armed conflicts. The last section examines the obligations of POs to protect the natural environment under international humanitarian law.

The protection of the environment during warfare attracted significant attention in the 1990s, especially after the 1990–91 Gulf War. It became clear at that time that the few rules provided by international humanitarian law (IHL) aimed specifically at protecting the environment were insufficient. Various studies have since been undertaken with the aim of strengthening that protection from an IHL perspective. It is only recently that scholars and institutions like the International Law Commission have started to reflect on how to better protect the environment in armed conflict through the lens of another branch of international law, namely, international environmental law (IEL). Such an approach has involved examining the interplay between IHL and IEL, and scholars have subsequently proposed and then elaborated on frameworks in that respect. This paper intends to identify common trends of those frameworks and to critically appraise them, with the aim of providing a suitable approach to the interplay between IHL and IEL.

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.

This article analyzes whether and to what extent energy resources fulfil the definition of military objective within the meaning of international humanitarian law (IHL) and customary IHL. In order to bring conceptual clarity to the duty to protect the natural environment in armed conflict, the article explores the legal limits to the destruction of energy resources (that are part of the natural environment) controlled by armed non-State actors during non-international armed conflicts (NIACs). It examines the practice of the United States, which characterizes the destruction of the natural environment during hostilities as being related to targets that contribute to the “war-sustaining capability” of enemies. Conceptual light is shed on the legality of attacks on oil refineries and installations during NIACs as a matter for IHL.

Both gender and the environment have traditionally been positioned at the periphery of international humanitarian law (IHL). In recent decades, there has been important progress in moving both concerns closer to its centre; to date, however, an understanding of the intersection of gender and the environment in the legal regulation of armed conflict remains largely underdeveloped. Nevertheless, as the present article documents, there are important similarities in strategies pursued to advance both gender and the environment from the periphery to the mainstream of IHL, namely: first, a focus on sources of IHL, in particular concretizing arguably limited specific treaty content with interpretive guidance and implementation frameworks; second, a conceptual critique of prevailing definitions of “harm” in IHL; and third, advancing, through close empirical documentation and household-level analysis of conflict's effects, understandings of harm that capture so-called “second-round” effects of conflict. Recognizing these important affinities between gender and environment work in IHL, this article draws on these insights to propose a typology of gendered environmental harm in conflict. The article concludes with proposals for enhancing the legal and operational capture under IHL of the gender–conflict–environment nexus.

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.

Approximately 100 years ago, a colonial conflict of great breadth began on the south side of the Mediterranean. Initially seen as an “indigenous” rebellion, the conflict evolved into an intense war, the final phase of which involved the intervention of two great colonial powers (France and Spain). Looking at the Rif War (1920–1926) in a region of what is now Morocco, then claimed by Spain, as an example, this article presents a critical analysis of a conflict rich in lessons for current humanitarian challenges and the sometimes-difficult relationship between humanitarian actors and the parties to a conflict. Assessed in the light of its human cost, which is largely forgotten today, the Rif War can feed debates through necessary historical reflection surrounding humanitarian action and the role of the International Committee of the Red Cross. It will also examine the complicated connections between historical truth, collective memory and the political difficulties inherent to reconciliation.