Qatar Red Crescent Society’s (QRCS) head of International Relations and International Humanitarian Law (IHL) Dr Fawzi Oussedik delivered yesterday a lecture on IHL and Contemporary Challenges to some master’s students at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), as part of their academic programme for 2020-2021.
The virtual event was a part of the ongoing co-operation between QRCS and HBKU to promote a culture of  IHL among the latter’s students. The lecture was moderated by Dr Mostafa Othman al-Amin and attended virtually by a diverse group of students in different majors and cultures.
Dr Oussedik introduced the purpose of the lecture: “To highlight a set of challenges and issues involved in the application of IHL these days, and their implications to the complexities of humanitarian action and the protected groups like civilians and relief workers”.
The lecture is just an introduction that should be followed by further in-depth research on such important topics by those interested in this specialisation.
It covered 12 challenges facing IHL, in an attempt to understand them and answer the questions they raise. These challenges are as follows: Privatisation of war, excessive force leading to armed conflicts, expanded definition of non-international armed conflict, counter-terrorism or third category of armed conflict, phenomenon of militarisation of children in armed conflicts and gross violations against innocence, multinational forces between responsibility and protection, new means and methods of warfare, urban warfare or conflicts of disproportionate distribution, legitimacy of international humanitarian intervention between sovereignty and the responsibility to protect, divergence between IHL and human rights, international judiciary and its impact on development of IHL development to face contemporary challenges, and role of international humanitarian fact-finding commission in contemporary war.
Dr Oussedik urged the student-researchers to engage in the development of the premises and concepts underlying IHL, which has an accumulative nature, just like human civilisation itself. 
He referred to the mission of humanitarian diplomacy undertaken by QRCS, in relation to the enhancement of the role of IHL and human rights principles in alleviating the suffering of the conflict-affected communities and ensuring that these populations have their basic rights respected and their minimum needs met.