24 November 2016, 12:15-13:30
Geneva Academy Talks
MSF
Violence against health care facilities and humanitarian workers remains a recurring and preoccupying issue in today’s world.
Paradoxically, this takes place within a well-accepted framework of protection of health care facilities and medical or humanitarian personnel under international humanitarian law (IHL), which rules and principles are not contested either by states or non-state armed groups.
This IHL Talk, organized with the support of the ICRC, aims at reflecting on the reasons why health care and humanitarian workers are being targeted despite their protection under IHL and what policy tools can be elaborated to implement and ensure better respect of the law by the different parties in armed conflicts.
Imogen Foulkes, BBC Geneva Correspondent
Babak Ali Naraghi, Head of Health Care in Danger Project, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
Robert Kolb, Professor of Public International Law, University of Geneva and Geneva Academy
Caroline Abu-Sada, Director of the Research Unit on Humanitarian Stakes and Practices (UREPH), MSF Switzerland
The IHL Talks are a new series of events, hosted by the Geneva Academy, on international humanitarian law and current humanitarian topics. Every two months at lunchtime, academic experts, practitioners, policy makers and journalists discuss burning humanitarian issues and their regulation under international law.
Violence against health care facilities and humanitarian workers remains a recurring and preoccupying issue in today’s world.
Paradoxically, this takes place within a well-accepted framework of protection of health care facilities and medical or humanitarian personnel under international humanitarian law (IHL), which rules and principles are not contested either by states or non-state armed groups.
This IHL Talk, organized with the support of the ICRC, aimed at reflecting on the reasons why health care and humanitarian workers are being targeted despite their protection under IHL and what policy tools can be elaborated to implement and ensure better respect of the law by the different parties in armed conflicts.
Our Head of Research and Policy Studies, Dr Erica Harper, spoke at a United Nations Economic and Social Council panel on June 16th, focused on Humanitarian Aid Under Siege.
Osama Maatermawi, Founder and Director of the Syrian Center for Legal Affairs and Arbitration, tells about his experience taking our Executive Master of Advanced Studies.
ICRC
Co-hosted with the ICRC, this event aims to enhance the capacity of academics to teach and research international humanitarian law, while also equipping policymakers with an in-depth understanding of ongoing legal debates.
Participants in this training course will be introduced to the major international and regional instruments for the promotion of human rights, as well as international environmental law and its implementation and enforcement mechanisms.
UN Photo / Jean-Marc Ferré
This training course will explore the origin and evolution of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and its functioning in Geneva and will focus on the nature of implementation of the UPR recommendations at the national level.
Adobe
This initiative wishes to contribute to better and more coordinated implementation, reporting and follow-up of international human rights recommendations through a global study on digital human rights tracking tools and databases.
Victoria Pickering
This project aims at providing support to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Association Clément Voulé by addressing emerging issues affecting civic space and eveloping tools and materials allowing various stakeholders to promote and defend civic space.