Beyond Compliance: In Conversation

Beyond Compliance
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What does everyday life during war and armed conflict look like? How do ordinary people engage with armed actors? And how can the law contribute to protecting civilians? Join Katharine Fortin and Florian Weigand in their discussions with leading academics, researchers, and practitioners working and conducting research in this area, shedding light on armed groups, civilian protection, and international law. 

  1. 1D AGO

    S2 EP 3: Sanctions

    How do sanctions affect the dynamics of armed conflict? How do sanctions work? And do they succeed in addressing harm and need? Exploring such questions, Katharine and Florian speak with Delaney Simon from the International Crisis Group and Mohammad Kanfash from Utrecht University.  Cited Documents: Kanfash, Mohammad, Sanctions as Barriers to the Work of Humanitarian Organizations in Syria in “Economic Sanctions from Havana to Baghdad: Legitimacy, Accountability, and Humanitarian Consequences,” edited by Joy Gordon. 2025 Kanfash, Mohammad, Interplay between sanctions, donor conditionality, and food insecurity in complex emergencies: the case of Syria. Disasters, 49. 2024 Kanfash, Mohammad, Starve or Surrender: Sanctions as a Siege Warfare Strategy in the Syrian Conflict. Syria Studies Journal, (15) 01. 2023 Simon, Delaney, It’s Not That Easy to Lift Sanctions on Syria, Foreign Policy, 2025. Simon, Delaney, Rethinking UN Sanctions on Syria’s Interim Leaders, International Crisis Group, 2025. Simon, Delaney, U.S. Sanctions Relief for Syria Is an Important Start, but Not Enough, Lawfare, 2025. Guest Bios: Mohammad Kanfash is a doctoral researcher at the Centre for Conflict Studies, Utrecht University, and a humanitarian practitioner with 17 years of experience in the Middle East and Europe. His work bridges academic inquiry and field practice, focusing on sanctions and their consequences for conflict-affected societies. Delaney Simon is a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, where she researches conflict prevention and economic statecraft. She is the author of the organization’s flagship report on the impact of economic sanctions on conflict dynamics. She has worked there since 2021. From 2015 to 2021, Delaney served the United Nations in Afghanistan, Lebanon and Yemen. In those countries, she advised senior United Nations officials on political stability, conflict mitigation and humanitarian planning. Earlier in her career, she was the special assistant to Afghanistan’s Ambassador to the United Nations in New York and a researcher on conflict policy in Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and other countries. The Beyond Compliance Consortium is a co-productive, socio-legal research partnership that traverses the fields of international law, conflict studies, humanitarian protection work and human rights policy, and brings together these communities of scholarship and practice with people with lived experience of conflict. It is funded by UK International Development. The second season is funded by UK International Development, while the first season was funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). Katharine Fortin is an Associate Professor in human rights law and international humanitarian law at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, Utrecht University. Florian Weigand is the Co-Director of the Centre on Armed Groups.

    46 min

  2. JAN 8

    S2 EP 2: Famines & Starvation

    What drives today’s famines? What role does armed conflict play? And to what extent does international law address these challenges? Engaging with such questions, in this episode of Beyond Compliance: In Conversation, Katharine and Florian speak with Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation and Professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and Yousuf Syed Khan, Investigations Manager at Legal Action Worldwide. Cited Documents: de Waal, Alex, The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa: Money, War and the Business of Power, Wiley, 2015. de Waal, Alex, Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine, Wiley, 2018. de Waal, Alex, New Pandemics, Old Politics: Two Hundred Years of War on Disease and its Alternatives, Polity, 2021. Khan, Syed Yousuf, Reframing Medical Deprivation Within the Starvation War Crime Paradigm, Tufts University, Fletcher School of Global Affairs, World Peace Foundation, forthcoming January 2026. Khan, Syed Yousuf, Gaza Arrest Warrants: Assessing Starvation as a Method of Warfare and Associated Starvation Crimes, Just Security, 2024. Kather, Alexandra Lily and Khan, Syed Yousuf, The Nexus Between Starvation Crimes and Sexual Violence: Indicia of On-going Extermination in Tigray, Ethiopia, Opinio Juris, 2023.  Guest Bios: Alex de Waal is executive director of the World Peace Foundation and Research Professor at the Fletcher School, Tufts University. He has worked on famine, conflict, and related issues since the 1980s as a researcher and practitioner. He served as a senior advisor to the African Union on Sudan and South Sudan in various capacities. He is the recipient of the Huxley Award of the Royal Anthropological Institute for 2024. Yousuf Syed Khan is the Investigations Manager at Legal Action Worldwide (LAW) in Geneva, overseeing international criminal investigations across multiple conflict-affected regions in support of strategic litigation. He is also a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Litigation Project, and an associate fellow at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – The Hague. Khan has over fifteen years of legal experience in complex conflict situations, with expertise on UN atrocity inquiries. Khan spent several years working in active conflict zones across Asia, Africa, and Europe. The Beyond Compliance Consortium is a co-productive, socio-legal research partnership that traverses the fields of international law, conflict studies, humanitarian protection work and human rights policy, and brings together these communities of scholarship and practice with people with lived experience of conflict. It is funded by UK International Development. The second season is funded by UK International Development, while the first season was funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). Katharine Fortin is an Associate Professor in human rights law and international humanitarian law at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, Utrecht University. Florian Weigand is the Co-Director of the Centre on Armed Groups.

    56 min

  3. 11/19/2025

    S2 EP 1: Civilian Protection & the Legacies of the War in Afghanistan

    How was civilian protection practiced and experienced during the international intervention and war in Afghanistan? And what are the legacies for international law today? In this episode, Katharine and Florian speak with Shaharzad Akbar, former Chairperson of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, and Thomas Gregory, author of Weaponizing Civilian Protection: Counterinsurgency and Collateral Damage in Afghanistan. Together, they explore how Afghans experienced harm amid two decades of conflict, how the coalition’s approach to civilian protection evolved, and what this reveals about international law. Cited Documents: Akbar, Shaharzad, The Battle Against Gender Apartheid: Hope through Accountability, Verfassungsblog, 2025.  Akbar, Shaharzad, A Crisis of Justice for Afghan Victims of War, Just Security, 2022. Gregory, Thomas, Weaponizing Civilian Protection: Counterinsurgency and Collateral Damage in Afghanistan (Oxford University Press, 2025). Edkins, Jenny, Zehfuss, Maja, and Gregory, Thomas, Global Politics: A New Introduction (Routledge, 2025).  Guest Bios: Shaharzad Akbar is the Executive Director of Rawadari, an organisation that monitors and reports on the human rights situation in Afghanistan. She previously served as Chair of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. Akbar is currently an Honorary Fellow at Wolfson College, University of Oxford. She holds an MPhil from the University of Oxford. Shaharzad's writing has appeared in Just Security, Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Justice Info and other international outlets.  Thomas Gregory is Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. His research focuses on civilian casualties in contemporary conflict, with a particular emphasis on how civilian harm is legitimised. His most recent books are Weaponizing Civilian Protection: Counterinsurgency and Collateral Damage in Afghanistan (Oxford University Press, 2025) and Global Politics: A New Introduction (Routledge, 2025), which is co-edited with Jenny Edkins and Maja Zehfuss.  The Beyond Compliance Consortium is a co-productive, socio-legal research partnership that traverses the fields of international law, conflict studies, humanitarian protection work and human rights policy, and brings together these communities of scholarship and practice with people with lived experience of conflict. It is funded by UK International Development. The second season is funded by UK International Development, while the first season was funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). Katharine Fortin is an Associate Professor in human rights law and international humanitarian law at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, Utrecht University. Florian Weigand is the Co-Director of the Centre on Armed Groups.

    49 min

  4. 07/14/2025

    S1 EP 12: Civilian Agency in the Digital Realm

    How are civilians in Ukraine exercising agency in the digital realm? And what are the consequences of their digital engagement, both politically and under international law? In this episode, Katharine and Florian bring together Oona Hathaway and Taras Fedirko (experts from law and political and economic anthropology) to shed light on this new dimension of agency during armed conflict. Cited Documents: Hathaway, Oona A. and Vera, Catherine and Pe'er, Inbar, Crowdsourced War (March 21, 2025). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5188908 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5188908 Hathaway, Oona A. and Donilon, Sarah and Squires, Carter, War Hazards Compensation for Civilians (March 28, 2025). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5197392 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5197392 Candea, Matei, Heywood, Paolo and Fedirko, Taras. Modalities of Free Speech, Annual Review of Anthropology, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-071423-115444  Candea, Matei, Fedirko, Taras, Heywood, Paolo and Wright, Fiona. Freedoms of Speech: Anthropological Perspectives on Language, Ethics, and Power, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2024. https://doi.org/10.3138/9781487552978 Guest Bios: Oona A. Hathaway is the Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law at Yale Law School, Professor of Political Science at the Yale University Department of Political Science, Faculty at the Jackson School of Global Affairs, and Director of the Yale Law School Center for Global Legal Challenges. She is president-elect of the American Society of International Law and a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She has been a member of the Advisory Committee on International Law for the Legal Adviser at the US Department of State since 2005 and in 2014-2015 she served as Special Counsel to the General Counsel at the U.S. Department of Defense. Taras Fedirko is a lecturer (assistant professor) at the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow, and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. He is a political and economic anthropologist studying how social movements organise to transform war economies; states; and capitalist labour and value regimes. He is currently leading a collective research project exploring crowdsourcing in Ukraine’s war economy. The Beyond Compliance Consortium is a co-productive, socio-legal research partnership that traverses the fields of international law, conflict studies, humanitarian protection work and human rights policy, and brings together these communities of scholarship and practice with people with lived experience of conflict. It is funded by UK International Development. The second season is funded by UK International Development, while the first season was funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). Katharine Fortin is an Associate Professor in human rights law and international humanitarian law at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, Utrecht University. Florian Weigand is the Co-Director of the Centre on Armed Groups.

    56 min

  5. 06/17/2025

    S1 EP11: Civilian Self-Protection and Land

    How does a community’s relationship with the land they live on feed into their experiences of harm? What solutions do they find to protect themselves? Katharine and Florian speak to Dr Piergiuseppe (Pier) Parisi and Dr Marwan Darweish about their research on the different ways in which civilian communities resist against armed actors in Colombia and Palestine. Cited Documents: Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University (UK), On Our Land (video), 2021. Darweish, Marwan, Popular Resistance in Palestine, in Decolonizing the Study of Palestine, Indigenous Perspectives and Settler Colonialism after Elia Zureik, I.B.Tauris, 2023. Parisi, Piergiuseppe, Beyond Compliance Symposium: Security beyond the physical – Addressing the Nasa indigenous people’s spiritual harm in armed conflict, Armed Groups and International Law Blog, 2024. Safety and dignity: Enhancing unarmed civilian protection amongst Palestinian communities in the South Hebron Hills (Masafer Yatta), Civil Protection to stay on our land, Palestine (video), 2024. Guest Bios: Dr. Marwan Darweish, is Associate Professor in Peace Studies at the Center for Peace and security at Coventry University, UK. His research is multidisciplinary and focuses on nonviolent resistance, cultural resistance, unarmed civil protection, conflict transformation cultural heritage and gun crime violence among the Palestinians in Israel. He is former Director of the MA in Peace and Conflict Studies at Coventry university. Dr. Piergiuseppe Parisi Piergiuseppe (Pier) Parisi is a lecturer in international human rights law at the Centre for Applied Human Rights and the York Law School (University of York, UK). Currently, his research focuses on several articulations of the rights of Indigenous peoples, including the right to Indigenous education, Indigenous justice mechanisms and their intersection with international humanitarian and human rights law, as well as Indigenous conceptions of security and protection in armed conflict. Pier was the Principal Investigator of the The Beyond Compliance Consortium is a co-productive, socio-legal research partnership that traverses the fields of international law, conflict studies, humanitarian protection work and human rights policy, and brings together these communities of scholarship and practice with people with lived experience of conflict. It is funded by UK International Development. The second season is funded by UK International Development, while the first season was funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). Katharine Fortin is an Associate Professor in human rights law and international humanitarian law at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, Utrecht University. Florian Weigand is the Co-Director of the Centre on Armed Groups.

    1h 11m

  6. 05/26/2025

    S1 EP 10: Strengthening Civilian Protection

    How is civil society in South Sudan engaging with armed actors to protect civilians? And what can humanitarian actors do? In this episode of Beyond Compliance: In Conversation, Katharine and Florian talk to Rev Peter Tibi, Gemma Davies and Leigh Mayhew about how different types of actors can strengthen civilian protection. Cited Documents: Davies, Gemma, Gray, Felicity, Barbelet, Veronique, Keeping protection paramount amidst a ‘humanitarian reset’: the need for proactive protection action to reduce civilian harm, HPG policy brief, London: ODI Global, 2025. Davies, Gemma, Mayhew, Leigh, with The Bridge Network, Community engagement with armed actors in South Sudan: reducing violence and protection risks, HPG case study. London: ODI, 2024. Davies, Gemma, Barbelet, Veronique and Mayhew, Leigh, Reducing violence and strengthening protection of civilians: debuking assumptions, HPG policy brief, London: ODI Global, 2024. Guest Bios: Rev. Tibi has served as the Principal at Imatong Bible College in Juba, Sudan. He served as an administrator and Assistant Executive Secretary for Africa Inland Church-Sudan, and worked within AIC for 13 years. He moved on to the New Sudan Council of Churches, where he served as the Deputy Executive Secretary; then in the Sudan Council of Churches as Acting Executive Secretary and General Secretary.  Rev. Tibi has served as the Executive Director of RECONCILE, International, since November of  2009. Gemma Davies is a Senior Research Fellow for the Humanitarian Policy Group at ODI. She has extensive experience working with a range of international humanitarian and human rights organisations, as well as the Department for International Development, in several conflict and fragile affected states, predominantly in Sub-Saharan (East, Horn and Western) Africa. Gemma specialises in a range of issues including protection of civilians, forced displacement and humanitarian negotiations.  Leigh Mayhew is a Senior Research Officer within ODI’s Global Risks and Resilience programme, and a fellow at The Centre on Armed Groups. His research focuses on armed group dynamics, illicit economies and development, smuggling networks and the intersection with armed conflict, radicalisation, and the security dimensions of climate change. Currently, Leigh’s work is focused on how communities engage armed actors to advance community self-protection.  The Beyond Compliance Consortium is a co-productive, socio-legal research partnership that traverses the fields of international law, conflict studies, humanitarian protection work and human rights policy, and brings together these communities of scholarship and practice with people with lived experience of conflict. It is funded by UK International Development. The second season is funded by UK International Development, while the first season was funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). Katharine Fortin is an Associate Professor in human rights law and international humanitarian law at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, Utrecht University. Florian Weigand is the Co-Director of the Centre on Armed Groups.

    55 min

  7. 04/03/2025

    S1 EP9: Gender & Civilian Agency

    How are women in India’s violence-affected Manipur State shaping not only conflict dynamics, but also trade and mobility? And how do ideas around gender influence, produce and challenge understandings of the principle of distinction under IHL? In this episode of Beyond Compliance: In Conversation, Katharine and Florian talk to Shalaka Thakur and Helen Kinsella about the synergies between their research. Cited Documents: Kinsella, Helen, Settler Empire and the United States: Francis Lieber on the Laws of War, American Political Science Review, 2023. Kinsella, Helen & Mantilla, Giovanni, Contestation before Compliance: History, Politics, and Power in International Humanitarian Law, International Studies Quarterly, 2020. Thakur, Shalaka & Mampilly, Zachariah, Rebel Taxation as Extortion or a Technology of Governance? Telling the Difference in India's Northeast, Comparative Political Studies, 2024. Guest Bios: Helen Kinsella is a Professor of Political Science and Law at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She holds affiliate faculty positions in the  Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies, the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, the Human Rights Center at the Law School, and the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change. As of June 2023, she is also a Visiting Scholar, at the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. She has a PhD in Political Science and an MA in Public Policy from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and a BA in Political Science and Gender Studies from Bryn Mawr College. Shalaka Thakur is a postdoctoral researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) on the project 'Trade-based statecraft: the new spatial logic of the state' (TRADECRAFT), which explores the role of checkpoints and transit taxes in state-making. Her fieldwork focuses on the borderlands between India and Myanmar, analysing how checkpoints, civilians and authorities interact to shape order and the economy. She holds a PhD in International Relations / Political Science from the Graduate Institute, Geneva, and an MSc in Conflict Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science. The Beyond Compliance Consortium is a co-productive, socio-legal research partnership that traverses the fields of international law, conflict studies, humanitarian protection work and human rights policy, and brings together these communities of scholarship and practice with people with lived experience of conflict. It is funded by UK International Development. The second season is funded by UK International Development, while the first season was funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). Katharine Fortin is an Associate Professor in human rights law and international humanitarian law at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, Utrecht University. Florian Weigand is the Co-Director of the Centre on Armed Groups.

    46 min

  8. 02/06/2025

    S1 EP8: Peacebuilding from Below

    What was the role of civil society in the Basque Country conflict transformation process? How did civil society succeed to even influence the process of ETA's disarmament? And could this happen elsewhere? Florian and Katharine talk to Dr. Véronique Dudouet and Urko Aiartza Azurtza to find out more about how the conflict moved towards peace, whether lessons could be replicated elsewhere and the role of international law in the process. Cited Documents: Dudouet, Véronique, From the Street to the Peace Table: Nonviolent Mobilization during Intrastate Peace Processes, United States Institute of Peace, 2021 Basque Permanent Social Forum, ETA's disarmament in the context of international DDR guidelines: Lessons learnt from an innovative Basque scenario, Berghof Foundation, Transition Series No. 12, 2017 Guest Bios: Urko Aiartza Azurtza was deeply committed to promoting peace in the Basque Country through extensive involvement. Member of the Gipuzkoa Bar, he was involved in many human rights cases in Basque Country and he is currently CoPresident of the European Lawyers Association For Democracy and World Human Rights. He stood as Senator in Madrid from 2011 to 2015. In recent years, he has been actively providing advice on peace and mediation to public and private international institutions in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. He is senior advisor at EIP and a consultant at OCHA's Humanitarian Negotiation Unit as well as a fellow of the Centre on Armed Groups. Since 2019, he has taken on the role of director at the Olaso Dorrea Foundation and its “TM eLab”, a centre for generating innovative ideas in the Basque Country, his birthplace and current residence. Dr. Véronique Dudouet is a Senior Advisor at the Berghof Foundation (Berlin, Germany), where she serves as focal point for inclusive peace processes, and conducts research, trainings and policy advice on conflict transformation, with a specific focus on non-state armed groups and social movements. In 2019, she was a Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow at USIP, Washington DC.  She is the (co-)author of four books, including Civil Resistance and Conflict Transformation: Transitions from Armed to Nonviolent Struggle (Routledge 2014). She has a PhD in conflict resolution from Bradford University, UK (2005). The Beyond Compliance Consortium is a co-productive, socio-legal research partnership that traverses the fields of international law, conflict studies, humanitarian protection work and human rights policy, and brings together these communities of scholarship and practice with people with lived experience of conflict. It is funded by UK International Development. The second season is funded by UK International Development, while the first season was funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). Katharine Fortin is an Associate Professor in human rights law and international humanitarian law at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, Utrecht University. Florian Weigand is the Co-Director of the Centre on Armed Groups.

    58 min
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What does everyday life during war and armed conflict look like? How do ordinary people engage with armed actors? And how can the law contribute to protecting civilians? Join Katharine Fortin and Florian Weigand in their discussions with leading academics, researchers, and practitioners working and conducting research in this area, shedding light on armed groups, civilian protection, and international law. 

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