News

During one week, from 19 to 23 March, practitioners, scholars, experts and students from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines discussed the roles that memory, culture and history play in dealing with a violent past and in preventing recurrence of atrocities.

In 2017, 55 situations of armed violence amounted to armed conflicts according to the definitions under international humanitarian law and international criminal law. The vast majority were non-international armed conflicts, as in preceding years. The analysis highlights two salient features: the multiplication of armed non-state actors and unprecedented casualties linked to armed gang violence.

Gloria Gaggioli has been appointed Swiss National Fund (SNF) Professor at the Law Faculty of the University of Geneva where she will lead a four-year research project on ‘Preventing and Combating Terrorism and Violent Extremism: Towards an Empirico-Legal Approach’.

Leading academics, law enforcement experts and practitioners from different regions and legal backgrounds, and representatives from international organizations and civil society will join an academic working group to discuss use of force challenges in different contexts.

In this ground-breaking commentary, conducted under the auspices of the Geneva Academy, over sixty international law experts investigate the application of the Geneva Conventions and explain how they should be interpreted today.

Our new paper ‘Diversity in Membership of the UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies’ examines the composition of UN human rights treaty bodies (TBs) notably in relation to gender balance, geographical representation, as well as TBs members’ subject-matter expertise and professional background.

Our Rule of Law in Armed Conflicts (RULAC) online portal features updated entries on the armed conflicts taking place in Iraq, Libya, Syria, South Sudan, Turkey and Yemen. These integrate recent developments like the Turkish offensive in Afrin, Israel’s largest scale aerial attacks inside Syria, and the divisions and infightings in Yemen.

Students of our LLM in International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights and Master of Advanced Studies in Transitional Justice, Human Rights and the Rule of Law will have the opportunity, during the Spring semester, to follow an optional course on the Islamic law of armed conflict. The course is also open to a limited number of external participants.

On the occasion of our 10th anniversary, colleagues, friends, partners and alumni told what the Geneva Academy means to them!

Our new publication The Armed Conflict in Israel-Palestine provides an update of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and highlights 2017’s most important developments.