Professor Andrew Clapham and Dr Annyssa Bellal will discuss the international law applicable to the ongoing conflict in Israel and Gaza, as well as some of the controversies surrounding the use of legal concepts such as proportionality, war crimes, starvation, and indiscriminate attacks. The discussion will also address more generally how international law can be a tool to tackle the conflict. 

Andrew Clapham is Professor of International Law at the Geneva Graduate Institute. He teaches international law, human rights law, and the laws of war. He recently served as a member of the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan (2017-2023). He was the first Director of the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights (2006 - 2014). In 2003 he was an Adviser on International Humanitarian Law to Sergio Vieira de Mello, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General in Iraq. His publications include War (2021); The Oxford Handbook of International Law in Armed Conflict, co-edited with Paola Gaeta (2014), and co-edited with Paola Gaeta and Marco Sassòli The 1949 Geneva Conventions: A Commentary (2015)

Annyssa Bellal is the Executive Director of the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform and a Senior Researcher at the Center on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding at the Institute. She teaches public international law at the Institute and the law of armed conflict at the University of Bern. Her latest publication, co-authored with Stuart Casey-Maslen, is on the Additional Protocols of the Geneva Conventions in Context (Oxford University Press, 2022).

Photo credit: Momen Faiz / NurPhoto / NurPhoto via AFP