Joshua Niyo, PhD candidate in International Law at the Graduate Institute and Teaching Assistant at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights – a joint centre of the Graduate Institute and the Faculty of Law of the University of Geneva – received the inaugural prize for his paper, “Legal Obligations for Armed Non-State Actors: Can IHL and IHRL Learn from Each Other?”, at the 2019 Association of Human Rights Institutes (AHRI) Conference held at the University of Potsdam from 6-7 September.
“It was a great opportunity to engage in the legacy of the 1949 Geneva Conventions now at 70”, said Mr Niyo. “The scope of the papers presented was both broad and in-depth, with the phenomenon of armed non-state actors taking some prominence. I thank God for this achievement and the organisers for selecting me, and I hope my paper and this prize contributes to the general discourse on the need to engage with these actors in the context of international law”.
The 2019 AHRI Conference brought together academics working on international humanitarian law (IHL) and human rights, and focused on the challenges ahead for human rights and IHL 70 years after the Geneva Conventions were adopted.
Keywords: international law, PhD