About the author(s):
Katharine Fortin is an Associate Professor at Utrecht University where she teaches IHL and IHRL. Before joining Utrecht University, she worked at the ICTY, ICC and Norton Rose Fulbright. She is the author of The Accountability of Armed Groups under Human Rights Law (Oxford University Press, 2017) which won the 2018 Lieber Prize. She has written widely about the framework of law that applies to armed groups in non-international armed conflicts and is one of the editors of the Armed Groups and International Law blog.
On 18 December 2013, the ICRC organised a conference on humanitarian dialogue with non-State groups. The topic under discussion was humanitarian dialogue with non-state armed groups, focusing on the impact of geopolitical challenges in the contexts of the Middle East and South Asia.
A summary of the conference has recently been published and can be found here . A podcast of the conference proceedings can be heard and downloaded here.
The ICRC conference brought together four leading experts on the topic:
– Dr Chaliland, one of the world’s leading experts in armed conflict studies and international relations and author of numerous books dealing with these subjects;
– Dr Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou, Visiting Professor at the Graduate Institute and Head of the Regional Development Programme, Geneva Centre for Security Policy
– Ronald Ofteringer, the ICRC’s advisor for global affairs
– Dr Jean-Hervé Bradol, Research Director of the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Foundation
The event was attended by some 200 Geneva-based diplomats, professors and students in the field of international humanitarian law, humanitarian practitioners from non-governmental organizations and Red Cross/Crescent Societies, as well as UN agencies based in Geneva and the wider world.