Potential harm to human rights and the environment, including by corporate actors, is amplified in situations of conflict. This article focuses on applying the right to a healthy environment in relation to armed conflicts and corporate responsibility. In particular, it analyzes and compares due diligence requirements in the European Union Conflict Minerals Regulation and the International Law Commission's Draft Principles on Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflicts and examines how these align with the right to a healthy environment.

Contemporary ecological and climate crises have thrown into sharp relief debates around what roles and responsibilities, if any, international security bodies ought to have in addressing environment-related matters. Building on a wider catalogue of the United Nations Security Council's practice concerning the environment, in this article, we provide a snapshot of the Council's practice pertaining in particular to the environment and armed conflict. In addition to setting out key aspects relating to the personal, geographical and temporal scope of that practice, we identify four armed-conflict-related substantive themes arising in the Security Council's actions in this area: (1) relations between conflict and natural resources; (2) relations between conflict and adverse environment-related phenomena; (3) relations between conflict and chemical and biological weapons; and (4) adverse impacts of conflict on the environment. Through this examination, we aim in part to provide stakeholders with a more extensive and detailed basis on which to evaluate what actions the Council has taken – and, by inference, which actions it has not taken – with respect to the environment and armed conflict.

In this iteration of the Review's “Beyond the Literature” series, we have invited Ezequiel Heffes to introduce his recent book Detention by Non-State Armed Groups under International Law, before then posing a series of questions to Tilman Rodenhäuser, René Provost, Mariana Chacón Lozano and Katharine Fortin, who have agreed to serve as discussants of the book. Tilman Rodenhäuser is a Legal Adviser at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), with particular expertise in non-State armed groups (NSAGs) and detention. René Provost is the James McGill Professor of Law at McGill University and has written extensively on public international law, including his recent monograph Rebel Courts: The Administration of Justice by Armed Insurgents.1 Mariana Chacón Lozano has served as the Operational Legal Coordinator for the ICRC in Colombia since October 2020 and has worked for the ICRC since 2011. Katharine Fortin is Associate Professor at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights within the Faculty of Law, Economics and Governance of Utrecht University. The Review team is grateful to all four discussants, and to Ezequiel, for taking part in this engaging conversation.

Aerial visuals play a central – and increasing – role in military operations, informing military decision-makers in real time. While adding relevant and time-sensitive information, these visuals construct an imperfect representation of people and spaces, placing additional burdens on decision-makers and creating a persuasive – yet misleading – virtual representation of the actual conditions on the ground. Based on interdisciplinary analysis of critical security studies, behavioural economics and international law literature, as well as rich data from US and Israeli military investigations into four military operations spanning from 2009 to 2021, this article identifies three types of challenges stemming from the mounting reliance on aerial visuals to inform military operations: technical challenges, relating to the technical capabilities and features of aerial vision technologies; cognitive challenges, relating to decision-making biases affecting human decision-makers; and human-technological challenges, relating to the human–machine interaction itself. The article suggests ways to mitigate these challenges, improve the application of the law of armed conflict, and protect people, animals and the environment during armed conflicts.

Over the last decade, social and behaviour change strategies have increasingly been used to address human rights and child protection concerns, including harmful practices such as child marriage, female genital mutilation and violent discipline. Social and gender norms have also been recognized as key drivers of child recruitment. Nonetheless, the use of social and behaviour change strategies to prevent and respond to the recruitment and use of children in armed conflict has not yet been systematically explored or applied. Building on academic and practical sources, including findings from studies by the International Committee of the Red Cross and United Nations University, social and behavioural science theory, experiences from the Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism on grave violations against children, and academic literature, this article explores how social and behaviour change approaches can inform prevention of and response to the recruitment and use of children in armed conflict. The article concludes that social and behaviour change approaches can effectively inform prevention and reintegration efforts and can facilitate responses that bridge the humanitarian, development and peace nexus. Using social and behaviour change approaches can help to reveal why children are recruited from the perspective of key actors and entities across the socio-ecological framework in order to prevent the practice from becoming more accepted.

The “State Expert Meeting on International Humanitarian Law: Protecting the Environment in Armed Conflicts”, organized by Switzerland and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for States party to the Geneva Conventions, was held in early 2023. The meeting brought together nearly 400 experts from ministries of defence, the environment and foreign affairs from over 120 countries to share national experiences, challenges and good practices related to the protection of the environment in armed conflicts. In addition, expert resource persons from the UN Environment Program, the UN International Law Commission and the International Union for Conservation of Nature supported the exchanges. The meeting's purpose was to progress on the national implementation of international humanitarian law relating to the protection of the natural environment in armed conflicts. The Chair's Summary prepared by Switzerland and the ICRC reviews the contents of the meeting, including the good practices shared, and can be drawn upon to enhance environmental protection in war. It can be found in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish at: www.icrc.org/en/document/chairs-summary-report-state-expert-meeting-ihl-protecting-natural-environment-armed.