The Beyond Compliance Approach: Centering Harm + Need Towards Full(er) Protection in Armed Conflict

Ioana Cismas, Katherine Fortin, Rebecca Sutton, Ezequiel Heffes, & Anastasia Shesterinina

One hundred twenty—This is the number of wars currently being fought around the world. Notably, and despite the fact that their intensity varies, conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, the Sahel region, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, and elsewhere demonstrate a “consistent pattern of grave and lasting civilian harm” and humanitarian need. The overarching aim of the Beyond Compliance Consortium is to examine what strategies have the most potential to generate compliance and restraint by armed actors—and more broadly, to facilitate full(er) protection—in order to prevent, reduce, and respond to harm and need arising in armed conflict. As such, we acknowledge that many of the concepts that are regularly used to describe lived experiences of conflict and to guide responses to suffering and loss in war are not neutral.

The fact that the epistemological contours, potentialities, and limitations of key concepts have either not been sufficiently investigated conceptually and empirically—as is the case for civilian harm—or that they remain deeply contested—as is the case for humanitarian need—represents an obstacle to developing effective legal, policy, and operational programming. As a foundational analytical step in the Consortium’s research endeavor, this Article makes three major scholarly contributions to the way in which the lived reality of war is viewed (ontology), studied (epistemology), and addressed by different stakeholders. First, this Article delivers conceptual clarity to key terminology used to describe the lived experience of armed conflict. Second, it provides insights into the conceptual interrelationship between civilian harm and humanitarian need, their combined scope, and their connection to international humanitarian law (IHL and international human rights law (IHRL), respectively. Third, by drawing on interdisciplinary insights, this Article demonstrates that efforts to achieve armed actors’ restraint from violence and abuse are not an alternative to, but rather complementary to, approaches that seek to achieve armed actors’ compliance with IHL and IHRL.

One hundred twenty—This is the number of wars currently being fought around the world. Notably, and despite the fact that their intensity varies, conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, the Sahel region, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, and elsewhere demonstrate a “consistent pattern of grave and lasting civilian harm” and humanitarian need. The overarching aim of the Beyond Compliance Consortium is to examine what strategies have the most potential to generate compliance and restraint by armed actors—and more broadly, to facilitate full(er) protection—in order to prevent, reduce, and respond to harm and need arising in armed conflict. As such, we acknowledge that many of the concepts that are regularly used to describe lived experiences of conflict and to guide responses to suffering and loss in war are not neutral.

The fact that the epistemological contours, potentialities, and limitations of key concepts have either not been sufficiently investigated conceptually and empirically—as is the case for civilian harm—or that they remain deeply contested—as is the case for humanitarian need—represents an obstacle to developing effective legal, policy, and operational programming. As a foundational analytical step in the Consortium’s research endeavor, this Article makes three major scholarly contributions to the way in which the lived reality of war is viewed (ontology), studied (epistemology), and addressed by different stakeholders. First, this Article delivers conceptual clarity to key terminology used to describe the lived experience of armed conflict. Second, it provides insights into the conceptual interrelationship between civilian harm and humanitarian need, their combined scope, and their connection to international humanitarian law (IHL and international human rights law (IHRL), respectively. Third, by drawing on interdisciplinary insights, this Article demonstrates that efforts to achieve armed actors’ restraint from violence and abuse are not an alternative to, but rather complementary to, approaches that seek to achieve armed actors’ compliance with IHL and IHRL.

  [Biographies]