On Friday 22nd February 2013 the Wolfson Law Society hosted a talk by Vanessa Holzer and Natália Fereirra de Castro on the Customary International Humanitarian Law (IHL) Project. A joint undertaking of the British Red Cross and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Customary IHL Project collects and analyses national and international practice on various matters of IHL, thus updating the practice that underpinned the 2005 ICRC Study on Customary IHL.

Customary IHL is important in today's armed conflicts because it fills gaps left by treaty law and so strengthens the protection offered to victims. Based at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, four British Red Cross researchers collaborate closely with the ICRC in making State practice from various countries, ranging from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, available on the ICRC Customary IHL database: http://www.icrc.org/customary-ihl