11 April 2022, 18:00-19:30
Military Briefings
Xin Qiao
Among the many aspects of warfare it aims to regulate, international humanitarian law (IHL) establishes rules on what kind of weapons can be used on the battlefield, and how they can be used.
This is usually referred to as the prohibitions or restrictions regarding the ‘means of warfare’. In general, IHL prohibits any weapon ‘of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering’, or weapons that may have indiscriminate or excessively injurious effects--this includes biological and chemical weapons, as well as landmines to a certain extent. But while some weapons are banned altogether, some are authorized under certain circumstances. In practice, this area of the law regulating armed conflicts involves a variety of international legal instruments, ranging from the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols to specific sectoral conventions. Accordingly, given its critical impact on the battlefield, it is crucial for IHL practitioners to understand this area of law.
This Military Briefing will give an overview of the applicable legal frameworks and the contemporary challenges in this area and will also focus on recent events in the armed conflict in Ukraine.
A Captain in the French Navy reserve, Eric Steinmyller is currently the head of the Coast Guard division for the Atlantic Ocean's French area of responsibility. He is in charge of all law enforcement issues in this area, including regarding drug trafficking, piracy, illicit fishing, protection of the environment, as well as search and rescue operations. Prior to this assignment, Mr Steinmyller had a long career in the French armed forces, where he most notably served as head of the law of armed conflict section at the French Ministry of Defense, and as military adviser to the French ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament. He joined a private shipping company in 2013 as a security and safety manager. Since 2016, he is also working as a consultant and lecturer on IHL and Law of the Sea for several military and civilian institutions, especially in the Middle East.
Military Briefings are a unique series of events relating to military institutions and the law. They aim to improve our students’ knowledge of military actors and operations and build bridges between the military and civilian worlds.
Geneva Academy
Applications for the 2024–2025 academic year of our LLM in International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights are open. They will run until 26 January 2024 for applications with a scholarship and until 24 February 2024 for applications without a scholarship.
Adobe
Discover our resources and what our experts and alumni say about the current situation in Israel and Palestine, with regular updates to include new events, articles, podcasts and comments.
UNAMID
This project will develop guidance to inform security, human rights and environmental debates on the linkages between environmental rights and conflict, and how their better management can serve as a tool in conflict prevention, resilience and early warning.
UN Photo/Violaine Martin
The IHL-EP works to strengthen the capacity of human rights mechanisms to incorporate IHL into their work in an efficacious and comprehensive manner. By so doing, it aims to address the normative and practical challenges that human rights bodies encounter when dealing with cases in which IHL applies.
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