The well-trodden path of national international humanitarian law committees

Abstract

AbstractThe road towards effective implementation of international humanitarian law (IHL) is a continuous process where important milestones will be reached at each step. As part of such a process, national committees and similar entities on IHL have played a key driving role. As with most long-haul road trips, one tends to start with an idea of the roads that will be taken and what the end destination will look like. In this case, the common destination is better respect for IHL. While the destination never changes, the different roads to be travelled can multiply, creating new opportunities through events that arise, and actors encountered along the way. Likewise, when the first national IHL committees were formed in the 1970s to advise and assist their States on the domestic implementation of IHL, they undoubtedly followed different roadmaps from those followed today. As IHL has evolved to keep pace with new realities of warfare, so too has the work of national IHL committees. New treaties have been adopted, new interpretations have been agreed upon, requiring new domestic laws and measures. This article will begin by pinpointing where exactly the journey started for national IHL committees, highlighting that the creation of these bodies coincided with important developments across the international landscape which would come to reinforce domestic implementation of IHL. In the second section, the authors will provide a detailed mapping of the roads generally travelled by these entities, with the intention to showcase the multi-faceted nature of their work and the innumerable milestones achieved along the way. The final section will explore the material, political and structural road bumps which are slowing down the work of some national IHL committees and will provide recommendations on how these entities may overcome these hurdles.