The Conduct of Hostilities and International Humanitarian Law: Challenges of 21st Century Warfare

The Study Group on the Conduct of Hostilities in the 21st Century
(hereinafter the SG) was established in 2011 and conducted its first
meeting in Sofia in 2012. It conducted a workshop in Leiden in November
2013. During this workshop, three general topics were explored. These
were the relationship of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and
International Human Rights Law in the conduct of military operations,
technological challenges posed by new weapons systems and the function
of the basic principles of IHL in the conduct of hostilities. An interim
report on these topics was published and presented at the April 2014
Washington D.C. joint meeting of the ILA and the American Society of
International Law. These topics were discussed further at a subsequent
workshop held in Berlin at the Freie Universität in November of the same
year. Attention was also devoted to the relationship of IHL with general
international law and the place of IHL within the legal “pluriverse”
surrounding modern multinational military operations. The SG was unable
to arrive at a consensus on a number of issues which arose, but the
discussions were nevertheless extremely useful in highlighting some of the
central questions related to the conduct of hostilities and focusing attention
on the core area of the mandate: the legal challenges within IHL relating to
the conduct of hostilities. It was decided in Berlin to refocus the work of
the SG and the final report on those challenges and leave the broader
questions of how IHL relates to other bodies of international law to further
exploration in other forums.