Integrating Legal Pluralism to ICRC's Task of Enhancing Compliance with International Humanitarian Law

The latest public reports by the International Committee of the Red Cross demonstrate its increased operational tendency granting importance to diversity and contextualization in the multiple contexts where the humanitarian institution operates. These reports call for the use of imagination and creativity to face challenges not yet overcome though recognized at least a decade back -notably the recurrent record of non-compliance with the law of armed conflict while the numbers of victims of war grow at a worrying pace. This thesis explores whether the predominant positivist legal character within the ICRC -typical of the western legal tradition- contributes or instead constitutes an obstacle to the current operational trends. It is argued here that complementing the marked positivist view of law at the ICRC with pluralist perspectives would help ease the tension and bridge the gap that it is argued exists at the ICRC between the legal and the operational minds. The ground is ripe for the integration of positivist and pluralist approaches at the ICRC, since a pluralist vision of law is in line with the pragmatic operational perspectives at the ICRC. A pluralist vision would entail open appeal to the moral ingredient of law in an inclusive and non-hierarchical dialogue which would integrate the diversity of actors at war as active participants in the legal enterprise. Moving forward to an inclusive and participative law-making process in a global context marked by a multiplicity of legal communities, religious dynamics and non-state conflicts may help improve adherence to and compliance with the law of armed conflict by rendering it more legitimate and meaningful in the mind of actors. Bridging the gap between the operational and legal minds at the ICRC could serve the operational objective to protect victims of armed conflict as well as the legal one to improve respect of the law.