The number and extent of today’s armed conflicts, and the crisis of compliance with international humanitarian law (IHL), are well-recognized. In his annual report on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict, the UN Secretary-General has underscored how “[i]nconsistent standards, assertions of exceptional circumstances and hollow calls for compliance [have] undermined respect for international humanitarian law”. Similarly, the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has acknowledged that the problem is not only about a lack of compliance, but active disregard for IHL. At the same time, the ICRC has recently come to the end of a long cycle of work revising its commentary on the Fourth Geneva Convention, which sets out key protections for civilians in armed conflict and under occupation. This episode focuses today on what feels like a stark gulf between the intricate work on the commentary – looking closely at individual articles of a 75-year-old Convention – and the larger sense of a growing and highly complex crisis of compliance in IHL.

Joining us for this episode are three experts in IHL: Marnie Lloydd (Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington), Abhimanyu George Jain (ICRC), and Yousuf Syed Khan (Legal Action Worldwide).

The episode refers, directly or indirectly, to the following materials:

• Protection of civilians in armed conflict: Report of the Secretary-General, S/2025/271 (15 May 2025) – available here
• Mirjana Spoljaric (President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)), Speech given at the UN Security Council Open Debate on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict(20 May 2026) – available here
• ICRC, The Geneva Conventions and their Commentaries– available here 
• ICRC, Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. Geneva, 12 August 1949. Commentary of 2025– available here 
• EJIL: Talk!, Just Security and Humanitarian Law & Policy, Protecting civilians in good faith: A joint symposium on the updated ICRC Commentary on the Fourth Geneva Convention– available here
• Yousuf Syed Khan, ‘Beyond Compliance Symposium: Applying a Systems Lens to Starvation as a Method of Warfare’, Armed Groups and International Law (June 18, 2026) – available here
• Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic (Syria Commission) ‘Encircle, Starve, Surrender, Evacuate’ (2018) – available here
• Eliav Leiblich, ‘Closing Loopholes Across Time: the ICRC’s New Commentary on the Fourth Geneva Convention’, Just Security (February 23, 2026) – available here
• Jean-Marie Henckaerts, ‘Protecting civilians in good faith: the updated Commentary on the Fourth Geneva Convention’, Humanitarian Law & Policy (October 21, 2025) – available here
• Abhimanyu George Jain et al, ‘A thematic overview of the updated ICRC Commentary on Geneva Convention IV’, International Review of the Red Cross(2026 forthcoming) – available here
• Marnie Lloydd, ‘War in Cities: The Foreseeable Loss of the Mundane and the Magical’, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, Peace Policy No. 57, May 2024 – available here