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.

This article introduces the global Women’s Safety Index (WSI), outlining its rationale, purpose, and potential applications. The Index consist of three dimensions: Equity, Protection, and Resources, identified as foundational to women’s safety. Key indicators within each dimension are selected based on theoretical relevance and empirical evidence. We detail the statistical methodology and framework used to construct the Index and present validation analyses demonstrating its ability to capture changes in women’s safety, particularly in response to external disruptions. The WSI is available on an interactive digital platform, enabling users to explore, visualize, and compare women’s safety data across regions and over time.

This article explores (a) how conceptualisations of movement embed sedentism within the security–migration nexus and its protection logics and (b) which conceptualisation of movement can analytically challenge that embedding. The overall aim is to problematise the opposition between sedentism and movement. I address these questions by analysing mapping and countermapping practices and considering what insights can be gained by conceptualising life as fundamentally in motion. The maps reveal four concepts of movement: border crossing, routes, journeys, and threads. Each operates within the security–migration nexus. The article then extends the notion of threads into a conceptualisation of life (and matter) as inherently in motion, or life-in-motion. Allowing life to emerge from and through the coexistence of movements offers an analytical framework that creates cracks in sedentism inscriptions within the security–migration nexus while avoiding the reduction of movement to nomadism – the ‘other’ of sedentism.

Protected and conserved areas and ecosystem restoration are key strategies for the conservation of life. Yet, in practice, they are not always closely aligned. Our purpose here is to improve the ability of conservation decision-makers and practitioners to integrate protected and conserved areas and restoration as complementary strategies to achieve broader conservation objectives. Protected and conserved areas can act as reference landscapes and seascapes for restoration, laboratories for restoration, sources of restoration material, vehicles for passive restoration and sites for targeted restoration. But protected and conserved areas themselves may require restoration (within their boundaries, in their buffer zones and between them), as a result of prior degradation, degradation after designation or recognition, and as a result of climate and other environmental changes. Harnessing these interlinkages, we argue, makes political, social, economic and ecological sense. Furthermore, it supports the achievement of multiple objectives, including those related to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, UN Convention to Combat Desertification and the Convention on Biological Diversity. We make six recommendations: (1) Better align restoration and protections plans; (2) insert restoration directly in protected and conserved area management plans where needed; (3) expand spatial planning approaches that include both protection and restoration; (4) promote joint task forces, projects, programmes and strategies that can help better deliver protection and restoration; (5) secure mutual benefits to people and nature as these are essential for sustainability of both protection and restoration interventions; and (6) align objectives for protection and restoration so they can make significant contributions to the delivery of critical ecosystem services such as food security and climate adaptation.

Scholars often analyse Western–Chinese legal conflicts in the nineteenth-century Qing empire through the lens of extraterritoriality. This article examines the 1895 anti-missionary riot in Chengdu and the ensuing dispute over the responsibility of Qing officials. It highlights the protection of foreign lives and property as a key area of contestation between Western powers and the Qing empire. During the riot, Chengdu authorities exploited their discretionary power to challenge missionary presence and undermine treaty obligations. In response, Western powers began a concerted effort to hold local officials accountable by pressuring the Qing state to impose severe punitive sanctions. The riot and its aftermath reveal how a non-Western state negotiated and enforced obligations required by Eurocentric international law. Protection emerges as a multifaceted instrument for the projection of imperial power and a malleable component of the Western-imposed treaty system, mediating the asymmetrical international relations in the nineteenth century.

The recent conflict in the Middle East posed unprecedented threats, with hundreds of long-range ballistic missiles launched toward Israel, targeting military and civilian facilities including hospitals. Organizational and logistic actions were taken in Sheba Medical Center, both pre-emptively and during the conflict, preparing for a mass casualty incident while maintaining routine medical care to the population and maintaining safety of patients and staff. These included discharging patients and increasing home hospitalizations, ward evacuations, transferring patients to protected areas, and classifying patients by their vulnerability and status of protection, accelerated structural adaptation of underground spaces to house patients, and construction of a tented field hospital underground. An effective command and control system was in place to monitor protective status, and an ethical committee was convened to assist in decision-making. These measures enabled continued delivery of emergency and medical care under fire while ensuring the safety of patients and staff.

Cultural heritage rests on imaginings of a shared humanity transcending national dividing lines. However, cultural heritage sites are frequently targeted in war. In this article I show that the politics of cultural protection is marked by tensions and contestations. A key argument is that the protection of cultural heritage in armed conflict is a militarised practice that is informed by notions of protection that are broadly western-centred and masculinised. Therefore, I suggest that they are insensitive to the gendered and colonial power relations that undergird the protection of cultural property. Informed by critical heritage studies, cosmopolitanism, and feminist IR scholarship, I elucidate the claims of this article through a feminist narrative analysis of protection. I identify what is said and what is silenced in heritage protection narratives. First, I focus on the wider storytelling that surrounds heritage protection, unpacking the ethical, gendered, and colonial assumptions employed. Second, I turn to the narration of military protection in the UNESCO military manual, attending to its ethical underpinnings, protection logics, and privileging of distinctively western military knowledge. I conclude by calling for a more nuanced approach to cultural protection.

The need to respect and (physically) protect the dead is well established under international and national laws and extends to human remains found in mass graves. Once mass graves are discovered, and prior to any investigation, the dead in mass graves should be secured to an extent through the protection of the site itself. Should investigations follow (due to human rights abuses or breaches of international humanitarian or international criminal law), then the dead, if excavated, are in the custody and protection of the investigating authorities. Following successful identification of human remains, their return to the next of kin may be possible, or appropriate reburial may ensue.

Engagement with mass graves is complex: no two mass graves are the same, and contexts differ, as may the legal framework governing mass graves. Building on the Minnesota Protocol, international standards for a rights-informed response to human remains found in mass graves are proffered by the Bournemouth Protocol on Mass Grave Protection and Investigation. A new research project now collates information to generate a digital global map of mass graves and asks how and to what extent this holds protective value. Such regularized mass grave mapping was advocated by former United Nations Special Rapporteur Agnès Callamard; indeed, mapping is increasingly employed in human rights contexts as a protection and justice-monitoring measure.

By combining legal, forensic and anthropological insights in responding to the question of data collation in relation to mass graves, this paper sheds light on ways of both conceptualizing and operationalizing digital mapping of mass graves and appraises what kind of protection this may hold for the dead. Structured into four main interrelated sections, the paper briefly anchors data collation as a protection measure under international legal provisions; it then examines the challenges associated with the curation and creation of a global map of mass graves by adopting anthropological, forensic and legal lenses on the subject of mass graves and the data generated surrounding the dead. In a third step, the paper outlines the methodological challenges encountered during the pilot phase of the study, before then offering analysis and discussion on our preliminary findings, where we conclude that the informative value of mass grave mapping holds protective potential, particularly in the absence of physical protection.

As well as offering an original inquiry that fits well with the theme of “protection of the dead”, the paper investigates the very boundaries of protection measures in the context of mass graves and what value they may hold. Such contribution to knowledge and practice is increasingly pressing in situations where physical protection of the dead is not forthcoming, and as an avenue to offer some (albeit incomplete) protection mechanisms for emerging mass grave landscapes: migratory deaths and the threat of mass fatalities arising from extreme climatic events.

United Nations peacekeeping is experiencing a generational shift as several large missions downsize and close. Amid this change, this essay considers the future of the Protection of Civilians (PoC) mandate, which has been a priority of UN peacekeeping since it was first authorized twenty-five years ago. It argues that PoC has evolved significantly, expanding from a narrow focus on physical protection from immediate threats to a holistic approach that includes establishing a protective environment. It suggests that while the PoC mandate has proven effective in reducing violence, the future is fraught with four significant challenges: waning state commitment to UN peacekeeping, the fragmentation of global peace and security mechanisms, shifting local perceptions in a rapidly changing information landscape, and mounting disillusionment among UN personnel. This essay contends that these obstacles underscore the inherently political nature of PoC, where power dynamics and perceptions profoundly impact mission success. As peacekeeping missions scale back, PoC remains essential but increasingly precarious, demanding strategic adaptability and sustained commitment. Ultimately, the essay argues that without renewed political and institutional dedication, PoC’s effectiveness—and the UN’s credibility—will be difficult to uphold in the face of evolving conflict dynamics and geopolitical shifts.