7 June 2021
On Friday 4 June 2021, our former Teaching Assistant Alessandra Spadaro was awarded her PhD summa cum laude (avec félicitations du jury) from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies after defending her thesis before Professor Andrew Clapham (her supervisor), Professor Paola Gaeta, and Professor Sandesh Sivakumaran (from Cambridge University).
ICRC>
While most of the existing scholarship focuses only on security detention or internment by armed groups in non-international armed conflicts, Alessandra Spadaro’s thesis – titled ‘In the Hands of the Rebels: Detention by Armed Groups at the Limits of International Law’ – also studies the detentions of armed group members by their own group and criminal detentions for crimes related to the conflict as well as common crimes.
In her thesis, Alessandra Spadaro studies which international law standards must be respected in order to protect individuals from arbitrary deprivations of liberty and how to interpret and apply them, vis-à-vis armed groups. Her findings are distilled into ten basic principles that should guide any form of detention by armed groups and that are simultaneously realistic for armed groups to comply with and sufficiently protective from the perspective of the detained individuals.
‘I hope to publish my thesis as a monograph soon and to continue studying how armed groups and other non-state actors can comply with international law rules aimed at the protection of individuals and their fundamental rights, including in situations of armed conflict’ says Alessandra Spadaro.
Olivier Chamard/Geneva Academy>
Alessandra Spadaro worked as a Teaching Assistant at the Geneva Academy from February 2018 to February 2021, with a short break in 2019 when she spent a semester conducting research at Harvard Law School.
She assisted international criminal law (ICL) courses in our LLM in International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights and taught bi-weekly tutorials to our LLM students on ICL. Alessandra also assisted courses on international humanitarian law, international human rights law and ICL in our Executive Master in International Law in Armed Conflict.
‘I am very grateful to Professors Robert Roth, Marco Sassòli and Gloria Gaggioli, under whose directorships I served, for giving me the opportunity to work at the Geneva Academy, which allowed me to fund my PhD and offered a great environment to grow as a researcher and teacher’ underlines Alessandra Spadaro.
Geneva Academy
International lawyers, social scientists, security experts, and humanitarian practitioners discussed how research in social sciences could inform IHL experts and humanitarian practitioners to assess whether a certain degree of cooperation between organized armed groups – referred to as a ‘coalition’ – had relevance for armed conflict classification.
ICRC
We are excited to announce the launch of a new project consisting of the publication of a yearly global annual report assessing compliance with international humanitarian law in contemporary armed conflicts.
Cover page of the book
In this launch event, key experts will comment and dialogue with Professor Sassòli on specific aspects of the book, including naval warfare and the law of neutrality, sources of IHL, IHL and human rights, as well as the classification of armed conflict
At this book launch, Erin Pobjie will discuss the key open legal questions on how to interpret and apply the prohibition of the use of force, contemporary challenges facing the it's prohibition, and the relevance of jus contra bellum.
ICRC
This online short course discusses the extent to which states may limit and/or derogate from their international human rights obligations in order to prevent and counter-terrorism and thus protect persons under their jurisdiction.
ICC/CPI
This online short course examines and discusses the main criminal jurisdictions fostering individual legal accountability for international crimes.
Oliver Peters / Pixabay
The ‘Counter-Terror Pro LegEm’ project combines legal analysis with social science research to (1) examine the effectiveness of counterterrorism measures and their effects on human rights and (2) analyse the structure of terrorist networks such as Al Qaeda or the Islamic State and see whether they qualify as ‘organized armed groups’ for the purpose of international humanitarian law.
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.
Geneva Academy
Geneva Academy