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.
How do people protect themselves in violent environments outside of ‘traditional’ war zones? And to what extent does international humanitarian law (IHL), the law of armed conflict, apply in such contexts? In this episode of Beyond Compliance: In Conversation, Katharine and Florian talk to Chiara Redaelli and Anjan Sundaram about Mexico. Together they dive into the activism and courage of indigenous frontline environmental defenders in Mexico and explore the difficulties, risks and benefits of applying IHL in this context.
Listen here:
Cited documents:
Redaelli, Chiara & Arévalo, Targeting drug lords: Challenges to IHL between lege lata and lege ferenda, International Review of the Red Cross, 105 (923), 652-673
Ted Talk, Meet our Planet’s Hidden Defenders, Anjan Sundaram, April 2024
Guest Bios:
Anjan Sundaram is an author, journalist, academic and artivist currently working on Mexico. His books include Breakup: A Marriage in Wartime, Bad News: Last Journalists in a Dictatorship and Stringer: A Reporter’s Journey in the Congo. He has reported from Central Africa, Cambodia and Mexico for Granta, the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, the Guardian and the Associated Press, among others.
Chiara Redaelli is a Senior Legal Advisor at Diakonia IHL. She is also an adjunct professor at Catholic University of Lille Lille University and La Sabana University in Colombia. She is co-editor in chief of the Journal on the Use of Force and International Law and member of the ILA Committee on the Use of Force.