This is the second report on ‘‘International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and the Challenges of Contemporary Armed Conflicts’’ that has been prepared by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for an International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent. In the years that have elapsed since the first report was presented to the 28th International Conference in Geneva, in December 200...

Recent scholarship has established that a majority of Americans will support the use nuclear weapons and violate principle noncombatant immunity when American lives are on line. Some scholars contend, however, these hawkish attitudes an outlier other Western democratic publics have more fully internalized taboo, as well prohibition deliberately killing civilians. To investigate cross-national i...

In 2003, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), in cooperation with the T.M.C. Asser Institute, launched a major research effort to explore the concept of “direct participation by civilians in hostilities” (DPH Project).1 The goal was to provide greater clarity regarding the international humanitarian law (IHL) governing the loss of protection from attack when civilians involve th...

In this paper we consider a scenario where one or more robotic bodyguards are protecting an important individual (VIP) moving in a public space against harassment or harm from unarmed civilians. In this scenario, the main objective of the robots is to position themselves such that at any given moment they provide maximum physical cover for the VIP. The robots need to follow the VIP in its movem...

What motivates ordinary civilians to sacrifice their lives for revolutionary causes? We surveyed 179 Libyan revolutionaries during the 2011 conflict in Libya. These civilians-turned-fighters rejected Gaddafi's jamahiriyya (state of the masses) and formed highly cohesive fighting units typical of intense conflicts. Fighters reported high levels of "identity fusion"--visceral, family-like bonds b...

Drawing on theories of intergroup prejudice and decision making, the authors examined how much participants valued lives of conationals and enemy civilians. Using decisions made under risk, Experiment 1 showed that Americans valued Iraqi and American lives equally when outcomes for those nations did not compete but valued American lives more under outcome competition. Experiments 2 and 3 extend...

In a retrospective study of coronary risk factors in young soldiers with coronary heart disease (CHD), designed to explain why junior ranks in the British Army have a higher mortality rate from CHD than comparable British civilians, high prevalence of heavy cigarette smoking was found to be the major discriminant. In general, young men with CHD have higher prevalence of cigarette smoking, and a...