20 October 2022, 18:30-20:00
Military Briefings
US Armed Forces in Iraq
Military legal advisors play a critical function in armed forces around the world. They advise on the legality of military operations and ensure compliance with international legal standards on all aspects related to the actions of armed forces (detention, occupation etc.). Military legal advisors also train soldiers of all ranks on the laws and regulations of armed conflict, maintain military discipline, and often serve as bridges with the civilian world, through cooperation with other branches of government or academia. In their functions, they navigate a complex web of legal instruments, policies, directives, and chains of command, and have to adapt to ever-changing circumstances. Yet their role is not always easy to understand from the outside.
This Military Briefing will attempt to answer some of the questions one might have on the function and day-to-day tasks of military legal advisors and offer a glimpse into the functioning of armed forces and the specific role of law and lawyers.
Brigadier General Dan Kuwali serves in the Malawi Defence Force as Commandant of the National Defence College. He is also a former Chief of Legal Services and Judge Advocate General, and served as Division Legal Advisor in the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC).
Outside of his military assignments, Mr Kuwali is a Visiting Professor at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at Lund University. He is also an Extraordinary Professor of International Law at the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria. He also served in various capacities in the Malawi University of Science and Technology, the University of Lilongwe, the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, the U.S. Army War College, and the African Bar Association.
Mr Kuwali’s work and research interests span a spectrum of issues ranging from global security, policy, and strategy to international law and international relations, including international criminal law, human rights and humanitarian law.
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.
Antonia von Malsen tells about her background, the programme and what it will bring to her career.
Geneva Academy
Applications for the 2023–2024 academic year of our LLM in International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights are open. They will run until 27 January 2023 for applications with a scholarship and until 23 February 2023 for applications without a scholarship.
In this lecture organized with the MIDS, Professor Chiara Giorgetti will discuss current efforts to create a reparation mechanism for Ukraine in order to hold Russia liable for its violations of international law.
ICRC
Organized by the Geneva Academy and the ICRC, the Advanced IHL seminar for academics and humanitarian policymakers aims to enhance the capacity of academics to teach and research IHL and contemporary issues arising during armed conflict, while also equipping policymakers with an in-depth understanding of ongoing legal debates and their relevance to decision-making.
The Rule of Law in Armed Conflicts project (RULAC) is a unique online portal that identifies and classifies all situations of armed violence that amount to an armed conflict under international humanitarian law (IHL). It is primarily a legal reference source for a broad audience, including non-specialists, interested in issues surrounding the classification of armed conflicts under IHL.
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.