Influencer, gamer, soldier, spy: the online era of child recruitment and its implications in international law (Part I)

As social media and gaming platforms create new interfaces between tech-savvy children and armed actors, new questions should be asked regarding how the law prohibiting child recruitment and use in hostilities can be promoted and enforced online. In this two-part post, ICRC Advisers Vanessa Murphy, Siobhan Sparkes McNamara, and Tilman Rodenhäuser consider how the digital environment is transforming more traditional forms of child recruitment, give a rough typology of related trends in the information and communications (ICT) environment, identify the relevant international law, and propose recommendations to improve compliance with these laws in the digital age.

A leading media figure and foreign fighter of a notorious group designated as terrorist was sentenced to life imprisonment for “conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, resulting in death”. Although outwardly appearing to quench the thirst of esteemed Lady Justice, the criminal charge reveals only part of the picture: in addition to having provided material support, the defendant was also filmed personally executing two kneeling soldiers, in other words, a foreseeably serious violation of international humanitarian law (IHL). Whilst these factual elements are mentioned with regard to the aggravated circumstances of the conduct and resulting consequences for sentencing considerations, the defendant was only charged with one single criminal count – the terrorist offence. Such is characteristic of the issues this post seeks to address, namely, the tensions that arise when such serious violations of IHL are apparently overlooked, and victims’ calls for justice left unanswered. In this post and as part of the Emerging Voices series, Natasha Floodgate, PhD candidate and teaching assistant at the University of Geneva, analyses current trends surrounding prosecutions of terrorist offences and war crimes before examining why such practice occurs. In a bid to reconcile the latitude afforded by the international counter-terrorism framework with existing state obligations under IHL and international criminal law (ICL), the author calls for a dualistic approach in order to achieve comprehensive prosecutorial outcomes.

The humanitarian landscape is being reshaped by converging trends, including the rapid adoption of new technologies in warfare, growing restrictions on how and where humanitarians can operate, impacts of the climate crisis and steep reductions in funding.   How are these trends shaping the needs of communities? What should communities realistically expect from humanitarians making difficult trade-offs in the face of an increasingly fraught operational space and precipitous funding declines? These are some of the key questions the ICRC's new policy report  seeks to answer, based on focus group discussions with communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and Ukraine, alongside interviews with humanitarian practitioners and policymakers in and beyond these contexts. In this post, part of our series “Delivering for people in an evolving humanitarian landscape”, ICRC Senior Policy Advisers Arjun Claire and Avigail Shai focus on what communities said they are experiencing in this changing environment and identify four priorities to meet these community needs and expectations.

Cluster munitions cause harm both at the moment of attack and long after fighting has ended. By scattering submunitions across wide areas, often with high failure rates, they expose civilians to immediate danger while leaving behind unexploded ordnance that can kill and injure for decades. For survivors, the consequences can last a lifetime, extending beyond the initial injury to affect physical and mental health, education, livelihoods and participation in community life. The Convention on Cluster Munitions was created in response to these documented and enduring humanitarian consequences, combining prohibition of the weapon with obligations to clear contaminated areas and assist victims. In this post, ICRC Legal Adviser Fahad Ahmed and ICRC Physical Rehabilitation Program Coordinator Maarten Abeel examine the humanitarian case for strengthening the implementation and universalizing the Convention ahead of its Third Review Conference in Laos in September 2026. Drawing on the experience of survivors and the role of physical rehabilitation in preventing injury from becoming lifelong exclusion, they argue that the Convention has demonstrated the value of humanitarian disarmament in both preventing future harm and addressing its consequences. They call on states to reject any normalization of cluster munition use, strengthen victim assistance and rehabilitation, and accelerate universalization of the Convention.

International humanitarian law (IHL) is primarily associated with the conduct of hostilities and the protection of people during armed conflict. Yet some of the decisions that determine civilian risk in a future conflict are made long before fighting begins, including where states choose to locate military infrastructure. This raises an important question: what role does IHL play in peacetime decisions that may shape the humanitarian consequences of a future war? In this post, Gabija Grigaitė examines whether IHL requires states to consider civilian protection when deciding where to locate new military objectives. Using Lithuania’s planned brigade-level military training area as a case study, she argues that the principle of precaution can require measures to be taken in peacetime to reduce the risk of disproportionate civilian harm in a future conflict. The post considers what this preventive dimension of IHL means for decisions about locating military objectives near densely populated areas and critical civilian infrastructure.

Civilian protection is often assessed by whether a person has been warned, evacuated, registered, sheltered or reached with relief. For many persons with disabilities, each measure depends on a wider chain: support persons, assistive devices, accessible communication, transport, medication, electricity, rehabilitation and local services. This post introduces the dependency-chain test and links it to existing international humanitarian law (IHL) rules on proportionality, precautions, warnings, evacuation, displacement, non-discrimination and relief. Lassi Murto is a Finnish disability-rights advocate, Chair of SMA Finland and Programme and Thematic Advisor at Abilis Foundation. He lives with spinal muscular atrophy and uses personal assistance in daily life. Writing in a personal capacity, he argues that IHL does not need a new legal category for every support relationship. Disability-inclusive interpretation, informed by the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), can instead help reveal what existing rules require when civilian safety depends on relationships, devices, services and infrastructure around the person.

As states race to develop autonomous weapons systems, the effort to agree binding international rules on machine decisions over life and death has reached a critical moment. In this post, Eberechukwu Owuamanam, Jesuit scholastic and humanitarian practitioner, argues that Pope Leo XIV's call to “disarm” artificial intelligence should be taken literally when it comes to such weapons. Writing from a humanitarian perspective shaped by work in the Global South, he contends that no autonomous system should ever select and attack a human being without meaningful human control, warns that automated force will fall hardest on those least able to build or resist it, and calls on states to conclude a binding treaty prohibiting autonomous weapons designed to target people and strictly limiting the rest.

Memorialization, one of the five pillars of transitional justice, plays a vital role in preserving the memory of international humanitarian law (IHL) violations and gross human rights violations, supporting accountability, and preventing recurrence. Building an accurate and inclusive collective memory of past atrocities is a resource-intensive process, fraught with challenges ranging from limited access to archives and conflict zones to the risk that dominant narratives overshadow marginalized voices. Artificial intelligence (AI) and data-driven technologies are increasingly used to ease these burdens, from cross-referencing dispersed records to expanding public access to memorialization projects. In this post, Paola Forgione and Megah Bintang Mahadinah examine the opportunities and risks that AI presents for memorialization processes. The authors argue that while AI can accelerate documentation and broaden the reach of memorialization efforts, it cannot substitute for the human judgement, empathy, and contextual understanding that transitional justice ultimately depends on.

The international humanitarian system has built a sophisticated architecture for the protection of civilians, namely political resolutions, cluster coordination mechanisms, reporting frameworks, and accountability tools. Yet when conflict-affected people are asked directly whether they feel protected, or whether they trust the actors claiming to protect them, the answer is frequently at odds with the system’s own assessments. Despite commitments under the Grand Bargain to center local actors and affected communities, research consistently reveals a persistent gap between how humanitarian actors evaluate their own performance and how affected communities experience it. In this post, part of our ongoing series “Delivering for people in an evolving humanitarian landscape,” Imane Karimou argues that humanitarian protection faces a trust and legitimacy crisis that cannot be resolved through better coordination or increased funding alone. Drawing on community perception research and the experience of community-centered protection frameworks, she makes the case for reorienting how the system evaluates success, measuring protection through community-reported experiences of safety, trust, and dignity, rather than through system-generated indicators and outputs.

Pacific Island states have long demonstrated leadership in promoting peace, disarmament, and humanitarian values. From traditional customs that reflect principles contained in contemporary international humanitarian law (IHL), to global advocacy for nuclear disarmament and environmental protections during armed conflict, the region is uniquely equipped to contribute to discussions on advancing IHL. This is particularly important in the context of contemporary challenges, including climate change, the illicit trade of small arms, cyber operations, and the vulnerability of submarine data cables that affect Pacific livelihoods. In this post, ICRC Legal Advisers Hannah Crothers and Catherine Thornton explore the importance of amplifying Pacific voices in the conversation on IHL, including through the Global Initiative to Galvanize Political Commitment to IHL, which provides a platform for states to contribute to the global discussion through sharing their experiences and insights.