Humanitarian Norms Research Articles

Applying Humanitarian Law: A Review of the Legal Status of the Turkey–Kurdistan Workers’ Party (pkk) Conflict

Abstract This article assesses the applicability of the criteria for non-international armed conflict to the situation in South-Eastern Turkey. It demonstrates that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (also known as the pkk), as a party to the conflict, fulfils the three main criteria laid down in conventional international humanitarian law and developed by indicative factors in international jurisprudence for assessing the existence of a non-international armed conflict in the context of Common Article 3 to the 1949 Geneva Conventions: being an organised armed group, having the ability to engage in ‘protracted violence’, and complying with law of armed conflict. It establishes that the pkk qualifies as an organised armed group under responsible command and has the operational ability, structure and capacity to carry out ‘protracted violence’, to respect fundamental humanitarian norms of international humanitarian law and to control territory. The article also ascertains that Turkey is clearly bound by the provisions of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, including Common Article 3, and customary international humanitarian law. Accordingly, it concludes that the conflict between the pkk and the Turkish security forces qualifies as a non-international armed conflict within the meaning of both Common Article 3 and customary international humanitarian law.

From Reprisals to Criminal Accountability: State Bias and the Prospects of Limiting War Through Law

Abstract Over the past 25 years, criminal prosecutions for war crimes have become a central element in the long-standing project of governing hostilities in international law. According to many, the threat of criminal prosecutions can be a general deterrent against violations of the laws of war, and can contribute more broadly to the diffusion and domestic appropriation of humanitarian norms. This article discusses some unintended effects of this “anti-impunity turn” in the laws of war in the context of non-international armed conflicts. Specifically, it examines the consequences of the fact that states typically have a monopoly over the means of legitimate criminal investigation for alleged crimes committed in their territory. Far from operating on a level playing field, criminal investigations in war contexts must be undertaken under institutional conditions that tend to favor state agents over non-state opposition groups. The article spells out some implications of this form of state bias and argues that it can contribute to exacerbate conflict and prolong violence in war.

Human Rights, Humanitarian Law and State Power

This article deals with the relationship between humanitarian law and human rights. Our argument is that the emergence of human rights as a particular language of political transformation in the 1970s had a crucial impact on traditional readings of international humanitarian law. On one hand, the breakthrough of rights language created favorable conditions for humanitarian norms to reclaim its relevance in law and politics nowadays. On the other, it obliged humanitarian norms to share space in the legal imaginary with the novel language of social emancipation of rights. We examine how the construction of legal arguments within a rights vocabulary may blur legal definitions and create space for abuses. Finally, we analyse specific situations where human rights law facilitates the state to use its powers in spite of humanitarian norms.

Fleeing mass starvation: what we (do not) know about the famine-migration nexus.

The relationship between famine and migration has not been studied adequately to date. A systematic review of scholarship centred on famine and its demographic, political, and socioeconomic effects demonstrates the paucity of academic attention to the issue. This paper surveys the dominant hypotheses and findings regarding the connection between famine and migration. It delineates key questions that an interdisciplinary and case-based exploration of the subject should address, highlighting gaps in the literature with respect to population-level analyses. Primary observations about the literature reviewed include tenuous generalisations about the linkage between famine and migration and partial examination of the role of politics in enabling or prohibiting mobility during hunger-related crises. In addition, disciplinary silos influence which particular aspects of a famine are scrutinised and which are not appraised. In view of these concerns, international legal and humanitarian norms governing migration also need to pay closer attention to its association with famine.

The European Union, Conflict Management, and the Normative Illusion

The European Union (EU) has recently become the most active conflict manager, currently deploying more operations than any other organisation. There has been a total of 13 operations of military nature from 2003 to 2019, deployed in Europe and in Africa. The discourse at the level of the European Union emphasizes not only the security of its members but also the importance of humanitarian norms. Do these norms drive the deployment of EU’s military operations? There is literature that recognizes the relevance of norms, suggesting that these factors may indirectly or even directly have a driving impact. On the contrary, I suggest that there is no normative driving impact. To be precise, I argue that power distribution and exposure to conflicts are the fundamental conditions driving the deployment of military operations by the EU.

Fragmentation of armed non-State actors in protracted armed conflicts: Some practical experiences on how to ensure compliance with humanitarian norms

AbstractFor almost two decades now, Geneva Call has been engaged in developing humanitarian dialogue with some 150 armed non-State actors (ANSAs), with the aim of increasing their knowledge and respect of humanitarian norms. Developing a protection dialogue with ANSAs is not an easy task, and it becomes more complex when groups split, mutate or join larger movements. Humanitarian organizations need to adapt their analysis to a more frequent timescale, keeping in touch constantly with a wide range of key stakeholders in order not to lose track of the current groups’ status and structure. In this note, Geneva Call's Director of Operations discusses some of the organization's experiences and lessons learned.

Revolutionary Law Abidance: Kachin Rebel Governance and the Adoption of ihl in Resistance to Myanmar State Violence

Although armed opposition actors are increasingly prevalent within contemporary conflicts, ethnographies seeking to understand and explain their relationship with international law are scarce. While scholars highlight the state-centric nature of international law, discussing at length how it privileges state over non-state actors, few examine the way rebels perceive and relate to the international legal system. Drawing on seven months of field research among Kachin civil society and the Kachin Independence Organisation / Army (kio/A), this article demonstrates how the kio/A’s nascent engagement with international law is being strategically pursued as part of a broader rebel governance project. Ethnographic research exposes the oft neglected rebel perspective. It reveals how rebels interact with international humanitarian norms as a means to facilitate and mediate relations with both local and international actors, in an attempt to promote nation building aspirations and thereby strengthen resistance to state violence.

Studium upadku. Proces Anny Boleyn (1536)

<p>Powszechnie uznaje się, że egzekucja Anny Boleyn w maju 1536 była rezultatem naruszenia wszelkich humanitarnych norm rządzących procesem karnym w dobie nowożytnej. Podważając dowodową stronę postępowania, pomija się z reguły zasady które angielska procedura karna znała i które miały zastosowanie w <em>state trials, </em>w tym również w przypadku procesu angielskiej królowej. Choć niewątpliwym jest, że prawo, gdy idzie o przestępstwa kwalifikowane jako polityczne, stawało się narzędziem, dzięki któremu władza realizowała swoje cele to nie można nie dostrzegać, iż proces Anny Boleyn konstrukcyjnie pozostaje tożsamy z innymi podobnymi postępowaniami, które miały miejsce w XVI w. Należy zatem spoglądać na wydarzenia, które doprowadziły do skazania Anny Boleyn, nie z punktu widzenia obecnych reguł prawnych i aksjologicznych, a z uwzględnieniem kontekstu historyczno-prawnego.</p>

Rise and Decline of International Rule of Law: Case of Non-State Armed Actors

This paper assesses the rise and decline of international rule of law in the case of non-state armed actors. Both signs of rise and signs of decline of international rule of law show in the case of non- state armed actors. Signs of rise include the expansion of coverage of international humanitarian law (IHL) and international criminal law, as well as international legal argumentation and rhetoric made by non-state armed groups. Some non-state armed actors express that they are governed by IHL in public statements or bilateral agreements with international actors, partly acknowledging universality of international humanitarian norms, and sometimes act as such. Signs of decline in the international rule of law also show – although some of them can be seen as business-as-usual – privileging of military advantage, instrumental use of international law (as justification and local interpretations), as well as conflicting understanding of IHL between local and global norms. The multiplicity of non-state actors also portends the decline of international rule of law, with the proliferation of many non-organized groups without legitimacy-seeking motivations.

Reconstructing Westphalian Sovereignty as an Effort to Enforce Human Rights Case Study: Humanitarian Intervention in the Libyan Conflict

State sovereignty and humanitarian intervention are two sides of a coin, presenting a threat to human rights enforcement, especially when human rights violation is done by the state. Failure from a state to provide human rights protection for its citizen will lead to intervention from the international community to enforce human rights in the name of humanitarian norms. The humanitarian intervention will indirectly weaken the principles of Westphalian state sovereignty as the main premise in the politics of international relations. This article is a case study of the Libyan conflict in 2011. This study uses the constructivism approach to analyze the contrasting relation between the principles of traditional Westphalian sovereignty and humanitarian intervention concept, and how this relationship may shift the human rights norms in the international community. In the constructivism approach, it is not enough to offer a causal explanation in order to understand international politics. Instead, it needs a more interpretative understanding. Hence, this study is conducted with a qualitative method, a critical approach to human rights in contemporary international politics.

Human Security

There is a growing discussion of the idea of jus post bellum (jpb) and what it means as an addition to just war thinking. This essay connects jpb to the thought of Augustine and Aquinas, so that jpb appears as integral in that tradition. To make this case, I argue that achieving jpb is key to building a just peace, of which the fundamental characteristic must be human security, and thus defines two approaches to the study of human security that emerges from the theological development of jpb ethics: Michael Schuck’s Augustinian and Kenneth Himes’s Thomistic jpb conceptions. I argue that they both emphasize the importance of human security, as shown by their arguments for building humanitarian norms post bellum, but have different aims and jpb moral implications.

International Law at the Saint Volodymyr Imperial University of Kyiv in the 19th and Early 20th Centurie

This article is devoted to the science of international law at the Saint Volodymyr Imperial University of Kyiv, a major centre for the teaching and study of international law in Tsarist Russia. It examines the international legal views propounded by Vasilii Andreevich Nezabitovskii (1824–1883), Roman Ivanovich Baziner (1841–?), Nikolai Karlovich Rennenkampf (1832–1899), Otton Ottonovich Eikhel’man (1854–1943), and Petr Mikhailovich Bogayevskii (1866–1929). Scientists working at the Saint Volodymyr Imperial University contributed considerably to the development of the science of international law, although their work is not widely known due to the fact they did not produce many works in “western” languages. The large majority of these scholars’ writings represent a perfect development of international legal theory. These works advanced the concepts of the legal nature of international law (Nezabitovskii, Eikhel’man); proposed a new spatial concept of territory that was further developed in international legal science (Nezabitovskii); and explored the laws and customs of war and the role of the Red Cross in the development of humanitarian norms in international law (Baziner, Rennenkampf, Bogayevskii).

Turkey’s Syria Policy: Constant Objectives Shifting Priorities

Turkey’s foreign policy approach started to transform from a more liberal and humanitarian foreign policy to a more realistic and pragmatic one in 2016, which was manifested in the Syrian civil war. In this period Turkey started to prioritize the use of hard power in order to prevent the threats resulting from the civil war. This paper asserts that while Turkey’s objectives in the Syrian crisis have remained stable, its priorities have changed especially in recent years. So, while from 2011-2016 humanitarian norms dominated Turkey’s Syria policy, after 2016, these norms became secondary priorities, and were replaced by hard power-based military assertiveness. To support this hypothesis, six main objectives of Turkey’s foreign policy are taken into consideration: Managing the humanitarian crisis, materializing the fall of the Assad regime, aiding the opposition forces, waging a proxy war with Iran, eliminating the threat of Daesh, and preventing the PYD/YPG from creating an area of dominance.

Non-human humanitarians

AbstractThe study of humanitarian intervention typically focuses on the human victims and saviours in armed conflict and natural disasters. Moreover, explanations of the virtues of humanitarian norms and ethics emphasise the importance of the university of suffering and the empathic nature of humanitarian efforts. In contrast, this article explores the neglected world of ‘non-human humanitarians’. Specifically, the article outlines three cases of non-human actors that expand and complicate international humanitarian practices: dogs, drones, and diagrams. Drawing on new materialist and posthuman literatures, the article argues that non-humans possess distinct capacities that vastly expand and transform humanitarian efforts in ranging from relief, to medicine, to conflict resolution. Highlighting non-human humanitarians thus offers a new perspective on the resources available for redressing mass violence and conflict, but also complicates existing definitions of humanitarian norms. To the contrary, the article demonstrates that non-humans often maximise humanitarian services to a degree greater than their human counterparts, but have also introduced changes into humanitarian practices that have problematic unintended consequences. Non-human humanitarians reveals previously discounted participants in international politics and the key roles they play in various international interventions.

The (Ir)Relevance of Human Suffering: Humanitarian Intervention and Saudi Arabia’s Operation Decisive Storm in Yemen

Launched on 26 March 2015, the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen has considerably intensified the complex conflict ravaging the country. Despite scholars identifying difficulties with the self-defence and intervention by invitation arguments offered as the primary legal justifications, the Saudi action received mostly approval or acquiescence from the international community. However, a largely overlooked feature of the justificatory discourse surrounding the Yemen intervention is the use of humanitarian and “responsibility to protect” (R2P) type language by the intervening states. This article examines the legal, political and normative significance of this discourse, arguing that humanitarian language was deployed to bolster the perceived legitimacy of military action. Although from a legal perspective the Yemen intervention does not strengthen claims for the existence of a right of unilateral humanitarian intervention, by framing its military action in terms that invoke widely accepted humanitarian and R2P norms Saudi Arabia created scope for the international community to support and legitimise the intervention. Contrary to the oft-cited assertion that humanitarian norms are primarily tools used to justify Western interventionism, the Yemen experience illustrates that such discourse is increasingly being used by a broader range of states, including some authoritarian non-Western states. We argue further that Saudi Arabia’s justification for the intervention also draws on existing ‘war on terror’ rhetoric, indicating that such language can increase the international political acceptance of legally-questionable interventions. Overall, the Yemen intervention continues a recent trend in which states weave together a variety of legal and political rationales for military action when constructing their justificatory discourse.

The End of the War/Peace Limit on the Application of International Human Rights Law: A Comment On “The Limits of Human Rights in Times of Armed Conflict and Other Situations of Armed Violence”

In “The Limits of Human Rights in Times of Armed Conflict and Other Situations of Armed Violence,” Andrew Clapham explains how the dynamics of international human rights law (IHRL) in recent decades, which give effect to foundational principles such as universality and the non-derogability of core humanitarian norms, have extended the limits of IHRL. This comment discusses three sets of concerns, which are also touched upon by Clapham, explicitly or implicitly: the disruptive effect of IHRL on substantive regulations of conflict situations, the functional limits of IHRL monitoring bodies and the political backlash encountered due to normative and institutional expansion. The comment also offers a number of critical observations on how IHRL has developed so far in relation to armed conflict situations and how should IHRL monitoring bodies apply IHRL in such situations.

A Clash of Norms? How Reciprocity and International Humanitarian Law affect American Opinion on the Treatment of POWs

Reciprocity is one of the oldest principles of warfare, but humanitarian norms embedded in international humanitarian law (IHL) prohibit reciprocity over various wartime acts. When it comes to the treatment of prisoners of war (POWs), how do these conflicting norms shape public opinion? One perspective is that citizens who learn about IHL acquire an unconditional aversion to abusing POWs. Alternatively, people may understand IHL as a conditional commitment that instead strengthens their approval for reciprocal conduct. Survey experiments fielded in the United States support the latter view: people’s preferences depend on the enemy’s behavior, and this “reciprocity effect” is largest among those who believe that the United States is legally committed to treating POWs humanely. Puzzlingly, prior studies do not find a reciprocity effect, but this is due to their use of a no-information experimental control group, which led to a lack of control over the subjects’ assumptions about the survey.

Introduction to the Special Issue: Humanitarian Organizations in Disaster Response

Not only do the authors in this special issue address three different problems humanitarian organizations could encounter while doing their job, they also show that each problem is characterized by a need to find balance. A balance between security and the speedy deliverance of aid; a balance between what is needed, what can be asked for and what can be processed; and a balance between humanitarian norms and values and professional conduct when facing regulations that go against the grain of humanitarian aid. Though no solution has yet been found for any of the problems, the articles show the diverse ways in which humanitarian aid workers try to find a balance. That in and by itself could be helpful for humanitarian aid workers when they discuss and decide on how to deal with these issues.

The Limits of Liberal Humanitarianism in Europe: The ‘Responsibility to Protect’ and Forced Migration

This article explores the response of Europe to the refugee ‘crisis’ since 2015 and considers if this is a reasonable test of the region’s commitment to international humanitarianism and the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ principle (R2P). This response is explored both in terms of policy decisions and the political discourse used to frame the nature of the challenge, which weighs humanitarian obligations against the needs of ‘security’, ‘societal cohesion’ and ‘burden sharing’. The article argues that the European response to the refugee crisis exposes internal contradictions and limitations in liberal humanitarianism more broadly, as well as fundamental problems with R2P even amongst those countries which champion the principle. Theoretically, the paper draws upon debates about securitisation, humanitarian norms, and liberal politics. Empirically, the paper analyses elite discourse and policy decisions within Europe, as well as UN statistical data on forced migration.

A pacifist ethos for the Responsibility to Protect: detaching prevention from intervention

The Responsibility to Protect (R2P), as a project intended to avert or end mass atrocities, incorporates both preventative and interventionist dimensions. This article begins with an overview of the place of prevention within the R2P and its foregrounding over the past decade at the expense of military intervention. The second part then looks at some existing critiques of this focus on prevention and suggests that such critiques are limited insofar as they remain wedded to military intervention as the essence of R2P. Part three then expands on the political, ethical, and normative problems that arise for the R2P in the attempt to connect the principles and practice of nonviolent conflict or atrocity prevention to the spectre of military intervention. As a consequence, it is argued that the central tenets of human protection within the R2P can only be coherently founded upon a pacifist ethos. A broadening of the ethical imagination around R2P is, therefore, required if humanitarian norms aimed towards human protection are to be consistently pursued.