Discrepancies between the main corpus of IHL and the realities of contemporary conflict situations have considerably increased since the end of the Cold War. In recent years, with a rise in intra-state conflict and other significant changes in the nature of armed conflict, there has arisen a clear need to revisit some of the key tenets of IHL in order to explore ways of ensuring the protection of civilians, detainees, prisoners, and people “hors-de-combat.” This need becomes particularly pronounced with regard to the development of advanced warfare technology. Far from implying a weakening of the current legal protection, exploration of the application and interpretation of IHL in contemporary conflicts aims to reinforce the law through the identification of the legal instruments applicable to the new realities and the harmonization of views on the application of current norms.

These challenges to IHL are the central concern of the International Humanitarian Law Research Initiative (IHLRI). Based at HPCR, IHLRI seeks to gather experts (government and independent) to discuss strategies for further research related to challenges to IHL and contemporary international security policies, to conduct original research on some aspects of these discussions, to teach and train practitioners on IHL in innovative ways, and to experiment with internet and other mechanisms for dissemination of information and networking related to IHL.

Among other activities, IHLRI has regularly hosted an informal high-level meeting of government experts (known informally as the Alabama Process) on foundational challenges to international humanitarian law stemming from contemporary conflict environments. A most recent meeting of this group was held in June 2004. IHLRI also continues to host an internet-based communications and information platform on international humanitarian law (www.ihlresearch.org). In addition to IHLRI, HPCR has a number of other projects focusing on human security, conflict management, and conflict prevention. (For more information please visit www.hpcr.org.)