Even with one in seven people worldwide living with some form of disability, this group has been largely invisible in the implementation of international humanitarian law (IHL) on the conduct of hostilities. Despite increasing recognition and calls for mainstreaming of the multiple and intersectional barriers and risks affecting persons with disabilities in armed conflict, their specific risks have not yet been taken into account when planning and conducting military operations.

In this post, Dr Helen Durham, ICRC’s Director of Law and Policy, and Professor Gerard Quinn, UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities, explore how the complementarity between IHL and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities can be used to increase the visibility of persons with disabilities within IHL, and analyze particular measures that can be taken in the conduct of hostilities to enable a more disability-inclusive implementation of the law of armed conflict.

Over the past year, millions of people living in conflict-affected areas have faced severe and acute food insecurity, and the numbers continue to rise. For many, seasonal food shortages are an intractable reality, but the situation is exacerbated by the increasing intensity and frequency of climate shocks, the long-term economic impacts of COVID-19, as well as the disruptive nature of insecurity and armed conflict on global food systems.

In this post, Policy Adviser Ariana Lopes Morey, Associate Menty Kebede, and Legal Adviser Matt Pollard provide insight into the ICRC’s perspective on the legal, diplomatic and operational dimensions of efforts to prevent food insecurity and famine during conflict, as articulated in its upcoming policy brief. The authors reflect on how addressing the challenge of food insecurity and risk of famine in conflict is complex – requiring speed and long-term commitment, as well as the involvement of many actors – and highlight the ICRC’s three key asks.

Armed conflicts affecting all regions of the world today continue to result in the separation of families and in people going missing and dying. Such heart wrenching loss also occurs in other situations of violence, in disasters and along migratory routes. In 2021, the ICRC registered more than 29,000 new cases of missing people, bringing the current number of cases we are following in 2022 to 173,800 – a 75% increase over the past five years. Many decades-old cases remain unresolved the world over.

In this post, ICRC legal advisers Helen Obregón and Ximena Londoño shed light on some of the particularly rich – but not sufficiently known – rules of international humanitarian law, notably on the ICRC’s Central Tracing Agency and National Information Bureau, relevant to protecting people affected by international armed conflicts like the one taking place in Ukraine today. Taking action to implement these obligations on the ground today is essential to the prevention of greater suffering tomorrow.

Although internal displacement is a global problem, it has long been a particular concern for African governments. According to the most recent estimates, conflict and violence have uprooted 21.8 million people from their homes in sub-Saharan Africa, a rising trend driven each year by other factors such as natural hazard-induced disasters, climate risks, and a dearth of durable solutions.

In this post, Judith Oputu, Diplomatic Adviser for Africa working with the ICRC’s Policy and Humanitarian Diplomacy Division, reflects on displacement diplomacy in Africa and outlines five ways that African States can be better incentivized to take action.

For the past two weeks, the world has watched a humanitarian crisis unfold across Ukraine. Many of our readers have reached out to us directly with questions on how the rules of war – international humanitarian law (IHL) – apply to the conflict.

In this post, our Chief Legal Officer Cordula Droege outlines the key rules of IHL governing the conflict and emphasizes the ICRC’s call for all parties to fulfil their legal obligations to avoid further civilian suffering and loss of life.

The skies over the conflict in Ukraine are filled with identical-looking consumer drones piloted by combatants and civilians alike – aircraft that promise to be a regular feature of war in the future. Few methods exist for telling small drones apart in airspace: combatants, unable to distinguish between drones that are a threat and those that aren’t, may direct attacks at civilian drone pilots.

In this post, civilian drone researcher and consultant Faine Greenwood argues that the aid world must move quickly to better define where small consumer drones fit into international humanitarian law.

Since its creation in 2000, the Bruges Colloquium on International Humanitarian Law has been jointly organized by the ICRC and the College of Europe, bringing together government representatives, international organizations, military practitioners, academics and civil society to grapple with the most urgent issues relating to the law of armed conflict. Its 22nd edition, held in October 2021, examined the enduring relevance of international humanitarian law (IHL) and the update of the ICRC Commentaries.

In this post, ICRC legal adviser Mickey Orkin unpacks some of the key issues discussed during last year’s Colloquium – conversations between hundreds of participants online from 59 countries – and the key takeaways for the work of the ICRC Commentaries team.

With armed conflicts persisting in various parts of the globe and at risk of breaking out in others, it is crucial to take a step back.

In this post, Boyd van Dijk, a McKenzie Fellow at the University of Melbourne, revisits the making of the Geneva Conventions and demonstrates why this history still matters today.

This year marks the 160th anniversary of the publication of Henri Dunant’s classic text, ‘A Memory of Solferino’, in 1862. Dunant’s powerful book inspired the founding of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and the First Geneva Convention of 1864.

In this post, Hugo Slim, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, reflects on changes in warfare and humanitarian aid since Dunant’s legacy and makes three calls to action of his own.

On 22 December 2021, the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously to adopt a resolution on Afghanistan introducing, for the only the second time in 30 UN sanction regimes, an explicit humanitarian carve-out. For those providing humanitarian assistance and supporting basic human needs in Afghanistan, donors, and private partners, the exemption gives much-needed assurance that they can continue their operations in Afghanistan without fear they are running afoul of UN sanctions against members of the Taliban and associated persons and entities, as well as the Haqqani Network.

What is a humanitarian carve-out, why was it so urgently necessary in the first place, and where do we go from here? In this post, Helen Durham, ICRC Director of Law and Policy in Geneva, and Chris Harland, ICRC Operational Legal Coordinator in New York, unpack the most pressing issues.