Beyond Compliance: In Conversation

How does armed conflict affect the environment, and how does environmental harm affect communities? What role do armed actors play in governing and damaging the environment? And how can law and peace processes better address environmental harm? In this episode of Beyond Compliance: In Conversation, Katharine and Florian speak with Anki Sjöberg, Co-Director at Fight for Humanity, and Laura Baron-Mendoza, Colombian lawyer and international legal scholar specialising in environmental justice and transitional justice.
Cited Documents:
Sjöberg, Anki, Michalko, Ján and Davies, Gemma, Gender norms and protection: navigating agency, risk and backlash , HPG Working Paper, London: ODI GLOBAL, July 2026.
Sjöberg, Anki and Balci, Mehmet, In Their Shoes: Health Care in Armed Conflict from the Perspective of a Non-State Armed Actor, Daedalus,  the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Spring 2023, pp.123-124.
Baron-Mendoza, Laura, Beyond the battlefield: leveraging rebel law for environmental protection and human rights, Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, September 2026, pp.106-148.
Baron-Mendoza, Laura, The FARC-EP as environmental governance actors: shifting the ecological perspective on war, International Journal of Law in Context, November 2025, pp.177-199.
Guest Bios:
Anki Sjöberg is Co-Director at Fight for Humanity. Anki has over 20 years of experience from working in the non-profit sector on issues linked to conflict, security, armed groups, and gender. Her work has focused on research, methodology, and operational work at a senior level with and on non-state armed actors in a variety of contexts. She holds a PhD in International Relations focused on Political Science from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.
Laura Baron-Mendoza is a Colombian lawyer and international legal scholar specializing in international law, environmental justice, and transitional justice. She holds a PhD from McGill University and currently serves as Senior Environmental Justice & International Law Fellow at MADRE, as well as Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies (ICwS), University of London. Her work bridges research, law, and practice, with experience advising the International Criminal Court, Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), and peacebuilding institutions on environmental accountability in conflict and post-conflict settings.
The Beyond Compliance Consortium is a co-productive, socio-legal research partnership that traverses the fields of international law, conflict studies, humanitarian protection work and human rights policy, and brings together these communities of scholarship and practice with people with lived experience of conflict. It is funded by UK International Development. The second season is funded by UK International Development, while the first season was funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

Katharine Fortin is an Associate Professor in human rights law and international humanitarian law at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, Utrecht University.

Florian Weigand is the Co-Director of the Centre on Armed Groups.

How are children affected by armed conflict? What kinds of harm do they face? And can the protection for children offered by international law translate into reality on the ground? Engaging with these questions, in this episode Katharine and Florian speak with Lway Mownt Noon, a Myanmar human rights activist and research consultant for the Beyond Compliance Consortium, and Cécile Aptel, Professor of Practice at the Fletcher School.
Cited Documents:
Lway Mownt, Noon, Holmes, Samantha, Rush, Chris and Weigand, Florian, Between Aftershocks & Airstrikes in Myanmar – Accounts of Compounding Harm + Need, Armed Groups and International Law, July 2025.
Aptel, Cécile, Unpunished Crimes: The Special Court for Sierra Leone and Children, in The Sierra Leone Special Court and its Legacy, 2014, CUP, pp. 340-360).
Aptel, Cécile, Atrocity Crimes, Children and International Criminal Courts: Killing Childhood, Routledge, 2023.
Guest Bios:
Lway Mownt Noon is an ethnic civil society activist, a researcher focusing on identity politics and geopolitics of Myanmar and works as a research consultant for the Beyond Compliance Consortium contracted by the University of York. Noon has worked on human rights for over 18 years, with a focus on women, children, and political prisoners. Noon was born under an armed conflict and is a victim of trafficking. She also has first-hand experience of being in IDP camps, refugee camps, and being held as a political prisoner. Noon holds a degree in International Relations and a Master's degree in Development Studies. Noon acts as a watchdog to the Myanmar military, ethnic armed organisations, and people's defence forces in Myanmar.
Professor Cécile Aptel is Professor of Practice at The Fletcher School, Visiting Professor at the College of Europe and Visiting Scientist at Harvard. An internationally recognized expert in child rights, international law and justice, she has held senior leadership positions at the UN, including UNIDIR and UNICEF, the IFRC and the Geneva Academy, and helped establish major international accountability mechanisms.
The Beyond Compliance Consortium is a co-productive, socio-legal research partnership that traverses the fields of international law, conflict studies, humanitarian protection work and human rights policy, and brings together these communities of scholarship and practice with people with lived experience of conflict. It is funded by UK International Development. The second season is funded by UK International Development, while the first season was funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

Katharine Fortin is an Associate Professor in human rights law and international humanitarian law at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, Utrecht University.

Florian Weigand is the Co-Director of the Centre on Armed Groups.

How does war affect mental health? And is international law equipped to recognise and address these harms? In this episode, Katharine and Florian speak with Lyla Schwartz, Program & Psychology Director at Poma Global and Researcher at the University of Basel, and Samantha Holmes, Researcher at the Beyond Compliance Consortium at the University of York’s Centre for Applied Human Rights.
Cited Documents:
Holmes, Samantha, Incidental mental harm through a decolonial lens: A culturally and contextually sensitive implementation of the principle of proportionality, International Review of the Red Cross, Vol. 108, No. 932, 2026.
Lway Mownt, Noon, Holmes, Samantha, Rush, Chris and Weigand, Florian, Between Aftershocks & Airstrikes in Myanmar – Accounts of Compounding Harm + Need, Armed Groups and International Law, July 2025.

Holmes, Samantha, War is not skin deep – International Humanitarian Law and mental health, Armed Groups and International Law, October 2024.
Schwartz, Lyla, Hassanpoor, Zainab, Lane, Hannah and Klapheke, Elizabeth, Economic constraints and gendered rules: Understanding women’s perspectives of how government-imposed restrictions impact women’s mental health and social wellbeing across Afghanistan, SSM - Mental Health, Vol. 6, 2024.
Schwartz, Lyla, Nakonechna, Mariia, Campbell, Georgina, Brunner, Donja, Stadler, Christina, Schmid, Marc, Fegert, Jörg M. and Bürgin, David, Addressing the mental health needs and burdens of children fleeing war: a field update from ongoing mental health and psychosocial support efforts at the Ukrainian border, European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 13 (2), 2022.
Guest Bios:
Samantha Holmes is a Research Associate at the York Law School and the Centre for Applied Human Rights (CAHR) at the University of York. She is also a member of the Beyond Compliance Consortium’s research programme “Building Evidence on Promoting Restraint by Armed Actors”. Her international humanitarian and human rights law research is informed and underpinned by her extensive human rights work across Southeast Asia. Her ongoing research focuses on the impacts of war on mental wellbeing and how the law can prevent mental harm. Samantha holds an LLM in International Human Rights Law and Practice from the University of York, and an LLB from Queen Mary University of London.
Lyla Schwartz is a PhD Candidate at the University of Basel, Switzerland, focusing on the mental health of refugees. She is a psychotherapist and clinical researcher with over a decade of experience supporting individuals, families, and communities through trauma, stress, and life transitions. Lyla has extensive field work experience in India, Peru, South Africa, Greece and Afghanistan. Specifically she has spent four years in Kabul, where she founded the organization Peace of Mind, providing services traumatized children.
The Beyond Compliance Consortium is a co-productive, socio-legal research partnership that traverses the fields of international law, conflict studies, humanitarian protection work and human rights policy, and brings together these communities of scholarship and practice with people with lived experience of conflict. It is funded by UK International Development. The second season is funded by UK International Development, while the first season was funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

Katharine Fortin is an Associate Professor in human rights law and international humanitarian law at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, Utrecht University.

Florian Weigand is the Co-Director of the Centre on Armed Groups.

How are drones changing the way wars are fought? What kinds of harm do they cause for civilians? And is international law able to keep pace with these developments? Engaging with these questions, in this episode of Beyond Compliance: In Conversation, Katharine and Florian speak with Khrystyna Kozak, Researcher at the Center for Civilians in Conflict’s (CIVIC) Ukraine Country Office, and Rebecca Mignot-Mahdavi, Assistant Professor of Law at Sciences Po Law School.
Cited Documents:
Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC), From Risk to Resilience: Civilian Protection Readiness in Ukraine, 2026.
Mignot-Mahdavi, Rebecca, Drones and International Law: A Techno-Legal Machinery, Cambridge University Press, 2023.
Mignot-Mahdavi, Rebecca, Surveillance on the Battlefield: Rituals of Sovereignty, Ars Interpretandi: Journal of Legal Hermeneutics, 2023, pp.26.
Mignot-Mahdavi, Rebecca, Drones Programs, the Individualization of War and the Ad Bellum Principle of Proportionality, in Necessity and Proportionality in International Peace and Security Law, Claus Kress & Robert Lawless eds., Oxford University Press, 2020, pp.131-168.
Guest Bios:
Khrystyna Kozak is a Researcher at the Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC) Ukraine Country Office. She holds a Master of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame with a concentration in International Peace Studies and holds an L.L.M. in Human Rights. Khrystyna has over seven years of experience working with NRC, UNHCR, and WFP, Register of Damages for Ukraine specializing in protecting civilians and accountability in armed conflict.
Rebecca Mignot-Mahdavi is an Assistant Professor of International Law at Sciences Po Law School. Her current research is situated in the fields of international law, international legal theory and digital security law and governance. Her research includes reflections on technolegal modes of governance and their evolution/proliferation in a context where risk-anticipation strategies and technology are in play. She explores these technolegal phenomena beyond rigid disciplinary boundaries. Rebecca is a Principal Investigator for the project AI-NODES (on the normative and distributive effects of AI), as part of the PostGenAI@Paris cluster. She is an Editor for the Legal Theory section of the Leiden Journal of International Law, a co-founder of the ESIL Interest Group on International Law and Technology, and an Associate Researcher at the TMC Asser Institute, University of Amsterdam. Rebecca holds a PhD from the European University Institute and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.
The Beyond Compliance Consortium is a co-productive, socio-legal research partnership that traverses the fields of international law, conflict studies, humanitarian protection work and human rights policy, and brings together these communities of scholarship and practice with people with lived experience of conflict. It is funded by UK International Development. The second season is funded by UK International Development, while the first season was funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

Katharine Fortin is an Associate Professor in human rights law and international humanitarian law at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, Utrecht University.

Florian Weigand is the Co-Director of the Centre on Armed Groups.

What is ‘civilian harm’, and how should it be understood in contemporary warfare? Why do definitions matter, and who gets to shape them? In this episode, Katharine and Florian speak with Lauren Gould from Utrecht University and Janina Dill from the University of Oxford about evolving approaches to defining and addressing harm to civilians.
Cited Documents:
Gould, L., Demmers, J., Bijl, E., & Azeem , S. Investigating Remote Warfare as the Radical Undoing of Life: The compounding civilian harm effects of US-led coalition bombings in Iraq. Antipode. 2025.
Gould, L., & Stel, N. (2021). Strategic ignorance and the legitimation of remote warfare: The Hawija bombardments. Security Dialogue ,53(1), 57 74.
Dill, J., Myers, E., Schubiger L., A Matter of Principle: How Local Consent Affects U.S. Support for Military Interventions. International Security 2026; 50 (3): 55–85.
Dill, J., Sagan, S., Creeds and Contestation: How US Nuclear and Legal Doctrine Influence Each Other, Security Studies, 34(5), 833–867.
Guest Bios:
Lauren Gould is Associate Professor in Conflict Studies and the principle investigator and project leader of the Realities of Algorithmic Warfare programme and Intimacies of Remote Warfare programme at Utrecht University. She also leads the project ‘Assembling the Western Way of War in Afghanistan and Beyond’ at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies. From a critical conflict and war studies perspective her trans- and interdisciplinary research programmes trace and conceptualize the changing character of the Western way of war and its impact on civilian harm and democratic accountability. 
Janina Dill is the Dame Louise Richardson Chair in Global Security at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford, a Professorial Fellow of Trinity College Oxford, and Co-Director of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law, and Armed Conflict (ELAC). Her research on law in war has been published in major journals of both International Law and Political Science. In 2021, she won a Philip Leverhulme Prize. She currently co-convenes studies on cumulative civilian harm in war, funded by the UKRI and the National Science Foundation, and on the concept of military objectives in IHL, in collaboration with the ICRC. She is a frequent public commentator on laws and ethics of war. 
The Beyond Compliance Consortium is a co-productive, socio-legal research partnership that traverses the fields of international law, conflict studies, humanitarian protection work and human rights policy, and brings together these communities of scholarship and practice with people with lived experience of conflict. It is funded by UK International Development. The second season is funded by UK International Development, while the first season was funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

Katharine Fortin is an Associate Professor in human rights law and international humanitarian law at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, Utrecht University.

Florian Weigand is the Co-Director of the Centre on Armed Groups.