One of the oldest branches of international law concerns its regulation of warfare between States, which formally dates back to the 1859 Battle of Solferino and the original Geneva Convention (the Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field) of August 1864. We shall trace the development of this law through to the landmark four Geneva Conventions of August 1949 and their two Additional Protocols—one for international armed conflict; the other for non-international armed conflict—of June 1977.
This course will explore many topics related to the regulation of warfare, including the classification of combatants and the treatment afforded to prisoners-of-war; the means and methods of warfare (including nuclear and chemical warfare, but also focusing on sexual violation and starvation); questions of targeting, proportionality and precautionality; the history and practices of belligerent occupation and the protection of cultural property and the environment. Classes shall be taught by a combination of “mini-lectures” of the instructor as well as class presentations, which will rely on a succession of well-chosen case-studies—such as the treatment of Taliban and Al-Qaeda members held at Guantanamo Bay as well as those captured during the Ethiopia/Eritrea hostilities; the targeting decisions of Operation Allied Force concerning Kosovo in the spring of 1999 and the use of AI techniques by Israel in its operation against Gaza after October 7, 2023.
The importance of these classes will be to test the continuing vitality and appeal of law during hostilities, although we shall want to question how this differs (if at all) from taking a “human rights” approach to regulating such conduct. More importantly, the recent accumulation of practice (Russia/Ukraine; Israel/Iran) and the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice (e.g. Legal Consequences Arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Territories of July 2024) requires critical consideration of the ambitions of the law in this area of activity—and whether it is a forlorn odyssey to try and secure any form of moderation once violence has taken hold.