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.
It is my great pleasure to announce that Dr Annyssa Bellal has joined the editorial team of the Armed Groups and International Law blog. Annyssa is the Strategic Adviser on International Humanitarian Law at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights and a Senior Lecturer in international law at Sciences Po, Paris. She also acted as legal adviser for the NGO Geneva Call, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs and for the International Committee of the Red Cross where she was the acting Head of the Customary International Humanitarian Law Project. In 2012, she was an Assistant Professor at the Irish Centre for Human Rights in Galway. Dr Bellal was awarded several fellowships for her research, notably from McGill and New York University. She was the editor of The War Report 2014, published by Oxford University Press, and the author of several articles on various IHL and human rights law issues, including an award-winning article on ‘International Law and Armed Non-State Actors in Afghanistan’ (International Review of the Red Cross, 2011, SNIS Geneva Award 2011).
We are very happy that Annyssa has joined the blog and look forward to her contributions of news and analysis on the topic of armed groups and international law. Welcome Annyssa!!