States are increasingly hiring private military companies to act in zones where armed conflicts are occurring. The predominant feeling in the international community is that it would be best to regulate such companies. Cognizant of much confusion as to the status of the employees of private military companies under international humanitarian law, this article explains the laws on mercenaries, c...

von Uexkull, N. 2016. Climate, Conflict and Coping Capacity. The Impact of Climate Variability on Organized Violence. Report / Department of Peace and Conflict Research 111. 44 pp. Uppsala: Department of Peace and Conflict Research. ISBN 978-91-506-2585-1. Understanding the conflict potential of climate variability is critical for assessing and dealing with the societal implications of climate ...

Civilians play an increasingly important and complex role in armed conflicts, both as victims and as perpetrators. While this overall trend towards ‘civilianization’ encompasses all types of present-day conflicts, it is twofold: it takes on a very different nature in high-technology warfare than in the context of low-technology combats that are typical of many civil wars. This article explores ...

Humanitarian agencies are increasingly engaged in research in conflict and post-conflict settings. This is justified by the need to improve the quality of assistance provided in these settings and to collect evidence of the highest standard to inform advocacy and policy change. The instability of conflict-affected areas, and the heightened vulnerability of populations caught in conflict, calls ...

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...

Legacy force-on-force models are symmetrical; they reflect the fact that the dynamics of both sides in the conflict is governed by similar rules. These models have also traditionally focused on the physical aspects of armed conflicts – fire, attrition, detection, movement, logistics, etc. Insurgency models are different in two key aspects: (a) they are asymmetrical and (b) they contain, in addi...

Countries should follow the principle of peaceful development when developing and utilizing outer space resources rights, but increasing militarization or weaponization is contrary to this basic principle. The not only creates tension in international relations also greatly increases danger armed conflicts space. According theory humanitarian law, it can be deduced that once an conflict breaks ...

The human society today is far from perfection and conflicts between groups of humans are frequent events. One example for such conflicts are armed intergroup conflicts. The collective behavior of the large number of cooperating participants in these conflicts allows us to describe the conflict on the basis of models containing only few variables. In this paper we discuss several cases of confl...