Call for papers: 1st Nordic Symposium on the Law of Armed Conflict

Scholars and legal practitioners are invited to submit their abstracts for the first Nordic symposium on the law of armed conflict, hosted by the Department of International and Operational Law of the Swedish Defence University and organized jointly with the Swedish Red Cross.

The symposium is the first of its kind implementing the pledge of Nordic states and Red Cross societies made at the 34th Red Cross conference in 2024. It aims to bring together academics, legal practitioners and other stakeholders from the military and humanitarian sectors and to strengthen collaboration, facilitate expertise and knowledge transfer, and enhance the dissemination of IHL/LOAC across the Nordic region.

Call for papers

For the 2025 symposium, those interested are invited to submit abstracts on any of the following three broad themes (note examples are in no way meant to be limitative):

• Conduct of hostilities: eg contemporary challenges in the realm of new weapons; technological developments such as cyber, autonomy and ai; methods of warfare; arena specific issues (land, air, sea, cyber and space); the law of targeting
• Protection: eg protection of medical services; humanitarian assistance operations; environment; prisoners of war and security detainees
• Compliance: eg gender-related aspects of compliance; socio-psychological factors that induce compliance and non-compliance; issues of collective and individual responsibility for loac violations

Abstracts shall not exceed 750 words, be accompanied with a CV and sent with the subject line ‘Nordic LOAC symposium abstract’ to Zarah Abrahamsson, email: zarah.abrahamsson@fhs.se

Deadline for submission is 1 March 2025.