Before the fighting begins: IHL and the location of military objectives

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.

For the world's more than 120 million forcibly displaced people, the idea of refuge is not an abstraction – it is a horizon, an act of imagination, and sometimes the only thing that keeps hope alive. Yet as displacement becomes more protracted, more politicized, and more invisible to public attention, the language of solidarity risks being hollowed out. World Refugee Day, marked each year on 20 June, is a moment to resist that hollowing – to insist that the dignity and rights of displaced people are not seasonal concerns, and that solidarity is not a sentiment but a practice, one with concrete legal and humanitarian frameworks. In this post, the fourth in our ongoing series "Delivering for people in an evolving humanitarian landscape," we depart from our usual analytical format to share a poem. Written and performed by Mamuch Bey, "the shelter that shone in the distance" offers what legal and policy language often cannot: an interior account of displacement, the longing for protection, and what it means to reach – or fail to reach – safety. Timed to this year's World Refugee Day theme of solidarity with refugees, and its call to uphold dignity and stand up for the rights of displaced people, the poem is a reminder that behind every case, every crossing, and every camp is a person who once looked toward a shelter they hoped would hold them. Listen to more of Mamuch Bey's work on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/user/31bnjlzbyocnaelbup5zdmgxmqey

Across Africa, norms regulating the conduct of hostilities long predate the codification of modern international humanitarian law (IHL). The ICRC Tool on African traditions and the preservation of humanity in warfare highlights how many African societies developed rules limiting violence, protecting civilians, and preserving human dignity during conflict. These traditions resonate strongly with contemporary IHL principles and offer important insights for current efforts to protect children affected by armed conflict. At a time when children continue to face killing and maiming, attacks on schools and hospitals, recruitment, displacement, and profound psychological harm, grounding humanitarian protection in both legal obligations and culturally rooted values can strengthen efforts to uphold humanity during war. In this post, Professor Robert Doya Nanima, Member of the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, and Special Rapporteur on Children Affected by Armed Conflict, reflects on the relevance of the ICRC Tool through the lens of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. Drawing connections between African traditions, IHL, and African Union frameworks such as Agenda 2040 and Agenda 2063, he argues that the protection of children in conflict requires breaking down institutional silos and placing children at the center of humanitarian action.

Conflict and displacement do more than destroy homes, livelihoods, and infrastructure. They also fracture the social relationships through which people sustain dignity, identity, and collective life. Yet humanitarian responses often focus primarily on individuals as beneficiaries, measured through categories of vulnerability, targeting, and service delivery. In many conflict settings, this approach can actively erode the communal bonds, local agency, and relational structures that communities themselves rely on to survive and recover. In this post, part of our new series “Delivering for people in an evolving humanitarian landscape”, Eberechukwu Owuamanam, Jesuit scholastic and humanitarian practitioner, draws on experiences from conflict-affected and disaster-affected communities in Nigeria, as well as African relational ontology, to argue that humanitarian action should move beyond models centered primarily on intervention and delivery. Drawing on concepts including Ubuntu, Igwebuike, and the Ijeluwa framework, he argues for approaches grounded in accompaniment, practice that strengthens, rather than replaces, the relational networks through which dignity and recovery become possible.