Drawing together key documents, case law, reports and other essential materials, International Humanitarian Law offers students, lecturers and practitioners an accessible and critically informed account of the theory, law and practice of international humanitarian law. Providing comprehensive, thematic and targeted coverage of national and international cases and materials, this book successfully balances doctrine with practical application to help readers understand how the theories are applied in practice and navigate through jurisprudence with ease. Employing a critical and targeted commentary throughout, this book also helps readers to better understand the implications of the law and the challenges facing international humanitarian law today including: cyber war, detention, direct participation in hostilities, human rights in armed conflict and terrorism. Suitable for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students and practitioners, International Humanitarian Law offers a thematic and comprehensive treatment of the subject.

The HPCR Manual on International Law Applicable to Air and Missile Warfare provides an up-to-date restatement of existing international law applicable to the conduct of air and missile warfare. The HPCR Manual and its associated rule-by-rule Commentary are the results of a six-year endeavor led by the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research (HPCR) at Harvard University, during which it convened an international group of renowned legal experts and practitioners to reflect on the current legal framework regulating air and missile warfare from various sources of international law. Through the publication of the HPCR Manual and its associated Commentary, HPCR hopes that legal advisors and military officers will benefit from an in-depth presentation - and interpretation - of international law applicable to military operations involving air and missile warfare. As a result, it is expected that a greater clarity of the law will enhance the protection of civilians in armed conflict.

Refugee camps are imbued in the public imagination with assumptions of anarchy, danger and refugee passivity. "Governing Refugees: Justice, Order and Legal Pluralism" marshals empirical data and ethnographic detail to challenge such assumptions, arguing that refugee camps should be recognised as spaces where social capital can not only survive, but thrive.

This book examines themes of community governance, order maintenance and legal pluralism in the context of refugee camps on the Thailand-Burma border. The nature of a refugee situation is such that multiple actors take a role in camp management, creating a complex governance environment which has a significant impact on the lives of refugees. This situation also speaks to deeply important questions of legal and political scholarship, including the production of order beyond the state, justice as a contested site, and the influence of transnational human rights discourses on local justice practice.

The book presents valuable new research into the subject of refugee camps as well as an original critical analysis. The interdisciplinary nature of McConnachie s assessment means "Governing Refugees "will appeal across the fields of law, anthropology and criminology, as well as to those whose work directly relates to Refugee Studies."

Is there still a right to seek asylum in a globalised world? Migration control has increasingly moved to the high seas or the territory of transit and origin countries, and is now commonly outsourced to private actors. Under threat of financial penalties airlines today reject any passenger not in possession of a valid visa, and private contractors are used to run detention centres and man border crossings. In this volume Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen examines the impact of these new practices for refugees' access to asylum. A systematic analysis is provided of the reach and limits of international refugee law when migration control is carried out extraterritorially or by non-state actors. State practice from around the globe and case law from all the major human rights institutions is discussed. The arguments are further linked to wider debates in human rights, general international law and political science.

Housing, land and property (HLP) rights, as rights, are widely recognized throughout international human rights and humanitarian law and provide a clear and consistent legal normative framework for developing better approaches to the HLP challenges faced by the UN and others seeking to build long-term peace. This book analyses the ubiquitous HLP challenges present in all conflict and post-conflict settings. It will bridge the worlds of the practitioner and the theorist by combining an overview of the international legal and policy frameworks on HLP rights with dozens of detailed case studies demonstrating country experiences from around the world. The book will be of particular interest to professors and students of international relations, law, human rights, and peace and conflict studies but will have a wider readership among practitioners working for international institutions such as the United Nations and the World Bank, non-governmental organizations, and national agencies in the developing world.

Through an analysis of UN operations including international territorial administration, refugee camps, peacekeeping, the implementation of sanctions and the provision of humanitarian aid, this book shows that the powers exercised by the UN carry a serious risk of human rights abuse. The International Law Commission has codified and developed the law of institutional responsibility, but, while indispensable, these principles and rules cannot on their own ensure compliance and accountability. The 'liberty deficit' of the UN and of other international organisations thus remains an urgent legal and political problem. Some solutions may be available; indeed, recent state and institutional practice offers interesting examples in this respect. But at a fundamental level we need to ask ourselves whether, judged on the basis of the principle of liberty, the power shift from states to international organisations is always beneficial.

The past two decades have witnessed the rapid proliferation of private military and security companies (PMSCs) in armed conflicts around the world, with PMSCs participating in, for example, offensive combat, prisoner interrogation and the provision of advice and training. The extensive outsourcing of military and security activities has challenged conventional conceptions of the state as the primary holder of coercive power and raised concerns about the reduction in state control over the use of violence. Hannah Tonkin critically analyses the international obligations on three key states - the hiring state, the home state and the host state of a PMSC - and identifies the circumstances in which PMSC misconduct may give rise to state responsibility. This analysis will facilitate the assessment of state responsibility in cases of PMSC misconduct and set standards to guide states in developing their domestic laws and policies on private security.

A growing number of states use private military and security companies (PMSCs) for a variety of tasks, which were traditionally fulfilled by soldiers. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the law that applies to PMSCs active in situations of armed conflict, focusing on international humanitarian law. It examines the limits in international law on how states may use private actors, taking the debate beyond the question of whether PMSCs are mercenaries. The authors delve into issues such as how PMSCs are bound by humanitarian law, whether their staff are civilians or combatants, and how the use of force in self-defence relates to direct participation in hostilities, a key issue for an industry that operates by exploiting the right to use force in self-defence. Throughout, the authors identify how existing legal obligations, including under state and individual criminal responsibility should play a role in the regulation of the industry.

The war of June 1967 between Israel and Arab states was widely perceived as being forced on Israel to prevent the annihilation of its people by Arab armies hovering on its borders. Documents now declassified by key governments question this view. The UK, USSR, France and the USA all knew that the Arab states were not in attack mode and tried to dissuade Israel from attacking. In later years, this war was held up as a precedent allowing an attack on a state that is expected to attack. It has even been used to justify a pre-emptive assault on a state expected to attack well in the future. Given the lack of evidence that it was waged by Israel in anticipation of an attack by Arab states, the 1967 war can no longer serve as such a precedent. This book seeks to provide a corrective on the June 1967 war.

Place is inextricably linked to history by way of culture, language, philosophy, faith and the development of worldviews. The richness and depth of experience of the Asia-Pacific region has been under-studied, over-simplified and under-appreciated. This book addresses that lacuna in the subject area of international humanitarian law. Drawing on authoritative perspectives and interviews with experts in and on this topic, including four of the region's most distinguished international judges, forty-one chapters thematically examine the development of international humanitarian law; practice and application of international humanitarian law; implementation and enforcement of international humanitarian law; and looking to the future and enhancing compliance with international humanitarian law. The expert contributors draw out unique features, providing fresh insights to scholarship. Contributions on and from the area also grapple with the regional commitments to humanitarianism generally, illuminating how and why international humanitarian law might be more readily accepted or ignored in armed conflicts in the region.

The Small Arms Survey 2012 seeks to increase our scrutiny of what is changing, and not changing, in relation to armed violence and small arms proliferation. Chapters on firearm homicide in Latin America and the Caribbean, drug violence in selected Latin American countries and non-lethal violence worldwide illustrate that security is a moving target; armed violence, both lethal and non-lethal, continues to undermine the security and wellbeing of people and societies around the world. The goal of curbing small arms proliferation, embodied in the UN Programme of Action, appears similarly elusive. Chapters on illicit small arms in war zones, trade transparency, Somali piracy and the 2011 UN Meeting of Governmental Experts highlight some of the successes, but also the continuing challenges, in this area. Country studies on Kazakhstan and Somaliland, along with the final instalment of the authorized transfers project, round out the 2012 edition.

Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility To Protect considers who should undertake humanitarian intervention in response to an ongoing or impending humanitarian crisis, such as found in Rwanda in early 1994, Kosovo in 1999, and Darfur more recently. The doctrine of the responsibility to protect asserts that when a state is failing to uphold its citizens' human rights, the international community has a responsibility to protect these citizens, including by undertaking humanitarian intervention. It is unclear, however, which particular agent should be tasked with this responsibility. Should we prefer intervention by the UN, NATO, a regional or subregional organization (such as the African Union), a state, a group of states, or someone else? This book answers this question by, first, determining which qualities of interveners are morally significant and, second, assessing the relative importance of these qualities. For instance, is it important that an intervener have a humanitarian motive? Should an intervener be welcomed by those it is trying to save? How important is it that an intervener will be effective and what does this mean in practice? The book then considers the more empirical question of whether (and to what extent) the current interveners actually possess these qualities, and therefore should intervene. For instance, how effective can we expect UN action to be in the future? Is NATO likely to use humanitarian means? Overall, it develops a particular normative conception of legitimacy for humanitarian intervention. It uses this conception of legitimacy to assess not only current interveners, but also the desirability of potential reforms to the mechanisms and agents of humanitarian intervention.

The law of occupation imposes two types of obligations on an army that seizes control of enemy land during armed conflict: obligations to respect and protect the inhabitants and their rights, and an obligation to respect the sovereign rights of the ousted government. In theory, the occupant is expected to establish an effective and impartial administration, to carefully balance its own interests against those of the inhabitants and their government, and to negotiate the occupation's early termination in a peace treaty. Although these expectations have been proven to be too high for most occupants, they nevertheless serve as yardsticks that measure the level of compliance of the occupants with international law.
This thoroughly revised edition of the 1993 book traces the evolution of the law of occupation from its inception during the 18th century until today. It offers an assessment of the law by focusing on state practice of the various occupants and reactions thereto, and on the governing legal texts and judicial decisions. The underlying thought that informs and structures the book suggests that this body of laws has been shaped by changing conceptions about war and sovereignty, by the growing attention to human rights and the right to self-determination, as well as by changes in the balance of power among states. Because the law of occupation indirectly protects the sovereign, occupation law can be seen as the mirror-image of the law on sovereignty. Shifting perceptions on sovereign authority are therefore bound to be reflected also in the law of occupation, and vice-versa.

This fully revised fourth edition of Constraints on the Waging of War considers the development of the principal rules of international humanitarian law from their origins to the present day. Of particular focus are the rules governing weapons and the legal instruments through which respect for the law can be enforced. Combining theory and actual practice, this book appeals to specialists as well as to students turning to the subject for the first time.

War demands that scholars and policy makers use victory in precise and coherent terms to communicate what the state seeks to achieve in war. The failure historically to define victory in consistent terms has contributed to confused debates when societies consider whether to wage war. This volume explores the development of a theoretical narrative or language of victory to help scholars and policy makers define carefully and precisely what they mean by victory in war in order to achieve a deeper understanding of victory as the foundation of strategy in the modern world.

The holy sites in Jerusalem exist as objects of international veneration and sites of nationalist contest. They stand at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, yet surprisingly, the many efforts to promote peace, mostly by those outside the Middle East, have ignored the problem. This 2006 book seeks to address this omission by focusing upon proposals of development of a legal regime to protect the holy sites separable from the final peace negotiations to not only protect the holy sites but promote peace by removing these particularly volatile icons from the field of conflict. Peace and the protection of the holy sites cannot occur without the consent and co-operation of those on the ground. This book supports local involvement by developing a comprehensive plan for how to negotiate: outlining the relevant history, highlighting issues of import, and identifying effective strategies for promoting negotiation.

The International Committee of the Red Cross's study of Customary International Humanitarian Law by Jean-Marie Henckaerts and Louise Doswald-Beck (Cambridge, 2005) contains a unique collection of evidence of the practice of States and non-State actors in the field of international humanitarian law, together with the authors' assessment of that practice and their compilation of rules of customary law based on that assessment. The study invites comment on its compilation of rules. Perspectives on the ICRC Study on Customary International Humanitarian Law results from a year-long examination of the study by a group of military lawyers, academics and practitioners, all with experience in international humanitarian law. The book discusses the study, its methodology and its rules and provides a critical analysis of them. It adds its own contribution to scholarship on the interpretation and application of international humanitarian law.

This book traces the evolution of crimes against humanity (CAH) and their application from the end of World War I to the present day, in terms of both historic legal analysis and subject-matter content. The first part of the book addresses general issues pertaining to the categorization of CAH in normative jurisprudential and doctrinal terms. This is followed by an analysis of the specific contents of CAH, describing its historic phases going through international criminal tribunals, mixed model tribunals, and the International Criminal Court. This includes both a normative and jurisprudential assessment as well as a review of doctrinal material commenting on all of the above. The book examines the general parts and defenses of the crime, along with the history and jurisprudence of both international and national prosecutions. For the first time, a list of all countries that have enacted national legislation specifically directed at CAH is collected, along with all of the national prosecutions that have occurred under national legislation up to 2010. The book constitutes a unique and comprehensive treatment of all legal and historical aspects pertaining to crimes against humanity in a single definitive volume.

Why do international criminal tribunals write histories of the origins and causes of armed conflicts? Richard Ashby Wilson conducted empirical research with judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and expert witnesses in three international criminal tribunals to understand how law and history are combined in the courtroom. Historical testimony is now an integral part of international trials, with prosecutors and defense teams using background testimony to pursue decidedly legal objectives. Both use historical narratives to frame the alleged crimes and to articulate their side's theory of the case. In the Slobodan Milo evi trial, the prosecution sought to demonstrate special intent to commit genocide by reference to a long-standing animus, nurtured within a nationalist mind-set. For their part, the defense calls historical witnesses to undermine charges of superior responsibility, and to mitigate the sentence by representing crimes as reprisals. Although legal ways of knowing are distinctive from those of history, the two are effectively combined in international trials in a way that challenges us to rethink the relationship between law and history.

Why do international criminal tribunals write histories of the origins and causes of armed conflicts? Richard Ashby Wilson conducted empirical research with judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and expert witnesses in three international criminal tribunals to understand how law and history are combined in the courtroom. Historical testimony is now an integral part of international trials, with prosecutors and defense teams using background testimony to pursue decidedly legal objectives. Both use historical narratives to frame the alleged crimes and to articulate their side's theory of the case. In the Slobodan Milo evi trial, the prosecution sought to demonstrate special intent to commit genocide by reference to a long-standing animus, nurtured within a nationalist mind-set. For their part, the defense calls historical witnesses to undermine charges of superior responsibility, and to mitigate the sentence by representing crimes as reprisals. Although legal ways of knowing are distinctive from those of history, the two are effectively combined in international trials in a way that challenges us to rethink the relationship between law and history.

Ideas of collective responsibility challenge the doctrine of individual responsibility that is the dominant paradigm in law and liberal political theory. But little attention is given to the consequences of holding groups accountable for wrongdoing. Groups are not amenable to punishment in the way that individuals are. Can they be punished - and if so, how - or are other remedies available? The topic crosses the borders of law, philosophy and political science, and in this volume specialists in all three areas contribute their perspectives. They examine the limits of individual criminal liability in addressing atrocity, the meanings of punishment and responsibility, the distribution of group punishment to a group's members, and the means by which collective accountability can be expressed. In doing so, they reflect on the legacy of the Nuremberg Trials, on the philosophical understanding of collective responsibility, and on the place of collective accountability in international political relations.

Despite the fact that there are up to 25 million internally displaced persons around the world, their plight is still little known. Like refugees, internally displaced persons have been forced to leave their homes because of war and human rights abuses, but they have not left their country. This has major consequences in terms of the protection available to them. This 2005 book aims to offer a clear and easily accessible overview of this important humanitarian and human rights challenge. In contrast with other books on the topic, it provides an objective evaluation of UN efforts to protect the internally displaced. It will be of interest to all those involved with the internally displaced, as well as anyone seeking to gain an overall understanding of this complex issue.

The growth in scope and importance of the private military and security industry in the past decade has challenged the role of the state as the main provider of defence and security functions. At the same time it has put under stress the state's authority to properly oversee the conduct of private contractors and has raised the question of whether existing rules of domestic law and international law are adequate to ensure their accountability in the event of abuse. This book addresses this question through the lens of international human rights law and international humanitarian law. It presents a systematic analysis of the way in which these two bodies of international law, applicable in times of peace and in the event of armed conflict, may be interpreted and implemented in a way so as to fill possible accountability gaps.
Human rights and humanitarian law obligations are analysed from the point of view of their applicability to the states involved, to international organizations, and to the companies and their individual employees. Victims' access to civil remedies and the criminal prosecution of private contractors, as well as new policy issues, such as the use of private contractors in the fight against piracy, are also covered in the book.

The concept of obligations erga omnes - obligations to the international community as a whole - has fascinated international lawyers for decades, yet its precise implications remain unclear. This book assesses how this concept affects the enforcement of international law. It shows that all States are entitled to invoke obligations erga omnes in proceedings before the International Court of Justice, and to take countermeasures in response to serious erga omnes breaches. In addition, it suggests ways of identifying obligations that qualify as erga omnes. In order to sustain these results, the book conducts a thorough examination of international practice and jurisprudence as well as the recent work of the UN International Law Commission in the field of State responsibility. By so doing, it demonstrates that the erga omnes concept is solidly grounded in modern international law, and clarifies one of the central aspects of the international regime of law enforcement.

This book addresses a dilemma at the heart of counter-terrorist policy: is it ever justifiable to torture terrorists in order to save the lives of others, the so-called 'ticking bomb' scenario?
The book opens with an analysis of the pure moral argument from the standpoint of the individual as torturer. It then looks at the issues that arise once a state has decided to sanction torture in certain situations: how to establish factually that the situation is urgent, deciding who to torture, training people to carry out torture, and the efficacy of torture as a means of gathering information. The final part examines attempts to operate legal systems which tolerate torture; how they relate to the criminal law notion of necessity and to international human rights norms.
After examining the utilitarian arguments for torture, and the impact on a society of permitting torture, the author presents a powerful argument for maintaining the absolute legal prohibition.