Research in International Law at the BSIS is clustered around questions that engage the performative significance of the International Law of Armed Conflict within a context of institutional and interpretative fragmentation. The focus of this research theme is accordingly on the overlap and contestation between various international law regimes – international humanitarian law, international criminal law, international human rights law – and how they come to interact with, influence and potentially govern situations of actual or emerging global conflict.
Special attention is directed at the role of practice and how regimes of international law become used not only by states but also by non-state actors and international lawyers. In this way, the International Law of Armed Conflict is understood as a historic but no less dynamic project situated at the intersection of normative ideals and an evolving professional practice.