About the author(s):
Rogier is a researcher at the Netherlands Defence Academy (NLDA) and works at the Dutch National Prosecutor’s Office. He holds LL.M-degrees from Utrecht University and the University of Nottingham. Before taking up his current positions, he was an associate legal officer in Chambers at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and a legal adviser at the International Humanitarian Law Division of the Netherlands Red Cross.
Rogier is an adjunct-lecturer at the Hague University of Applied Sciences, where he teaches international humanitarian law, and he co-convenes the Hague Initiative for Law and Armed Conflict.
The purpose of this post is to draw your attention to a series of useful online lectures, updates, and new publications by the ICRC.
* Last week, ICRC president Maurer gave a talk in London on the challenges the ICRC currently faces. The video, as well as the text, of his speech can be found here. Maurer discussed, inter alia, that the gaps in the law related to detention in times of armed conflict needs to be addressed.
* A few weeks ago, new updates for the practice of the ICRC Customary IHL study were added to the Customary IHL database: an update of state practice of 7 countries and 3 tribunals relating to armed conflicts and humanitarian issues such as the distinction between combatants and civilians, the use of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, the protection of internally displaced persons, the protection of children and in particular child soldiers, the prohibition of sexual violence and slavery, the integration of international humanitarian law (IHL) into the training and operations of armed forces, and the prosecution of war crimes. Practice up till the end of 2010 of the following countries has been included for this most recent update of the Database: Armenia, Brazil, Cuba, El Salvador, Georgia, Nepal and New Zealand, as well as and update of the case-law of ECCC, ICC and ICJ. New practice is marked in green throughout the Database.
* A new issue International Review of the Red Cross has been published on the Cambridge University Press website (in the “first view” section). As usual, the open access version will be available via the ICRC website in due course. The combined issue (Vol I and II) deals with violence against health care (in times of armed conflict). It also includes the following two articles relevant to the recent discussion on detention (by multinational forces) in NIAC:
“Some controversies of detention in multinational operations and the contributions of the Copenhagen Principles” by Bruce ‘Ossie’ Oswald
and
“International humanitarian law interoperability in multinational operations” by Marten Zwanenburg
* On the ICRC Washington’s blog Intercross, Anna Nelson discusses Obama’s speech on the Authorisation to Use Military Force, a year after. On the same topic, on Just Security, former US Department of State legal adviser Harold Koh posted “Ending the Forever War: One Year After President Obama’s NDU Speech”.
* The ICRC Library published its latest quarterly IHL bibliography (1st quarter 2014) here.
* A podcast of the ICRC conference on “Humanitarian dialogue with Non-State Armed Groups: The impact of geopolitical challenges” can now be listened to here.