Date/Time
Date(s) - 16/01/2023
3:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Categories No Categories


Public conference co-organised by the Delegation of the European Union to the UN and other international organisations in Geneva, the Permanent Mission of Switzerland to the UN and other international organisations in Geneva, and the University of York

This conference seeks to engage academic, humanitarian, diplomatic and religious circles in a conversation about why and when engagement with religious leaders can be beneficial to humanitarian norm-compliance and how it can be pursued effectively.

The event will present the findings of the applied research Generating Respect for Humanitarian Norms: The Influence of Religious Leaders on Parties to Armed Conflict – The Generating Respect Project, developed by the University of York’s Centre for Applied Human Rights and York Law School, in close partnership with Geneva Call and the Diakonia International Humanitarian Law Centre, and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (UK).

The Generating Respect Project aimed

  1. To provide empirical evidence for the influence of religious leaders on state and non-state parties to armed conflict;

  2. To conceptualise why and how religious leaders exert influence on armed actors, how they interact with humanitarian norms anchored in international humanitarian law and human rights law, and how their influence can be leveraged for norm-compliance generation;

  3. To operationalise the findings in the form of guidelines to enable effective engagement between humanitarians and religious leaders.

The research is based on extensive desk analysis and empirical data collected through online and in-country interviews with religious leaders, armed actors, humanitarians, scholars, and other key stakeholders from Colombia, Libya, Mali, Myanmar, Syria, and Yemen.

Where? Auditorium A1B, Geneva Graduate Institute or Live-streamed online

RSVP for in person or online attendance.