As artificial intelligence (AI) begins to shape decisions about who is detained in armed conflict and how detention facilities are managed, questions once reserved for science fiction are now urgent matters of law and ethics. The drive to harness data and optimize efficiency risks displacing human judgment from one of the most sensitive areas of warfare: deprivation of liberty. In doing so, AI could strip detainees of what remains of their humanity, reducing them to data points and undermining the core humanitarian guarantees that the Geneva Conventions were designed to protect.

In this post, Terry Hackett, ICRC’s Head of the Persons Deprived of Liberty Unit, and Alexis Comninos, ICRC’s Thematic Legal Adviser, explore how the use of AI in detention operations intersects with international humanitarian law (IHL), and why humane treatment must remain a human-centered endeavor. Drawing on the ICRC’s recent recommendations to the UN Secretary-General, they argue that while IHL does not oppose innovation, it sets the moral and legal boundaries that ensure technological progress does not come at the cost of human dignity.

When people go missing in war, their absence lingers far beyond the battlefield – splintering families, deepening social divides, and haunting political transitions. Yet amid this grief, the families of the missing often become unlikely peacebuilders: their search for truth draws them across old front lines, transforming pain into connection and personal loss into a collective force for reconciliation.

In this post, Jill Stockwell, Simon Robins, and Martina Zaccaro explore how families of the missing – through shared advocacy and dialogue – can reshape divided societies. Drawing on ICRC research from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus, and Nepal, they show how families who once faced each other as enemies now work side by side, using their moral authority and lived experience to foster empathy, resist manipulation, and model the very reconciliation peace processes often fail to achieve.

When wars end, peace rarely begins overnight. It’s built, slowly and painstakingly, through acts that restore a sense of humanity where it was once suspended. Among these, how a society treats people it detains may seem peripheral, yet it can determine whether trust survives long enough for peace to take root. Humane detention, often overshadowed by more visible aspects of conflict recovery, is in fact one of the earliest and most concrete tests of readiness for peace. Each act of respect for law and dignity – registering a detainee, allowing a family visit, providing medical care, or releasing a prisoner when the reason for detention has ceased – helps reduce the harm that fuels revenge and instead preserves the fragile threads of trust that can bind divided societies.

In this post, Terry Hackett, ICRC’s Head of the Persons Deprived of Liberty Unit, and Audrey Purcell-O’Dwyer, ICRC’s Legal Adviser with the Global Initiative on IHL, show how compliance with international humanitarian law (IHL) in detention – while not a direct path to peace – can serve as a legal and moral bridge towards it, one rooted in dignity, accountability, and the quiet rebuilding of trust. By limiting suffering and safeguarding dignity, it helps prevent conflicts from eroding the institutions and confidence that societies need to recover.

Picture a potential future armed conflict: missiles and drones crowding the skies, uncrewed vehicles rolling across borders, and governments scrambling to coordinate their defences. Their conclusion: Every citizen is needed. Some collect and relay information about the approaching enemy into an artificial intelligence (AI) platform that supports military decision-making. Reservists join the ranks of the armed forces. Computer experts choose to contribute by conducting cyber operations aimed at disrupting military operations, sowing chaos among the civilian population, and harming the enemy’s economy. As the militaries on both sides rely heavily on digital communication, connectivity, and AI, the armed forces call on tech companies to provide cybersecurity services, computing power and digital communication networks.

In this post, Tilman Rodenhäuser, Samit D’Cunha, and Laurent Gisel from the ICRC, Anna Rosalie Greipl from the Academy, and Professor Marco Roscini from the University of Westminster (and former Swiss IHL Chair at the Geneva Academy) present five key risks for civilians, along with the obligations of both civilians and states, related to the involvement of civilians in information and communication technology (ICT) activities in armed conflict.

In line with its mandate, the ICRC engages with all parties to an armed conflict, including non-state armed groups. The ICRC has a long history of confidential humanitarian engagement with armed groups to alleviate and prevent the suffering of persons living in areas controlled by these groups. However, this engagement has become increasingly complex. Accordingly, the ICRC undertakes an annual internal exercise to evaluate the status of its relationships with armed groups and to identify developments to strengthen its future engagement worldwide.

In this post, ICRC Adviser Matthew Bamber-Zryd discusses key findings from the 2025 exercise. The ICRC estimates that 204 million people live in areas controlled or contested by armed groups. In 2025, there were more than 380 armed groups of humanitarian concern. A key development in 2025 is the ICRC's deepened engagement with non-state armed groups that are parties to armed conflict and bound by international humanitarian law (IHL), achieving significantly higher contact rates with these groups than with other armed actors. Yet engagement remains constrained by three major obstacles: deteriorating security conditions, operational constraints including limited resources and competing priorities, and state-imposed barriers, notably counter-terrorism legislation.

The law of naval warfare is a complex collection of international laws, developed in an era that could not anticipate today’s global interdependence, the scale of maritime trade, or the nature of modern maritime conflict. Recent attacks on civilian shipping and ports have underscored the significant humanitarian consequences for seafarers and the global community of states who are heavily dependent on open and secure sea lines of communication. While the existing legal framework – partly codified in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and supplemented by later conventions – remains robust, it was conceived for a different maritime world. Proactive, inclusive dialogue among states is urgently needed to identify and address legal implementation challenges and protection gaps.

In this post and through the naval warfare workstream of the Global IHL Initiative, ICRC Legal Advisers André Smit and Kelisiana Thynne outline the international community’s reflections, ideas and recommendations for protecting civilian lives and livelihoods affected by naval operations in an era of heightened geopolitical tension at sea.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Fundamental Principles of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement – humanity, impartiality, neutrality, independence, voluntary service, unity and universality. Proclaimed in Vienna in 1965, they were born not as abstract ideals but as the direct result of over a hundred years of humanitarian action. They have enabled aid to cross frontlines, families to be reunited, and hope to reach places of despair. Yet today, the world in which they must operate is under extraordinary strain: conflicts drag on for years, humanitarian workers face record levels of attack, climate shocks compound existing crises, digitalization reshapes the battlefield, and politicization erodes the fragile space where help can reach those who need it most. The human consequences of war remain devastatingly constant, and the Principles- that have guided the Movement since 1965 are under growing pressure.

In this post, ICRC’s Director General Pierre Krähenbühl reflects on the enduring relevance and importance of the Fundamental Principles in a rapidly shifting world. He argues that they are not self-sustaining ideals to be admired from afar, but living commitments that must be exercised and defended. Drawing on his three decades of humanitarian work, he makes the case that the Principles resist the dangerous normalization of war, safeguard access to people in need, and fuel the courage necessary to channel indignation into lifesaving action. At sixty, the Principles will only remain vital if we choose to live them, and in so doing, keep humanity alive in the darkest of times.

Following five years of research and consultations, the ICRC has published a new, updated Commentary on the Fourth Geneva Convention (GC IV) of 1949. GC IV is the cornerstone of protection for civilians in international armed conflict and occupation – protections that remain urgently relevant amid patterns of urban warfare, strikes on essential services, and persistent harm to people who are not, or are no longer, taking part in hostilities. The 2025 Commentary consolidates seven decades of practice, jurisprudence, and operational experience into a practical guide to applying GC IV’s safeguards effectively today.

In this post, Jean-Marie Henckaerts, the head of the ICRC project to update the Commentaries on the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977, situates the updated Commentary in contemporary conflict realities and explains why GC IV’s protective purpose must steer its interpretation. He argues that good faith interpretation – required by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties – means reading GC IV in a way that realizes its humanitarian object and purpose, not hollowing it out through technical argumentation that defeats protection in practice.

The impact of armed conflict on mental health is increasingly evident. According to data from the World Health Organization, one in five people who have experienced armed conflict in the last ten years suffers from some form of mental health condition. With an estimated two billion people living in places affected by war, the scale of the problem is staggering. Yet, despite its magnitude, the legal protection of mental health during hostilities remains largely overlooked by both academics and practitioners.

In this post, part of the Emerging Voices series, Giulia Bosi, Postdoctoral Researcher in International Law at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa, Italy, examines whether and how international humanitarian law (IHL) seeks to safeguard mental health. Her analysis shows that the drafters of IHL treaties were, at least to some extent, aware of the importance of mental health, that several IHL norms aim to protect it, and that the growing recognition of mental health as an integral part of health is shaping contemporary interpretations of IHL.

For groups involved in long-running non-international armed conflicts, the decision to end the use of violence poses significant challenges – even when it is no longer recognized to be an “effective” means of achieving organizational objectives.

In this post, independent researcher Dr Thomas Evans argues that exploring the cultural perspectives, influences, and identities within non-state armed groups and their members is vital to understanding the continued usage of, and disengagement from, political violence.