Chapter

Comparing experiences : engaging states and non-state armed groups on international humanitarian law

Andrew Carswell and Jonathan Somer

The companion to international humanitarian law

Leiden ; Boston : Brill Nijhoff, 2018

p. 39-55

English

The genesis of this contribution was a conversation between the authors when they were working respectively as point persons for training State armed forces with the ICRC (Andrew) and non-State armed forces with Geneva Call (Jonathan). When discussing the barriers to IHL compliance buy-in by each type of armed actor, Andrew mentioned that his audience regularly points the finger at non-State armed groups as the principal perpetrators of IHL violations - to which Jonathan replied that his audience points the finger in precisely the opposite direction. This contribution is based on a discussion between the authors that took place at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Canadian Red Cross's 2017 IHL conference, entitled Order in Chaos: the Evolution of Law Governing Armed Conflict.

• Full text : restricted access (ICRC)

• The companion to international humanitarian law / ed. by Dražan Djukic, Niccolò Pons