The Law of Protracted Conflict: Overcoming the Humanitarian-Development Divide

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Heike Krieger
• Subject Area: Public Law
• Term: from 2019 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 428994051

Contemporary armed conflicts have become protracted and complex with far-reaching socio-economic consequences, such as severe damage to infrastructure, disruption of services, and protracted displacement. The dire socio-economic dimensions of protracted conflicts, the link between poverty and fragility, and the traditional divide between humanitarian and development assistance render it difficult to address the short- and long-term needs of affected communities. The proposed project will provide a comprehensive analysis of the institutional and substantive legal frameworks within which humanitarian and development assistance are delivered. Its aim is to investigate the extent to which international law enables integrated, sustainable and accountable humanitarian and development assistance in contexts of protracted conflicts. The project will deliver on its aim through three closely connected work packages (WP) that focus on institutions, legal regimes and accountability, respectively. WP 1 charts the multitude of humanitarian and development actors operating in contexts of protracted conflicts and examines whether their mandates, principles, legal relations, and institutional structures are amenable to the creation of a humanitarian-development nexus. WP 2 focuses on the interactions between legal regimes applicable to protracted conflicts, with a view to evaluating whether international law contributes to the creation of the divide between the two sectors or can in fact provide legal common grounds to overcome the divide between them. Lastly, WP 3 assesses the need for new standards and mechanisms to ensure the inclusion of and accountability to affected communities in light of the expanding and interconnected nature of humanitarian and development responses. The project will be the first to approach the divide between humanitarian and development assistance comprehensively from an international law perspective. Moreover, it will clarify the laws that pertain to the underexplored, socio-economic dimensions of protracted conflicts. Therefore, the project will make fundamental advances in the field of international law, as well as the multidisciplinary fields of humanitarianism, development, transitional justice, and peacebuilding. More broadly, the research findings of the project will contribute to some of the fundamental debates in international law, for example, on the evolution of international (humanitarian) law in face of the changing characteristics of armed conflicts, regime interactions and fragmentation of international law, and the expanding role and authority of non-state actors, particularly international organisations, in global governance. Beyond its contributions to scholarship, the project will develop legal and policy recommendations for the interpretation and design of international law and thus engage in knowledge transfer for international cooperation towards the operationalisation of the humanitarian-development nexus.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: United Kingdom
• Co-Investigator: Andreas Buser
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr. Robin Geiß; Dr. Giedre Jokubauskaite