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ICRC
19 November 2019
Our new War Report article Iraq: Any Hope for Change? provides an overview of the non-international armed conflict (NIAC) in the country.
Written by Josiane Matar, it provides information about the classification of the conflict, its history, parties, developments in 2019 – including the recent protests and fate of foreign fighters and their families – and issues related to war crimes allegations, investigations and prosecutions.
‘This article is a very useful tool for anyone interested in understanding the current situation in Iraq and whether one can still classify the situation as a NIAC’ explains Dr Annyssa Bellal, Senior Research Fellow and Strategic Adviser on International Humanitarian Law at the Geneva Academy.
Despite the fact that the Iraqi state has claimed victory against ISIS, the armed conflict has not yet ended. Recent events have shown that there is still a high risk of ISIS resurgence and military operations are still taking place against ISIS sleeper cells and rural holdouts.
While the Iraqi Government have resorted to foreign assistance from the United States and its allies, and the PMU received backing and funding from Iran, the conflict remains a NIAC as the Iraqi Government invited and consented to these interventions.
This article complements the legal analysis of the conflict provided in the Rule of Law in Armed Conflict (RULAC) online portal, which includes an overview of the situation, its classification, parties and applicable international law.
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IAEA Imagebank
Our Strategic Adviser on international humanitarian, Dr Annyssa Bellal, has been invited to brief on 13 August – together with the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross Peter Maurer and the United Nations (UN) Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs Miguel de Serpa Soares – the UN Security Council on the Geneva Conventions.
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Our new publication Defending the Boundary analyses the constraints and requirements on the use of autonomous weapon systems (AWS), also called ‘killer robots’, under international humanitarian law and international human rights law.
Event
This event, hosted by the Geneva Academy and the ICRC during the 33rd International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, will serve to discuss the new Guidelines on this issue with Conference participants.
Short Course
ICRC
This short course discusses the protection offered by international humanitarian law (IHL) in non-international armed conflicts (NIACs) and addresses some problems and controversies specific to IHL of NIACs, including the difficulty to ensure the respect of IHL by armed non-state actors.
Short Course
ICRC
This short course aims to study, in depth, an emblematic example of the complexity of international humanitarian law and the challenges it raises: the classification of armed conflicts.
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This project, initiated in 2014 by the Swiss Chair of International Humanitarian Law, Professor Noam Lubell, intends to identify, via expert meetings and research, a set of best practices that states should apply when they investigate or examine alleged violations or misconduct in situations of armed conflict.
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Crown Copyright
This project examined the legal requirements that the use of autonomous weapon systems would need to comply with in a number of scenarios envisaged by proponents of increasing autonomy in weapon systems.
