Dr Cordula Droege is Director of International Law, Movement and Partnerships at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). She joined the ICRC in 2005 and has since served as Head of the Legal Division and Chief Legal Officer, Chief of Staff to the President, and Head of Legal Advisers to Operations, in locations including Sri Lanka and Israel and the Occupied Territories. She has worked in the field of international law and human rights at the International Commission of Jurists, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Max Planck Institute for International Law. She holds a PhD and a law degree from the University of Heidelberg and an LLM from the London School of Economics.

This article brings a critical feminist phenomenological lens to a central pillar of the international humanitarian law regime – the proportionality rule – and reflects on how the narrow, masculine orientation of the norm fails to accommodate women’s experiences of incidental mental harm. While women disproportionately experience double the rates of post-traumatic stress disorder in response to trauma events than do men, the proportionality rule does not expressly include mental harm within its ambit, exposing the rule to conservative interpretation and exclusionary applications for gendered mental harm. Some interpretations of the temporal constraints of the rule (concerned with the legality of single strikes, absent their latent, reverberating effects) reflect a dominant event-based legal model at odds with women’s experiences of mental harm that are protracted, cumulative and repercussive. Studies reveal women’s fear as a product of constructions of masculinity and femininity, structural inequity, and fear conditioning. This article offers a reparative response through a gendered and temporal alignment of the principle of proportionality with women’s experiences of mental harm in armed attacks.

Sophie Legros1 is an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Methodology of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She holds a PhD from the Department of International Development at the LSE. Her research explores changes in social norms shaping work, care and security in gang-controlled neighbourhoods in Medellín, Colombia, and the methods best suited to capture those dynamics.

The continued applicability of international human rights law in situations of armed conflict entails that the right to mental health also applies. It is therefore crucial to examine how human rights supervisory mechanisms engage with this right in such contexts. Building on this premise, the present paper investigates how United Nations treaty bodies address mental health in conflict and post-conflict settings in their Concluding Observations. The study is based on a textual analysis of these documents conducted through the Universal Human Rights Index database. The findings reveal that most recommendations contained in the Concluding Observations call for particular attention to the mental health of children, especially child combatants, and of women, particularly those who are victims of sexual and gender-based violence. In terms of action required, they emphasize the need to ensure the availability and accessibility of mental health and psychosocial support services to persons affected by conflict.

The mental health and psychosocial needs of victims of armed conflict remain inadequately addressed in international law, despite growing recognition of their significance. More than one in five people living in post-conflict settings will develop a mental health condition, yet demand for mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) frequently outstrips supply. This article examines the intersection between human rights law and victim assistance regimes in disarmament treaties, exploring how the latter could strengthen international legal and policy responses to post-conflict mental health needs. Though it has conceptual and implementation gaps, Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights provides a doctrinal foundation for mental health care; building on this foundation, victim assistance models include features such as explicit prioritization of MHPSS, practical implementation frameworks, and clearer international assistance obligations. These features could inform the development and implementation of the right to health, offering particularity that, if extended beyond specific weapons victims, has the potential to benefit wider post-conflict populations.

Academia, though not immediately associated with preserving humanity in war, has been instrumental in advancing international humanitarian law (IHL). Since the 1864 Geneva Convention, scholars have supported the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) by promoting IHL, researching it, and helping the law develop. In a world facing 130 armed conflicts, rising polarization and dehumanization, and a paradoxical mix of interest in and disillusionment with IHL, academia’s role is more vital than ever. Despite its contributions, however, limited scholarship exists on how academia has supported the ICRC in preserving humanity in war by contributing to IHL. How has academia promoted this body of law? How has research strengthened IHL as the cornerstone legal framework that it is today? What role have academics played in its normative development? This article explores these questions, examining academia’s endeavours to promote IHL through education, advocacy and public engagement; its research efforts to consolidate IHL, clarifying it and supporting its implementation; and its contributions to IHL’s development, from involvement in treaty-making to proposing new norms. The piece also calls for reforms in IHL education to enhance its impact, advocates for multidisciplinary and ethical research focused on compliance and other pressing issues, and urges greater inclusion of academia in structures and processes aimed at developing the law. Finally, the article concludes by issuing a call to action for States, universities and academics, and outlining pathways to collectively strengthen IHL and uphold humanity in war.

International humanitarian law (IHL) has been under immense pressure in the past few years. Despite IHL being created to mitigate suffering in armed conflicts, in recent years it has been leveraged by some as a means of justifying violence against civilians under the guise of proportionate incidental loss. With IHL lacking organic international accountability mechanisms, some States have “gamed” the rules of this body of law, resulting in military operations causing the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians that are defended as legally justifiable. Such arguments are a far cry from the original founding impetus of IHL, based on Dunant’s idea of humanity as “a kind of energy which gives one a positive craving to relieve as many as one can”. In this article, we argue that to re-emphasize humanity, it might be necessary to focus on other means of accounting for civilian harm, whether it is lawful or unlawful. Traditionally, criminal prosecutions have punished grave breaches of IHL or war crimes, neglecting the place of redress. Other bodies of international law, such as international human rights law, have expanded litigation possibilities for individual civilian harm in armed conflict at both the domestic and international level. Many of these cases have helped shape the key components of human rights law and have provided a strong incentive for States to ensure rights, protect victims and prevent future violations. Yet lawful civilian harm, where States find that incidental civilian loss is not excessive in relation to the military advantage gained, may provide no legal avenue to a claim of a violation of IHL or human rights law.

If IHL is considered from a civil (delict/tort) litigation and operational perspective, it can better recognize the agency of civilians and can be an avenue to respond to their harm and mitigate its repetition in military operations. It can also bolster the precautionary principle of militaries taking “constant care” to spare the civilian population from the ravages of armed conflict. This can be seen in the US and Dutch militaries adopting civilian harm mitigation and response (CHMR) action plans that go beyond IHL compliance and see civilian harm as also a moral and strategic concern. The increasing use of both civil litigation and operational CHMR is, we argue, representative of an increasing trend to uphold humanity in line with the spirit and purpose of IHL. We outline how this can be embedded in the operationalization of the principle of precaution and the duty of constant care as an obligation of due diligence to redress civilian harm, whether lawful or unlawful, as a basic tenet of humanity in war.

This article examines whether – and, if so, how – existing international humanitarian law (IHL) protects civilians from cumulative mental harm, understood as harm to mental health caused by the cumulative effect of multiple isolated or interrelated actions undertaken during a military operation. It explores three legal avenues under IHL – (1) the general protection of civilians from the dangers of military operations, (2) the obligation to take constant care to spare civilians in the conduct of military operations, and (3) the prohibition against launching attacks expected to cause excessive incidental civilian harm – to determine the degree to which cumulative mental harm is already addressed by existing law. The article contends that parties to conflict are required to establish a framework for operationalizing these protections and outlines the organizing principles for such a framework.

Mental health constitutes an integral and indivisible dimension of the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health under international law. Yet, the specific obligations it generates for States in situations of armed conflict would benefit from a cross-sectoral discussion and engagement to enrich emerging understandings in both legal doctrine and institutional practice, with a view towards a comprehensive analytical framework. This article argues that the right to health framework, anchored in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and other core human rights treaties, provides a legally coherent and operationally applicable framework for the protection of mental health in armed conflict. It examines how the Availability, Accessibility, Acceptability and Quality framework, minimum core obligations, the requirement of non-retrogression and the duty to use maximum available resources operate in conditions of armed conflict. It also considers how to operationalize this framework, which recognizes affected persons as rights holders and engages legal responsibility of States as duty bearers as a condition for effective safeguarding of the right to mental health in armed conflict.

Although they are critical for military units’ compliance with international humanitarian law (IHL), junior leaders are often overlooked in the development of ethical and moral decision-making when it comes to education and training. To foster the internalization of IHL principles in this vital cohort, those principles must be better melded with military ethics. Through examination of different military efforts to create ethical warriors, important points from behavioural ethics, the use of warrior ethoses, instances of competing positive values, and ideas for effective and affordable curricula, the present article suggests a path forward for accomplishing this.

This article examines the role of the African Union’s Peace and Security Council (PSC) in strengthening compliance with international humanitarian law (IHL), a dimension of its mandate that remains largely unexplored in the literature. The article argues that although this mandate is explicit and carries significant normative potential, its implementation remains limited, fragmented and inconsistent. To demonstrate this, the study proceeds in three steps. First, it analyzes the normative foundations of the PSC’s IHL mandate through an interpretative and systemic reading of its constitutive texts. Second, it critically assesses the Council’s concrete practice, highlighting the limits and inconsistencies of its actions and instruments. Third, it identifies avenues for improvement, emphasizing the need to institutionalize compliance monitoring, to structure PSC decisions with greater precision and gradation, and to make fuller use of available legal mechanisms and partnerships. The central argument is that the PSC holds under-utilized legal and institutional tools which, if fully mobilized, could significantly enhance its effectiveness in fulfilling its IHL-related mandate and establish it as a key regional actor in the promotion of respect for IHL and the protection of victims of armed conflict.

Conflict-affected populations experience harms beyond those to life and limb, yet narratives about the effects of attacks remain dominated by war’s physical impacts. This article highlights the incidental mental harms of war, which are not necessarily the objective of an attack but which can nevertheless be devastating to those affected. It proposes a critical analysis of international humanitarian law’s principle of proportionality in attack through a decolonial lens. Among the rules regulating the conduct of hostilities, proportionality has attracted attention for its protective potential against incidental mental harm, but its interpretation remains the subject of fierce debate. This article argues that mental harm should be considered in jus in bello proportionality assessments, but not in a manner that undermines the decolonizing global mental health agenda. A decolonial lens reveals that some legal interpretations encourage the consideration of incidental mental harm in decisions of attack, but only for a fraction of the mental harms experienced in conflict (such as post-traumatic stress disorder or a traumatic brain injury), thus omitting much of the lived reality of mental harm. These interpretations might succeed in deconstructing the hierarchy between physical and mental harms, only to replace it with one between types of mental harms – a hierarchy that privileges and prioritizes Western understandings of mental health. Rather, this article posits, the application of proportionality should centre localized and socio-culturally appropriate notions and experiences of mental harm.

Abimbola Ajirinsola Hannah Ajileye (born 1974) is a Deputy Director in the International and Comparative Law Department of Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Justice. A qualified legal practitioner with over two decades experience in private practice specializing in both criminal and family law, she transitioned to the Nigerian Civil Service in 2014. She has since held key roles within the Ministry of Justice, including Maritime Law Desk Officer (2018–20), and currently serves as Desk Officer for the International Criminal Court (since 2018) and International Humanitarian Law (since 2022). She is the IHL Focal Person for Nigeria’s National IHL Committee (since 2023) and a member of the Nigerian Bar Association, the International Bar Association, and the Federation of International Women Lawyers.

The legal appraisal of civilian mental harm amounting to trauma is something that has been discussed by international scholars when it comes to warfare and its aftermath, but no discussion has taken place on how such civilian war trauma can be compensated for. The question becomes even starker in cases of cumulative war trauma, where the trauma incurred appears as an externality of warfare and as a natural repercussion stemming from the latter. Along these lines and drawing from climate change litigation that has taken place before international courts and tribunals over the last few years, this article details how arguments derived from that litigation scheme can present prospects as well as limitations with regard to how cumulative war trauma, caused by States as well as by non-State actors, can be subject to compensation.

Italy and the Italian Red Cross (ItRC) have recently developed a strong institutional partnership aimed at the promotion of international humanitarian law (IHL), both domestically and in international fora. This cooperation has been particularly evident in the last few years and culminated during the 34th International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (International Conference) in 2024, when Italy and the ItRC worked side by side in the preparation of the event and actively followed up to turn commitments into concrete outcomes. Their close coordination also stands out in the participation and engagement of relevant administrations and national stakeholders in Italy’s National IHL Committee, re-established in 2021, whose role and functioning features prominently in this contribution as a concrete example of Italy and the ItRC’s renewed collaboration. Through a qualitative review of previous initiatives, including the adoption of the first IHL Voluntary Report, the cooperation on a new IHL military manual and the joint engagement in the last International Conference, this paper assesses how cooperation between States and National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies influences both IHL’s implementation and its elevation as a political priority, analyzing enabling factors, suggesting avenues for further improvements and potentially illustrating an example that could inform similar efforts in other national contexts.

In 2019, the 33rd International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent adopted the landmark Resolution 2 on “Addressing the Mental Health and Psychosocial Needs of People Affected by Armed Conflicts, Natural Disasters and Other Emergencies”. By examining Resolution 2’s origin and the time and context in which it was adopted, and by analyzing its normative influence on subsequent international instruments adopted by States, this article explores how Resolution 2 has contributed to advancing and establishing norms and standards for responding to the mental health and psychosocial needs of people affected by armed conflicts and other emergencies.

This article examines the reintegration of children and women captured from areas formerly controlled by the so-called Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq, and subsequently repatriated to Central Asian States, through the lens of the International Committee of the Red Cross’s (ICRC) integrated protection and mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) approach. Drawing on mixed methods, it combines routine pre- and post-intervention data from DASS-21 and Paediatric Emotional Distress Scale (PEDS) assessments of fifty-two participants with semi-structured interviews with seven repatriated women and six psychologists involved in ICRC-supported MHPSS services.

Quantitative findings indicate reductions in overall psychological distress across adults, adolescents and younger children during a period in which they received integrated protection–MHPSS support. Qualitative narratives complement these results by illustrating how participants experienced these improvements, while also highlighting persistent challenges related to the weight of memory, separation from family members left behind, ambiguous loss, stigma and social difficulties. The study contributes to the limited empirical literature on post-return trajectories by highlighting the role of receiving families and communities in fostering acceptance of returnees and reducing stigma, the need for long-term support for both returnee families and front-line practitioners, and the importance of integrating mental health and psychosocial considerations into national reintegration frameworks.

The article argues that protection measures – aiming to ensure that the rights and dignity of returnees are upheld, their legal and administrative issues are addressed, and their family links are protected – and layered MHPSS care supporting emotional well-being and psychological recovery are operationally interdependent and can be mutually reinforcing in practice. It suggests that integrated approaches may offer a relevant framework for addressing the layered vulnerabilities experienced by these populations, as responses are more likely to match the depth and complexity of their needs when protection and MHPSS are implemented in a coordinated manner. By documenting the experiences of returnees and practitioners, the article offers operational insights into integrated protection–MHPSS strategies for people affected by conflict and reflects the ICRC’s engagement in supporting the safe, dignified and rights-based reintegration of returnee children and women.

National IHL committees (NIHLCs) have been repeatedly recognized as one of the most effective tools for strengthening implementation of international humanitarian law (IHL). This article traces the evolution of Australia’s NIHLC since its establishment in 1977, describes recent reforms to its mandate, composition and goals, and provides examples of its work at a local, regional and global level. In doing so, the article seeks to provide an example of how a long-standing NIHLC can strengthen and reaffirm IHL implementation and foster greater collaboration between a government and a National Red Cross and Red Crescent Society.