Current and Future Challenges to Respect for IHL: A Practitioner’s Perspective

In this lecture, Jelena Pejic will discuss certain key challenges and opportunities, from a practitioner’s perspective, relating to upholding respect for international humanitarian law. A former Senior Legal Adviser in the Legal Division of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva, Ms. Pejic is currently a non-residential Senior Fellow at the Lieber Institute for Law & Warfare at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and the Institute’s Lieber Scholar for 2023.

In over twenty years with the ICRC, Ms. Pejic was responsible for a range of the organization’s legal policy work related to the treatment of persons in enemy hands, including the law and practice of detention in armed conflict and other situations of violence. She also developed institutional positions on the relationship between IHL and terrorism, the extraterritorial use of force, the legal and practical challenges posed by internment in armed conflict, investigating violations of IHL, and other issues. From 2011 to 2019, she was in charge of the Improving Compliance with IHL project, which the ICRC carried out in cooperation with the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.