Newly Graduated LLM Alumnus Publishes a Condensed Version of his LLM Paper in Prominent Blog

14 November 2023

Our LLM alumnus Ioannis Bamnios – who graduated in October from our LLM in International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights – published the main and very innovative argument of his LLM paper on the ‘conduct of hostilities in occupied territories’ in the leading blog Articles of War of the US Military Academy at West Point.

Direct Civilian Participation in Hostilities and its Application Within the Gaza Strip

His blog post forms part of Article of War 2023 Symposium on Israel-Hamas and aims to shed light on the circumstances under which civilians in occupied territories lose protection from direct attack. In this post, Ioannis Bamnios explores direct civilian participation in hostilities and its application within the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, analyzing inter alia mutual exclusivity of hostilities and occupation.

‘My blog post is a shorter version of my LLM paper on the direct participation in hostilities in places where there are no ongoing hostilities (in the IHL sense of the term) and applies the findings of the paper to the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The knowledge I acquired during the drafting of my LLM paper enabled me to write this piece and provide a legal response to one of the issues that arose after the recent eruption of hostilities in Israel and Gaza’ explains Ioannis Bamnios.

‘Our alumnus developed in his LLM paper an innovative and nuanced solution to a question of great contemporary relevance for IHL and war victims. Now he succeeded in having his core idea published in a blog very much read by military lawyers all around the world. I can only hope that those involved in an occupation will follow his advice’ underlines his LLM paper supervisor Professor Marco Sassòli.

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