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 15th Bruges Colloquium on International Humanitarian Law, organised by the ICRC and the College of Europe, will this year take place on 16 and 17 October (normally the full day on Thursday and the first half of the Friday). A pre-announcement can be found here. This year’s topic is detention in times of armed conflict. Very topical indeed, given the recent judgement in the British Serdar Mohammed v Ministry of Defence case and the extensive academic discussion that followed on the authority to detain in non-international armed conflicts (see here, here, and here for a parts of the discussion).
The Colloquium is highly recommended. It is one of my favourite (yearly) IHL-conferences: not just for its lovely location (right in the centre of the pretty city of Bruges with its good food and Belgian beer), but for its interesting topics and the high level discussions between panelists and participants.
The panels will address the following topics:
– the relevant norms for detention in international armed conflict
– the legal framework when detaining in relation to non-international armed conflict
– the specificities stemming from detention during operations abroad
– the challenges related to the transfer of detainees from one authority to another
– the interplay between international humanitarian law and human rights law
More information will be posted on the conference website.
See for previous editions (and links to the related publications) here and here.