24 November 2016, 12:15-13:30
Geneva Academy Talks
MSF
Violence against health care facilities and humanitarian workers remains a recurring and preoccupying issue in today’s world.
Paradoxically, this takes place within a well-accepted framework of protection of health care facilities and medical or humanitarian personnel under international humanitarian law (IHL), which rules and principles are not contested either by states or non-state armed groups.
This IHL Talk, organized with the support of the ICRC, aims at reflecting on the reasons why health care and humanitarian workers are being targeted despite their protection under IHL and what policy tools can be elaborated to implement and ensure better respect of the law by the different parties in armed conflicts.
Imogen Foulkes, BBC Geneva Correspondent
Babak Ali Naraghi, Head of Health Care in Danger Project, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
Robert Kolb, Professor of Public International Law, University of Geneva and Geneva Academy
Caroline Abu-Sada, Director of the Research Unit on Humanitarian Stakes and Practices (UREPH), MSF Switzerland
The IHL Talks are a new series of events, hosted by the Geneva Academy, on international humanitarian law and current humanitarian topics. Every two months at lunchtime, academic experts, practitioners, policy makers and journalists discuss burning humanitarian issues and their regulation under international law.
Violence against health care facilities and humanitarian workers remains a recurring and preoccupying issue in today’s world.
Paradoxically, this takes place within a well-accepted framework of protection of health care facilities and medical or humanitarian personnel under international humanitarian law (IHL), which rules and principles are not contested either by states or non-state armed groups.
This IHL Talk, organized with the support of the ICRC, aimed at reflecting on the reasons why health care and humanitarian workers are being targeted despite their protection under IHL and what policy tools can be elaborated to implement and ensure better respect of the law by the different parties in armed conflicts.
The 2025 Latsis Symposium on Science for Global Development and Humanitarian Action, organized by ETH for Development, gave prominent space to human rights issues.
Geneva Academy
The Geneva Academy has published a new spot report analysing Israeli policy and practice relating to water in the Occupied Palestinian Territory through the lens of IHL.
UN Photo / Jean-Marc Ferré
This training course will explore the origin and evolution of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and its functioning in Geneva and will focus on the nature of implementation of the UPR recommendations at the national level.
The Geneva Human Rights Platform contributes to this review process by providing expert input via different avenues, by facilitating dialogue on the review among various stakeholders, as well as by accompanying the development of a follow-up resolution to 68/268 in New York and in Geneva.
UN Photo/Violaine Martin
The IHL-EP works to strengthen the capacity of human rights mechanisms to incorporate IHL into their work in an efficacious and comprehensive manner. By so doing, it aims to address the normative and practical challenges that human rights bodies encounter when dealing with cases in which IHL applies.