Book launch: Animals in the International Law of Armed Conflict

About this event

The panel discusses the findings of the recent book Animals in the International Law of Armed Conflict, edited by Anne Peters, Robert Kolb, Jérôme de Hemptinne. The book fills a lacuna in the scholarly writings on the law of armed conflicts. From an international legal perspective, both domestic and non-domestic non-human animals are forgotten actors. This is largely due to the anthropocentric nature of international humanitarian law, which treats non-human animals as objects or property. However, since animals are endangered, affected, exploited, and killed in situations of armed conflicts, it is important to explore how international humanitarian law applies to them. You are invited to join the editors of the book and some discussants to analyse in depth this fascinating new topic.

Panellists

• Professor Anne Peters (Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law Heidelberg)
• Professor Robert Kolb (University of Geneva)
• Dr Jérôme de Hemptinne (Universities of Utrecht and Louvain)

Anne Peters is a director at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (Heidelberg) (Max Planck Institute), a professor at the Universities of Heidelberg, Freie Universität Berlin and Basel and an L. Bates Lea Global Law Professor at the University of Michigan. She holds an honorary doctorate of the University of Lausanne. She was a member (substitute) of the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) in respect of Germany (2011–14) and a legal expert for the Independent International Fact- Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia (2009). She was the President of the European Society of International Law (2010–12) and has served on the governance board of various learned societies such as the German Association of Constitutional Law (VDStRL) and the Society of International Constitutional Law (ICON-S). She is currently president of the German Association of International Law (DGIR).

Robert Kolb is Professor of Public International Law at the University of Geneva. He has worked as a legal advisor for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) (1998–9) and sporadically for the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (since 2000). He was a secretary of the Institut de Droit International (1999– 2003) and was a member of the Board of Directors of the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights (Geneva Academy). In 2008, he was the director of studies for The Hague Academy of International Law (Francophone stream). In 2011, he acted as a counsel for the German Government in the Jurisdictional Immunities case (Germany v. Italy) at the International Court of Justice. He acted as legal counsel (avis de droit) in several dozens of cases. Robert Kolb was a lecturer in public international law at the Graduate Institute of International Studies (Graduate Institute) (1999–2002), and later an associate professor at the University of Bern (2002–7), as well as adjunct professor at the University of Neuchâtel (2003–8). He has also taught at the Geneva Academy (and its predecessor institute), as well as at the Catholic University of Milan, in 2002.

Jérôme de Hemptinne is a Lecturer at Utrecht University. He is also teaching IHL and international criminal law at the University of Louvain, at the Catholic University of Lille, at the Institut d’études politiques (Paris) and at the Geneva Academy. He worked for more than a decade at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. He also worked at the Office of the United Nations Legal Counsel in New York and at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. Jérôme de Hemptinne is a member of the editorial committee of the Journal of International Criminal Justice.

Discussant

Dr Saba Pipia (Diakonia IHL Center, Georgian-American University)

Saba Pipia is a Legal Adviser at the Diakonia IHL Center in Jerusalem and teaches international law at the Georgian-American University. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Law from Tbilisi State University. Throughout his doctoral and postdoctoral studies, he was a visiting researcher at the Michigan State University (USA), the Max Planck Institute (Germany), the University of Groningen (The Netherlands). He was an invited lecturer at the University of Porto (Portugal) and the University of Iasi (Romania). He is a recipient of multiple research scholarships including from the DAAD, European Commission and the US Government (Fulbright program). Areas of his research include international humanitarian law, international criminal law and animal law. He has published academic publications in Georgia and abroad.

Chair

Dr Marco Longobardo (University of Westminster)

Marco Longobardo is a Senior Lecturer in International Law at the University of Westminster, where he teaches public international law, international humanitarian law, international criminal law and other related subjects. He undertook his doctoral studies at the Sapienza University of Rome and previously lectured at the University of Messina and in the context of IHL courses for the personnel of the Italian armed forces. He has published extensively on public international law issues and he is the author of The Use of Armed Force in Occupied Territory (Cambridge University Press 2018), for which he was awarded the 2021 Paul Reuter Prize. He is the Reviews Editor of the Journal of International Humanitarian Legal Studies and sits on the advisory board of the International Community Law Review and the Journal du Droit Transnational.