Rebecca Mignot-Mahdavi – författare

Through an analysis of the use of drones, Rebecca Mignot-Mahdavi explores the ways in which, in the context of counterterrorism, war, technology and the law interact and reshape one another. She demonstrates that drone programs are techno-legal machineries that facilitate and accelerate the emergence of a new kind of warfare. This new model of warfare is individualized and de-materialized in the sense that it focuses on threat anticipation and thus consists in identifying dangerous figures (individualized warfare) rather than responding to acts of hostilities (material warfare). Revolving around threat anticipation, drone wars endure over an extensive timeframe and geographical area, to the extent that the use of drones may even be seen, as appears to be the case for the United States, as part of the normal functioning of the state, with profound consequences for the international legal order.

This volume of the Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law takes a close look at the role of so-called “expert manuals” in the interpretation and development of the international law of armed conflict and connected branches of international law relating to military operations.

This volume of the Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law takes a close look at the role of so-called “expert manuals” in the interpretation and development of the international law of armed conflict and connected branches of international law relating to military operations.

Volume 24 of the Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) is dedicated to investigating IHL’s universalist claims from different perspectives and regarding different areas of IHL.

Volume 24 of the Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) is dedicated to investigating IHL’s universalist claims from different perspectives and regarding different areas of IHL.

This book, a follow-up publication to the 2016 volume Foreign Fighters under International Law and Beyond, zooms in on the responses that the international community and individual States are implementing in response to (prospective and actual) returning foreign fighters (FFs) and their families, focusing on returnees from Syria and Iraq to European countries. As States and international organisations are still ‘learning by doing’, the role of the academic community is to help steer the process by bridging the divide between international standards and their implementation at the national level and between security concerns and human rights law. Furthermore, the academic community can and should assist in identifying ways forward that are both effective, sustainable and international law-compliant. Those are, ultimately, the goals that the present volume seeks to pursue. The observations, recommendations and warnings included in this book will be useful in future debates on (returning) FFs, both in the academic world and in the world of policy makers and practitioners, as well as to the public at large.Francesca Capone is Associate Professor of International Law at the Istituto DIRPOLIS of the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa, Italy.Christophe Paulussen is Senior Researcher International Law at the T.M.C. Asser Instituut in The Hague, The Netherlands.Rebecca Mignot-Mahdavi is Lecturer in International Law at the Manchester International Law Centre, University of Manchester, School of Law in Manchester, United Kingdom.