A seminar on Transnational and Non-State Actors: Legal and Policy Challenges was convened against the background of the international and interdisciplinary initiative launched by the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research at Harvard University and the Graduate Institute for International Studies in Geneva, which is aimed at developing and deepening research into how the increasingly prominent role played by transnational and non-state armed groups is changing the landscape of warfare and challenging traditional understandings of the laws and customs of war.

Held in March 2007 at Harvard University, and in cooperation with the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the seminar brought together a group of  twenty-seven experts representing a multidisciplinary set of cross-cutting academics and policymakers. Participants to the seminar were asked to organize their thoughts and intellectual exchanges on non-state armed groups and the contemporary landscape of war and law around three discrete strands of inquiry: the metamorphosis of war; the limitations of the current laws of war; and existing and potential strategic responses.

The aim of the seminar was to examine the recent and consequential rise of transnational and non-state armed groups (NSAGs) with a view to understanding analytically the place and role of these actors in the new context of conflict, and identifying options in relation to the legal and policy implications of these transformations.

In disaggregating the problem into these three different facets, the intent of the seminar was to map out the key components and actors of the new scene and enable an innovative reconstruction. Through presentations and discussions among an international group of senior scholars, the aim, too, was to develop and articulate novel thinking into how the increasingly prominent role played by transnational and non-state armed groups is at once altering the landscape of armed conflict and challenging traditional understandings of the laws of war.

Articulated around these lead strands, panels were devoted to the metamorphosis of war; the challenges to international humanitarian law; existing and potential responses for compliance and international security; non-state actors’ resort to terrorism; the role, place, and status of private military contractors; the involvement of non-state actors in post-conflict situations; and the examination of cases of recent wars where non-state actors featured prominently such as those of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon. 

Six papers were commissioned for the event, and are available through the publications section of the portal.  A full report discussing the themes examined during the seminar will be available in October 2007.