Law and the Future of War
Through conversation with experts in technology, law and military affairs, this series explores how new military technology and international law interact. Edited and produced by Dr Lauren Sanders and Dr Simon McKenzie, the podcast is published by the Asia-Pacific Institute for Law and Security. Until July 2024, the podcast was published by the University of Queensland School of Law.
Law and the Future of War
The Geneva Conventions and Non-State Armed Groups - Katharine Fortin
In this episode, Simon speaks with Dr Katharine Fortin about non-international armed conflicts, focussing on the intersections between IHL, international human rights law and armed non-State actors.
Dr Katharine Fortin is a senior lecturer of public international law and human rights at Utrecht University's Netherlands Institute of Human Rights. She is the Editor in Chief of the Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights and founder of the Armed Groups and International Law blog. Her book The Accountability of Armed Groups under Human Rights Law (OUP, 2017) won the Lieber Prize in 2018. She is Co-Investigator on the Beyond Compliance Consortium: Building Evidence on Promoting Restraint by Armed Actors. Katharine has a LLM and PhD from the Utrecht University. She is a qualified solicitor in the UK and previously worked at Norton Rose Fulbright, the Council of Churches of Sierra Leone, the ICC and the ICTY.
Additional resources:
- Fortin, Katharine ‘Mapping Calamities: Capturing the Competing Legalities of Spaces under the Control of armed non State Actors without erasing everyday civilian life’ (2023) 8(1) Social Science and Humanities Open
- Matthew Bamber-Zryd, 'ICRC engagement with armed groups in 2024' Humanitarian Law & Policy Blog (31 October 2024)
- Katharine Fortin and Ezequiel Heffes (eds), Armed Groups and International Law: In the Shadowland of Legality and Illegality (Edward Elgar, 2023)
- Naz Modirzadeh, 'Cut These Words: Passion and International Law of War Scholarship' (2020) 61(1) Harvard International Law Journal 1.
- Zoe Pearson, 'Spaces of International Law' (2008) 17 Griffith Law Review 489.
- Helen Kinsella, The Image Before the Weapon: A Critical History of the Distinction between Combatant and Civilian (Cornell University Press, 2015)
- Kieran McIvoy, 'Beyond Legalism: Towards a Thicker Understanding of Transitional Justice' (2007) 34(4) Journal of Law and Society 411.
- Sally Engle Merry, The Seductions of Quantification: Measuring Human Rights, Gender Violence and Sex Trafficking (University of Chicago Press, 2016)
- Ana Arjona, Rebelocracy: Social Order in the Colombian Civil War (CUP, 2016)
- Zachariah Cherian Mampilly, Rebel Rulers: Insurgent