VCDNP Senior Fellow Angela Kane participated in a panel discussion on 29 March 2019 on "International Law in Tomorrow's Wars" under the auspices of the biennial Humanitarian Congress Vienna (HCV). The first HCV was held in 2011 and has continued since with the aim to assess changing needs in humanitarian work, as well as to give such work heightened visibility. The panel discussion in which Ms. Kane took part was focused on international humanitarian law against the backdrop of increased war fighting in urban areas, the advent of lethal autonomous weapons systems and the global fight against terrorism.
In addition to Ms. Kane, the panel also featured keynote speaker Françoise Bouchet-Saulnier (Médecins sans Frontières), as well as Heather Harrison Dinniss (Swedish National Defence University), Manfred Nowak (University of Vienna) and Eva Svoboda (International Committee of the Red Cross).
During her remarks, Ms. Kane paid particular regard to the ongoing conflict in Syria and the chemical weapons attacks, the investigation of which she oversaw under UN auspices during her tenure as UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs. She also addressed the authority of the Organisation on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to assign attribution in cases of chemical weapons attacks, as well as the origin of that authority.
See Ms. Kane's full remarks below from the Humanitarian Congress Vienna's Facebook page, beginning at 36:30.
https://www.facebook.com/humanitaerer.kongress.wien/videos/2403817849864437/
