Call for Papers: Complementing IHL: Exploring the Need for Additional Norms to Govern Contemporary Conflict Situations

The Minerva Center for Human Rights at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv Delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) are organizing an international conference on "Complementing IHL: Exploring the Need for Additional Norms to Govern Contemporary Conflict Situations," which will take place June 1-3, 2008, in Jerusalem. The conference "seeks to examine if, how and to what extent the regulation of certain contemporary conflict situations could be improved - whether by the development or reinterpretation of international humanitarian law (IHL) or by the introduction of complementary norms derived from alternative legal sources." The conference organizers provide the following additional background and submission instructions:

The application of the laws of armed conflict, including the laws of occupation, has traditionally depended on the fulfillment of threshold conditions or triggering mechanisms. Accordingly, invocation of the law governing international armed conflict situations turns on the actual existence of state-controlled violence across international borders; the application of the law governing non-international armed conflict situations depends on the existence of prolonged and/or high intensity violence between organized groups (at least one of which is not a state); and the law of occupation hinges on the factual existence of effective control by armed forces over alien territory.

Recent conflict situations, such as those in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Kosovo, have arguably entailed major factual complications and ambiguities that seem to raise difficult questions regarding their legal qualification: they involve multi-national armed operations; cross-border or low-level violence involving non-state entities; or hostile military presence in foreign territory without full control. This gives rise to the question of whether an amendment or reinterpretation of the threshold provisions contained within IHL could enhance protection of humanitarian interests implicated in these conflicts.

It has also been argued that such conflicts, in particular as they involve non-state actors and/or international organizations, are under-regulated and that additional normative sources may contribute to complement IHL in such contexts.

Although some experts believe that human rights law may supplement IHL in many of these new conflict situations, human rights law may suffer from the same structural predicaments that may constrain the application of IHL. As the European Court of Human Rights decisions in Bankovic and Behrami and the House of Lord's judgment in Al-Skeini demonstrate, the application of human rights law too is contingent on conditions for application or on triggering circumstances, which may be no less rigid than those governing the application of IHL. Hence, the conference proposes to examine the need for reform of these triggering provisions and the appropriateness of invoking additional norms coming from other areas of international law.

The conference aims to critically examine the adaptability of IHL to what might be regarded as new conflict situations and to try to identify potential areas of under-regulation - conflict situations that may be inadequately regulated by IHL. The conference will then explore the potential of developing or reinterpreting IHL or locating non-IHL normative sources, which may apply to those potential areas of under-regulation or inspire the creation of new bodies of law. Such alternative sources may include or relate to human rights law (perhaps subject to more flexible conditions for application), but they might also include the laws of state responsibility and general principles of law, such as the principle of good neighbourliness and the prohibition against abuse of right. Other legal regimes governing activities with cross-border effects, such as international environmental law and international economic law, may serve as a source of inspiration for developing such general principles.

The conference seeks to study the potential for developing or reinterpreting IHL, as well as other legal regimes that could possibly complement IHL and apply to new conflict situations, in ways that are conducive to the attainment of IHL's overriding goals: the mitigation of harm and suffering and the promotion of humanitarian interests, even in times of conflict.

SUBMISSION OF PROPOSALS:

Researchers interested in addressing these questions, or other questions related to the topic of the conference, are invited to respond to this call for papers with a one-page proposal for an article and presentation, along with a brief CV. Proposals should be submitted no later than 1 December 2007, by email, to the Minerva Center for Human Rights at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Email: mchr@savion.huji.ac.il.