International humanitarian law and digital technology: critical reflections (webinar)

On 8 June, the Asser Institute and the International Review of the Red Cross will host a webinar celebrating the common launch of the Asser Institute's Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law (YIHL) Vol. 2018 (published in 2020) and the International Review of the Red Cross (IRRC) Vol. 102, Issue 913 (published in 2021). Vol. 2018 of the YIHL is devoted to the humanitarian and legal challenges surrounding weapons and new military technologies and the latest edition of the IRRC addresses ‘Digital Technologies and War’. This event, co-hosted by the Hague Initiative for Law and Armed Conflict (HILAC), the International Humanitarian and Criminal Law (IHCL) Platform and the Designing International Law and Ethics into Military Artificial Intelligence (DILEMA) project, will address two different dimensions of international humanitarian law and digital technology; one focusing on the kinetic/military dimension, and one looking at the humanitarian/protection dimension. The first presentation (‘The law of armed conflict issues created by programming automatic target recognition systems using deep learning methods’) will be given by one of the authors who contributed to the YIHL: Dr Joshua G. Hughes, research analyst at ‎Trilateral Research. The second presentation (‘Tech and armed conflict: the spread of harmful information in humanitarian settings’) will be provided by Ms Delphine van Solinge, who is the ICRC’s protection advisor on digital risks for populations in armed conflict and who was interviewed in the IRRC.