Abstract

Over the course of four meetings in September-October 2024, thirty leading experts in International Humanitarian Law discussed whether there is a need to strengthen IHL to address the challenges of 21 st century warfare, and how that could best be accomplished. The resulting White Paper identifies five substantive areas (space warfare, cyberwarfare, autonomous weapons, environmental warfare, and treatment of non-state actors during armed conflict) that the participating experts believed warrant clarification, new rules, or interpretations of existing rules found in the Geneva Conventions or other elements of IHL, through new treaties, soft law, and interpretative guidance.

Keywords

The 1949 Geneva Conventions, the 1977 Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions, International Humanitarian Law, Space Warfare, Cyber Warfare, autonomous weapons, protecting the environment in wartime, treatment of non-state actors, and targeted killing of non-state actors

Publication Date

2025

Document Type

Article

Publication Information

Journal of International Law Symposium (forthcoming 2025)

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COinS Michael P. Scharf Faculty Bio