Considering the drastic changes in the nature of conflicts, humanitarian organizations (HOs) and donors, investing more attention into impartiality is critical for HOs if they are to survive and improve the quality of their humanitarian activities. As one of the four fundamental humanitarian principles, impartiality has critical implications for humanitarian action in relation to three aspects: its symbolic meaning for humanitarian action, its procedural significance for humanitarian access, and its operational importance for needs assessments. This article analyzes how the practice of impartiality is challenged by the current humanitarian financing model from five angles: funding source, funding amount, funding allocation, financial management and funding categorization. To cope with these obstacles, we focus on the financial perspective and propose three suggestions for international HOs: first, digitally innovating the humanitarian financing model to ensure that overall humanitarian needs are covered; second, strengthening engagement with non-traditional donors such as the Gulf countries and China, with a focus on infrastructure; and third, developing a hybrid financing model, with case studies from UNICEF and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

To encourage further interrogation of the language of “survivor-centredness” in the field of conflict-related sexual violence, this article offers a case study of efforts to build and intensify more survivor-centred pedagogy for use in the training of humanitarian workers seeking to address sexual violence in conflict and emergency settings. Set against the backdrop of a literature review of existing usages, it builds on key aspects of an earlier evaluation in which all three authors were involved in different capacities.

Institutions are often reluctant to openly engage on controversies around the patriarchal underpinnings of the humanitarian sector, or the hard questions around implementing rights-based approaches in spaces where the dominant social norms run counter to an enabling environment for principled humanitarian and development assistance. A reluctance to engage on these issues can lead to unintended suppression of gender justice efforts under the urgency and scale of needs-based humanitarian response. Pre-crisis unequal power relations can be visible or invisible, difficult to measure and even more difficult to address through humanitarian action. Engaging on root causes and drivers of human suffering is often viewed as “political” in contexts of closing civic space and restricted humanitarian access. This article will explore tensions and synergies between the humanitarian principles and the gender justice agenda with a view to helping humanitarian actors contribute to long-term goals of transforming social norms. The article applies a critical feminist lens to the humanitarian principles of neutrality and impartiality, with a focus on the wider development agenda, the nature of the State in a State-centric global order, and the continuum of violence. Drawing on critical feminist theory and decolonization discourses, and building on gender analyses of international humanitarian law, this article looks to queer the humanitarian principles of neutrality and impartiality within the context of the shifting aid system in which they are applied. The objective is help address some of the gaps in literature, identify ways in which aid actors can reduce unintended harm to the gender justice agenda, and help contribute to the more transformative agendas of gender justice.

Neutral States must abstain from supporting a party to a conflict with military equipment and assistance. This core aspect of the law of neutrality has not changed with the adoption of the UN Charter in 1945, or with the brutal Russian aggression against Ukraine. That said, by reviewing the changes to neutrality law over time, this article finds plausible reasons to believe that neutrality has – for better or worse – become optional for the vast majority of States, which can today opt to be non-belligerent States – i.e., States that are neither neutral nor parties to the armed conflict. All States have to cooperate to bring to an end serious violations of international law, including humanitarian law, and this duty of cooperation has abolished “sitting-still neutrality”, but it does not render neutrality law moot. This reading of “optional but not qualified” neutrality maintains the core neutrality idea of abstaining in military matters. In this article, I argue that views of “obsolete” or “qualified” neutrality are not new at all but depart from well-accepted rules of legal interpretation and raise concerns about double standards. Viewing neutrality as optional but unqualifiable offers greater conceptual clarity, is more honest than alternative views, and comes with advantages for humanitarian action.

Neutrality, a foundational principle in humanitarian efforts and peace mediation, encounters significant practical challenges in the modern landscape of armed conflicts, particularly in the intermediary role of humanitarian organizations. This study examines the role of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) as a neutral intermediary in Yemen, focusing on the release and repatriation of detainees during the 2016–20 peace efforts. Drawing on the ICRC's experience, the analysis highlights the evolving understanding of neutrality from a rigid concept to a more flexible, context-sensitive approach. The findings emphasize the importance of neutrality in fostering trust and facilitating dialogue while acknowledging the operational complexities and strategic considerations involved. This study provides insights into enhancing the contributions of neutral intermediaries to sustainable peace processes.

The protection of non-combatants in times of autonomous warfare raises the question of the timeliness of the international protective emblem. (Fully) Autonomous weapon systems are often launched from a great distance, and there may be no possibility for the operators to notice protective emblems at the point of impact; therefore, such weapon systems will need to have a way to detect protective emblems and react accordingly. In this regard, the present contribution suggests a cross-frequency protective emblem. Technical deployment is considered, as well as interpretation by methods of machine learning. Approaches are explored as to how software can recognize protective emblems under the influence of various boundary conditions. Since a new protective emblem could also be misused, methods of distribution are considered, including encryption and authentication of the received signal. Finally, ethical aspects are examined.

The principle of independence is central to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement's work with and for migrants. Independence requires humanitarian actors to retain their autonomy and resist any interference that might divert them from acting according to the principles of humanity, impartiality and neutrality. Yet, in the face of increasing securitization of migration and instrumentalization of aid and migrants, independence – in practice and perception – cannot be assumed. Drawing from current debates and primary research by the Red Cross Red Crescent Global Migration Lab, this article examines existing challenges in upholding independence in migration contexts and outlines recommendations for action.

Conceptually rooted in the efforts to ban indiscriminate weapons and both their immediate and long-term effects, humanitarian mine action and humanitarian disarmament operations have developed significantly since 1988, when the United Nations first took on work on mine action operations for the protection and benefit of local communities. A large part of those operations has been carried out by humanitarian disarmament NGOs such as the Mines Advisory Group (MAG), one of the first organizations to be established on this issue. Drawing on MAG's experience and perspective, this article explores how the humanitarian principles apply to humanitarian disarmament operations. The aim of the article is to show that as an operator on the humanitarian–development nexus, MAG considers the four humanitarian principles as a critical and necessary part of its reference framework due to the influence of the humanitarian disarmament framework, even when operating in the development space. All in all, the case of humanitarian disarmament and MAG's experience are good examples to illustrate where the humanitarian horizon is extended because of long-terms serious needs, and that humanitarian principles remain essential to keep the focus on the needs of affected populations.

As usage of military artificial intelligence (AI) expands, so will anti-AI countermeasures, known as adversarials. International humanitarian law offers many protections through its obligations in attack, but the nature of adversarials generates ambiguity regarding which party (system user or opponent) should incur attacker responsibilities. This article offers a cognitive framework for legally analyzing adversarials. It explores the technical, tactical and legal dimensions of adversarials, and proposes a model based on foreseeable harm to determine when legal responsibility should transfer to the countermeasure's author. The article provides illumination to the future combatant who ponders, before putting on their adversarial sunglasses: “Am I conducting an attack?”

In an era marked by growing conflicts, prolonged humanitarian needs and less donor funding, collaboration between the humanitarian and peacebuilding sectors is essential for more effective responses. This paper examines the complexities of fostering such collaboration, emphasizing the importance of integrated multisectoral approaches capable of addressing both immediate necessities and long-term peace and development objectives. While recent initiatives such as the humanitarian–development–peace nexus framework and the United Nations Secretary-General's Agenda for Humanity reflect progress toward integrated approaches, substantial collaborative challenges persist. This paper identifies three key entry points for mutual learning between humanitarian and peace actors. Firstly, it discusses a “peace-responsive” approach to humanitarian activities that proactively contributes to “peace-positive” outcomes. Secondly, it emphasizes the need for the peace sector to learn from humanitarian efforts regarding accountability to affected communities. Thirdly, it underscores the need to understand the normative foundations of each sector and their implications for joint action. Drawing on these insights, the paper offers recommendations for policy-makers and practitioners to help them advance joint approaches to humanitarian assistance and peacebuilding in conflict-affected contexts.

International humanitarian law (IHL) provides the normative foundation for efforts to address the issue of missing persons during and after armed conflict. Whilst IHL does not engage with how parties to an armed conflict may go about restoring peace, there has been speculation that resolving the missing issue, by bringing answers to families about the fate and whereabouts of their missing relatives, can potentially play a role in building peace. This article represents an effort to compile existing evidence in academic and practice literature that supports an understanding of how addressing the missing issue relates to peacebuilding. In so doing, the article seeks to lay out a research agenda to understand how addressing the issue of the missing can serve to advance peacebuilding, and proposes avenues for further research.

The notion of solidarity, although not new to the humanitarian sector, has re-emerged in recent discussions about effective and ethical humanitarian action, particularly in contexts such as Ukraine and Myanmar where the traditional humanitarian principles have been facing certain pressures. Because solidarity appears as a good but can also involve selectivity and privilege, and because it risks continued militarism and normalization of civilians participating within that militarism, the notion of solidarity merits rich and rigorous thinking. This article explores how the notion of solidarity is being utilized by those currently re-emphasizing its importance and what it might mean in practice in today's humanitarian contexts. The article argues that if solidary action involves not only a political stance but solidary working methods, the recent calls for solidarity demand respect for the variety of principles and practices within the humanitarian ecosystem, while nevertheless upholding mutual obligations owed within that professional community – that is, within careful limits as to what is considered humanitarian action.

With technological developments presenting tremendous opportunities, rapid developments in data-driven artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have the potential to significantly transform humanitarian forensic action. Yet, their role in the forensic identification of dead bodies remains unexamined. The correct and early identification of dead bodies is not only important to afford the deceased their honour and dignity and to ensure that their families know the fate of their loved ones, but also has broader implications for human rights and international humanitarian law (IHL). This article examines the opportunities and challenges of AI and ML in advancing honour and dignity in death for armed conflict victims in humanitarian forensic action under IHL. It argues that the application of AI and ML in humanitarian forensic action has the potential to revolutionize and support forensic practitioners in the identification of human remains. This will consequently guarantee that families know the fate of their loved ones and that the deceased are afforded dignified burials according to their religious and cultural rites. The article proposes recommendations for the future use of AI and ML in humanitarian forensic action, including the adoption of a legally binding international instrument governing their use, the development of guidelines for their use, the training of forensic actors in IHL and human rights law, and the use of new technologies in humanitarian action.

In times of armed conflict, disasters and violence, people may become separated from their families, go missing or die, or become victims of ill-treatment and sexual violence. Under international humanitarian law, States have obligations to prevent harm and address humanitarian needs. At State level, the medicolegal system is conventionally mandated to address these needs and fulfil related legal obligations. In practice, State responses can sometimes be non-existent, limited by the endemic functionality of existing systems, or degraded by crises of violence, natural disasters and migration. These conditions can, in turn, impede the establishment of peace, reparations, restorative justice efforts and post-conflict reconstruction. This paper explains what a medicolegal system is and the entities that encompass it. The paper highlights the importance of developing clear policies, regulation and procedures that ensure proper functioning of the system. It reviews common gaps and challenges that limit State prevention and response to issues of humanitarian concern. Finally, recommendations when developing and implementing humanitarian programmes to strengthen medicolegal systems are provided, with a particular focus on the content of protection dialogue in diplomatic fora.

How can humanitarians carry out their work during a genocide? Between April and June of 1994, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) faced that very question. After bloodshed broke out in Rwanda, the ICRC was the only remaining humanitarian organization in the country and continued its aid work while surrounded by brutal violence. Based on previously published materials,1 this article examines the strategies that enabled the ICRC to pursue its humanitarian mission in the face of the most basic inhumanity. In particular, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement's Fundamental Principles of neutrality and impartiality were critical to establishing contact with all involved parties: dialogue, including with those perpetrating genocide, was key to ensuring the safety of ICRC staff, and to facilitating the organization's work on behalf of those affected by the violence. Additionally, the ICRC spoke out frequently as the violence was unfolding in Rwanda, and this article addresses the question of public communications, in both principle and practice, during a genocide.

This article explores the role of Article 6(5) of Additional Protocol II to the Geneva Conventions in balancing justice and peace during transitions from armed conflict to peace. It argues that the provision, which encourages the granting of broad amnesties at the cessation of hostilities, requires a re-evaluation of the obligation to investigate, prosecute and punish under international law. By analyzing the legal context and scope of Article 6(5), as well as its application in transitional justice models such as in Colombia, the article highlights how the principle of peace can be prioritized alongside justice without undermining victims’ rights. The discussion critically addresses maximalist interpretations of justice, presenting a nuanced approach that foregrounds restorative justice and the importance of reconciliation in post-conflict societies.

Armed conflict presents a multitude of risks to civilians, prisoners of war and others caught in the middle of hostilities. Harmful information spreading on social media compounds such risks in a variety of tangible ways, from potentially influencing acts that cause physical harm to undermining a person's financial stability, contributing to psychological distress, spurring social ostracization and eroding societal trust in evidentiary standards, among many others. Despite this span of risks, no typology exists that maps the full range of such harms. This article attempts to fill this gap, proposing a typology of harms related to the spread of harmful information on social media platforms experienced by persons affected by armed conflict. Developed using real-world examples, it divides potential harm into five categories: harms to life and physical well-being, harms to economic or financial well-being, harms to psychological well-being, harms to social inclusion or cultural well-being, and society-wide harms. After detailing each component of the typology, the article concludes by laying out several implications, including the need to view harmful information as a protection risk, the importance of a conflict-specific approach to harmful information, the relevance of several provisions under international law, and the possible long-term consequences for societies from harmful information.

The information used for this typology is based entirely on open-source reporting covering acts that occurred during armed conflict and that were seemingly related to identified harmful information on social media platforms or messaging applications. The authors did not verify any reported incidents or information beyond what was included in cited sources. Throughout the article, sources have been redacted from citations where there is a risk of reprinting harmful information or further propagating it, and where redaction was necessary to avoid the impression that the authors were attributing acts to particular groups or actors.

When do non-international armed conflicts (NIACs) end? Determining the existence of a NIAC requires a detailed, fact-intensive inquiry. Since the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia's seminal decision in the Tadić case, international courts and tribunals have evaluated the existence of NIACs under the Tadić test's two-pronged inquiry into intensity and organization. Although that decision also pronounced that international humanitarian law (IHL) continues to apply until a “peaceful settlement is achieved,” neither international tribunals nor scholars have articulated a comparably widely accepted and well-developed test for determining the end of NIACs.

At the same time – and especially since 9/11 – States have increasingly relied on IHL to meet the threat posed by non-State actors, broadening the scope of conflict-related liabilities in armed conflict without conferring the privileges or immunities otherwise inherent in IHL. This one-sided approach twists the purpose of IHL and places members of organized armed groups into legal black holes without temporal limitations, as States resist the termination of “armed conflict” irrespective of the continuing intensity of violence or the level of organization of non-State actors. Ultimately, the current approach gives States broad discretion without appropriate safeguards, which undermines the proper application of human rights and humanitarian principles within conflict and prevents the establishment of a sustainable peace.

This paper argues that the most appropriate test for ascertaining the end of a NIAC is one that combines objective consideration of the diminution of organized and intense hostilities below the Tadić threshold with the likelihood that hostilities will not again rise above that threshold. It thus draws from but does not fully endorse the preferred approach of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which focuses on the lasting termination of hostilities,1 while abjuring a general temporal limitation. Although commendable for its effort to avoid the legal uncertainty that attends the revolving conflict classification problem, the ICRC's approach unfortunately tends to encode existing uncertainty surrounding the termination of NIACs and to indistinctly prolong the application of IHL to erstwhile conflict situations. In contrast, the authors suggest that a test for the end of NIAC based on a specific period (five months following the diminution of organized and intense hostilities below the Tadić threshold), subject to an evaluation of the risk that those hostilities may resume, better balances certainty of legal application with the promotion of a return to peace. The authors will employ the facts of diverse case studies, including the FARC in Colombia, the LTTE in Sri Lanka, numerous armed groups in Mali, and the United States with Al-Qaeda, to build a legal standard that courts can use to determine IHL's continuing applicability to an erstwhile armed conflict.

Three decades after the United Nations Security Council invoked its Chapter VII powers to create the ad hoc criminal tribunals, there can be little doubt that the prosecution of individuals responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) contributes to restoring and maintaining peace. While there is little doubt that the reparatory function of justice is just as crucial as retribution, under international law today, reparations for IHL violations remain harrowingly insufficient or borderline non-existent. In scholarship and strategic litigation, various attempts have been made to distil an individual right to reparations from black-letter IHL. This article argues that such approaches are doomed to fail, as procedural aspects of international obligations rarely, if ever, emerge through the evolution of an existing customary international obligation, let alone via the crystallization of a new customary international norm. They are usually triggered by a political shift that makes States adopt novel regulations setting forth the jurisdictional ramifications of enforcing a pre-existing right or obligation. This article thus advances a two-fold argument. First, it asserts that States’ increased compliance with the obligation to provide compensation for violations of IHL attributable to them would contribute to “the restoration and maintenance of peace” just as much as the prosecution of persons responsible for serious violations thereof. Second, it argues that the individual right to claim reparations for IHL violations can only be established through a political decision of States, and that the establishment of an international mechanism for Ukraine might be an important precedent for the evolution of the current international system.