The ICRC’s core publication on teaching international humanitarian law (IHL) is available online, providing academics, researchers and students with a wealth of updated resources, cases and references, in a user-friendly format. New case studies are being uploaded on a regular basis.

Access How does law protect in war? Online

Main features

The platform is divided into three main parts:

1. The Law provides a comprehensive IHL course outline, which allows readers to navigate directly to specific case studies, linking the legal theory to relevant humanitarian practice.
2. The Practice sets out more than 350 case studies – many of them new – illustrating specific topics of IHL based on public sources. The Discussion section of each case raises thought-provoking questions to foster reflection and debate among students. The case studies can be consulted by region, theme or type of document.
3. Pedagogical resources offers recommendations on how to teach IHL and a series of useful course outlines for law, journalism or political science professors.

What’s new

The novelty of the online platform resides in its easy navigation, through hyperlinks, between The Law, The Practice and the online index. New case studies on emerging humanitarian and legal issues are regularly added, supplying professors with up-to-date teaching material. A search engine and an extensive index also permit users to perform quick searches using key words. Moreover, most articles referred to in the further reading sections are available through the ICRC library.