 The two issues I've been asked to address, and I will do so in that order, is one, who may be targeted against whom a lethal force be used under international humanitarian law. And then the second issue is the territorial or geographic scope of applicability of IHL. So as regards the first issue, it needs to be made really very clear that the rules on targeting under IHL, I'll say targeting, even though this word is not included really in the treaties, it's use of force, use of lethal force. But I'll speak of targeting anyway, is that the rules of targeting are actually, as regards international conflict, pretty clear. Lethal force may be used against combatants, meaning members of the armed forces of another state in this type of conflict. In fact, IHL specifically says that combatants have the right to take a direct part, to take a direct part in hostilities. And as we know, of course, the use of lethal force is the very essence of war. It is one of the ways you prevail upon the enemy. And it is the specificity of this type of human behavior, if I may put it that way. The more vexed question is, in fact, what about the other category of persons involved, meaning civilians? International humanitarian law treaties, additional protocol one and two, specifically have a rule, both of them, so applicable in international and non-international conflict, that civilians enjoy protection from attack, i.e., they may not be targeted, quote, unless and for such time, as they take a direct part in hostilities. So the question, subject to much controversy today, is what does direct participation in hostilities mean under those relevant provisions of AP1 and AP2, and how should they be interpreted? I can, at this point in time, only remind you of what the ICRC's response to that question was. It was provided in 2009 in a document issued by the organization called the ICRC's guidance on the notion of direct participation in hostilities under IHL. And what does it say? It's sort of for non-lawyers. I think it would be rather complicated to read. I'm going to try and be as simple as I possibly can. What it essentially, the essential question, thus, that it answers is, when are persons otherwise considered civilians not protected from attack when they may be targeted, because they are directly participating? And the guidance, in fact, differentiates between two such categories. If I may put it that way, you see that I'm trying to simplify, so that's not correct. The first one are members of organized armed groups. In other words, fighters in a non-international armed conflict. The guidance in the ICRC took the position that persons whose continuous combat function it is to directly participate in hostilities on the side of an armed group in a non-international conflict and who are therefore de facto the armed forces of that non-state party do not enjoy protection from attack and, in fact, cease to be civilians for the purpose of the conduct of hostilities. The other, it's not a category, but the other group that the guidance refers to are individual civilians who may take a direct part in hostilities on a sporadic basis. Thus, for example, if I'm involved or I live in a non-international armed conflict area and a government soldier is passing by and I shoot him, obviously I am directly participating in hostilities and lethal force may be used against me. That's what IHL says when it says civilians enjoy protection from attack unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities. So what the guidance recognizes is that individual civilians, when they take sporadic participation in hostilities, are not protected from lethal attack during those specific acts of violence. I will just add two more very quick points. One is that the fact that civilians may lose protection from attack under the rules on the conduct of hostilities because they themselves directly participate in hostilities and must expect to be, you know, that force may be used back against them. They do not acquire prisoner of war status upon capture. In other words, the issue of targeting in the guidance has been disassociated from the issue of civilian protection, which civilians, of course, have and maintain upon capture. There's no question about that. In other words, they remain also subject to domestic law for any acts of hostilities, whether as a member of an armed group or as an individual civilian that they may have undertaken. Now, the last point I'd like to make is that I don't have time to go into this, but the guidance also includes something called recommendation nine for those of you who may not be familiar with it. And it essentially says that even though civilians, as I've just described, lose protection from attack under IHL as specified in the treaties for such time as they directly participate in hostilities, nevertheless, this doesn't mean that it's sort of a shooting spree. You can shoot at all times, you know, at anyone. And the guidance introduces this idea of unnecessary balance between military necessity and humanity into, in fact, targeting and essentially says, and I'm sort of paraphrasing here, that the kind and degree of force used must not exceed that which is actually necessary to achieve the military purpose in given circumstances. We can come back to that later. I just want to say that I know that colleagues on my left and on my right are not too happy with the ICRC's interpretive guidance. Neither are states. So I think we've kind of hit a middle road there. That's my personal opinion and I have the right to say it here. The next question I've been asked to address, so sort of that's who may be targeted, combatants, fighters in armed groups as long as they perform a continuous combat function and are thus members of that group or individual civilians who take a direct part in hostilities for the time that they do so. The next question is the territorial scope of applicability of IHL and as has been mentioned, the use of drones has in particular raised a lot of controversy and many legal and other questions related to the territorial scope of application of IHL. I can only hope to address, in fact, three points and I'll sort of take them in turn. The issue is, by the way, raised because IHL treaties are not explicit and not precise on the scope of application, the territorial application, their own territorial application. So you could actually argue it sort of one way or another way and people have done so over the last couple of years. The first issue is, does IHL apply to the whole of the territories of a party to the conflict? And the second is, what about the applicability of IHL to the territory of non-belligerent states, for example, by means of a drone strike? To address the first question which is, does IHL apply to the whole territory of states, I would suggest and I think that's non-controversial that the answer in international conflict is yes, IHL applies to the whole territory of the states, one or two or more that may be involved. There's nothing to suggest otherwise. In other words, it doesn't just apply to what is called colloquially as the battlefield or the zone of combat. Once there's an international conflict between two countries, it is triggered. Again, I come back to recommendation nine, which does not mean there's a free for all. It simply means, in our view at least the IHL sees you, that an assessment between humanity and necessity may be made in some obvious cases and might not lead to the necessity for the use of lethal force. The question of the applicability of IHL in cases of extraterritorial NIAC is controversial and I have to give a specific example here. However, hypothetical, imagine if Switzerland were a party to the conflict in Afghanistan. It had sent jets, it had sent troops, whatever the case may be. The question arises in this particular scenario is the following. It's clear that IHL, that there's a NIAC. Why is there a NIAC? Marco had said that. And why is Switzerland involved in a NIAC? Sorry, non-international armed conflict. It is because Switzerland is fighting with the consent of the Afghan government on the side of the Afghan government against organized armed groups. That's clearly a NIAC. So I think it's, again, non-controversial that IHL applies to the territory of Afghanistan. But if a member of an armed group, say a Taliban member, came to Switzerland and attacked Swiss military objectives, does IHL apply to the territory of Switzerland? And different views have been submitted on this issue. That's an ongoing debate. According to some views, no, no. IHL is only limited to the territory of Afghanistan. Applicability, according to other views, and I have to say I would share this view personally, is that IHL would be also applicable as a matter of law. It's a different thing whether in practice and in policy, you know, how the situation would be dealt with. But as a matter of law, would IHL be applicable to the acts of a Taliban in Swiss soil? I would say yes. You can't have it both ways. Let's be very frank. You go to war somewhere else, but that war can never come to you. There is something called the equality of rights and diligence among parties to armed conflicts, including non-international, of course. And my sense is that for legal and political reasons, confining the applicability of IHL to the territory of one party to the conflict and leaving out the other would not uphold that principle. So that's, I repeat, that remains an issue of debate and state opinions have been far and few between as regards what the answer to this question should be. And then the third issue, which is because I have to kind of only really speak about this one and then end, I think, yes, is the issue of what is the legal regime governing in the following scenario, meaning the territory of a non-belligerent state? Switzerland is what it is. It's not involved in any conflict at all anywhere of any kind. A member of an armed group, say the Taliban, come to Switzerland and directly participate in hostilities from Swiss soil. Modern technology, as we know today, would allow that. The question is, can this person be targeted under the rules of international humanitarian law on Swiss soil as a matter of law? Again, regardless of whether he would be targeted as a matter of policy or practice. And once again, there are two essentially different views on this issue. There are writers and states obviously who believe that IHL has no territorial application. And as long as there's a nexus between that individual and the conflict in Afghanistan, and that individual is directly participating in hostilities vis-à-vis that conflict in Afghanistan, he may be targeted or she may be targeted anywhere on the globe. I repeat, I'm not saying this would happen in policy or in practice, but as a matter of law that they could be targeted everywhere. And that in fact, other bodies of law, primarily UN Charter law and the law of neutrality, even though it's applicability and NIAC is, well, it doesn't happen actually, that other bodies of law would prevent the scenario that I am speaking about from happening in practice. And then there's the other view, which is that taken by the ICRC, which is that the individual person directly participating in hostilities from Swiss soil should not be dealt with as a matter of IHL. In other words, that IHL does not apply to him or her as a matter of law. And that that situation needs to be dealt with by the rules on the use of force that are contained in human rights law. Because to say that IHL follows, like in a backpack, anybody moving around the globe would actually lead to the notion and the acceptance of the concept of a global battlefield. There are policy reasons as well. If a Taliban member comes to Switzerland and DPHs in relation to the conflict in Afghanistan, why would the Swiss population or any non-belligerent population for that matter have to bear the consequences of the use of lethal force under IHL as a matter of law? Again, I'm not talking saying this would happen in practice. Why could collateral damage be inflicted on the Swiss population, which it could under the rules of IHL? And again, in policy and in just humane terms, it would appear that the global battlefield extension to these types of situations would be counterproductive to say the least. Finally, and here I know I'm way beyond the time, is to say naturally it is possible, although I'm not aware of such a scenario at the moment, that you could imagine the scenario I've just given Switzerland. You have one Taliban there. What about if, leaving aside usabella issues, an organized armed group constitutes itself on Swiss soil, and the intensity of hostilities with another government, or with, I don't know, I mean, many factual scenarios, or with Switzerland and joint Switzerland, and we have in Afghanistan, in fact, like scenario, what happens in those circumstances? All I'm saying is that it's invisible that if the requisite criteria have been met that Marco Sassoli was talking about, in other words, intensity organization, that you could have a scenario in which a non-villagerant state would in fact cease to be a non-villagerant state, and on whose territory a separate non-international armed conflict may be constituted. I might just briefly abuse my control of the microphone to add a word myself on one of the issues, and that's the geographical scope that Jelena mentioned. And I do so just because I think it's important to try and explain the other view, and how, at least for me, how I get there, recognizing the problems with it in terms of this notion of a global battlefield. Because in the example that was given, we're talking about, say, someone who's a Switzerland involved in conflict in Afghanistan, and now there's someone from, say, I don't remember if you used the Afghan Taliban or Al-Qaeda, Afghan Taliban, who's now in Switzerland and can this person be targeted under IHL? Now, that obviously straight away gives us the most dramatic final straight to the extreme. And I think the difficulty for me with reaching that same conclusion is that if I take it step by step, I don't get there. So if I say, well, you've got the person fighting right now, he's in Afghanistan, and you've got the hot zone of the battlefield, and everyone's fighting and shooting each other, now let's imagine that the person is 50 meters away from the hot zone, but just across the border in Pakistan. But does that 50 meters make them suddenly not targetable? I don't think so. Is it the fact that the person's just across the border make them not targetable? Well, that brings us into questions of use at Belem and violation of Pakistani sovereignty and so on. But I don't think it affects the use in Belem, the question of whether the person is a legitimate target or not. Let's say that those 50 meters away, the person's still doing the same thing that they were doing on the battlefield, because you can be commanding your troops and you can be doing everything when you're 50 meters away. And now out of the person's a kilometer away, but they're doing the same thing. They're holding the satellite radio. They're commanding the troops. They're doing everything. At that moment, everything that the ICSE would recognize is clearly taking a direct part in hostilities. Is it now because they've gone from 50 meters to 500 meters to a kilometer, but they're still doing exactly the same thing? Does that make them any less of a target? And then you follow me. You've got 10 kilometers away, and you go 100 kilometers away, and now you're in Geneva. But you're doing the same thing. And you're holding the radio, and you are commanding the troops. At that moment, giving orders is doing commands and doing the same thing. Does that necessarily then mean that because of that distance, IHL ceases to apply to the question of whether the person can be targeted or not. And my own view is that IHL doesn't tell us anything about distance in this case. It wasn't designed to determine the geographical boundaries of an armed conflict. It was designed to apply to all acts of hostilities between parties to a conflict. And so wherever those acts of hostilities are taking place between parties to a conflict, then it might be that someone is very far from the battlefield, but they are clearly taking a direct part and possibly even an important part in the conflict. I don't see how we can say that IHL wouldn't apply. At the same time, I share the unease of where I've reached with my conclusion. I mean, my own view, unfortunately, the way I approach the law very often makes me reach conclusions that I don't like. But it doesn't mean that I necessarily think I'm wrong. It just, I think there may be a problem with the law. We need to overcome it. I think policy in these situations would dictate that we don't use. I would reach the same conclusion as a matter of policy. I'm just not certain that that's the answer in IHL. But legally, I think there's another root here. And that is, well, two issues. One, if you're talking about targeting an individual in territory of another state, there's the use ad bellum, which may well be the reason that you can't target that person. They might be legitimate target under IHL, but you don't have justification to use force on the territory of another state because of the use ad bellum. And the other is human rights law. And here again, we enter another whole area that we didn't cover in this panel, but an extremely controversial and area full of debate over the relationship between IHL and human rights law. And here my own view is that that relationship between them is a dynamic one that is context dependent. And the further you go from the heart of the battlefield, the stronger the role that human rights law plays in the interplay between them. So it may be that in the situation we just mentioned, my conclusion would be that that person may be a legitimate target under IHL, but the interplay between human rights law and IHL in that situation means that targeting them would be unlawful. But it's not because they're not a lawful target under IHL, it's because of the interplay between human rights law and IHL. So I'd reach in the way of the same conclusion, but I would still say that under IHL, the person might be a legitimate target. It's just we have. He's right. Thank you. Anyway, look, these are all areas full of debates, full of problems that they can open up a whole other can of worms here with also the IHL and human rights, but I just felt I wanted to explain some of the other views here.