Università Roma Tre

Course description:
The “International Humanitarian Law Legal Clinic” (IHL Legal Clinic) has been established in 2016 to permit students to acquire a sound knowledge on international humanitarian law, cooperate on a pro bono basis on projects with leading international and national institutions operating in this area and develop significant skills and a humanitarian-oriented approach beneficial for their competences, future professional activities and civil awareness. The IHL Legal Clinic is an optional course (7 CFU) opens to students from Roma Tre and those involved in exchange programmes (eg. Erasmus) qualifying for a final mark. The working language is English (students can also qualify for ‘Lingua giuridica’).

So far students involved in the Roma Tre IHL Legal Clinic have provided support to some of the most relevant international and domestic stakeholders as: The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC); Amnesty International; NATO (Allied Command Operations Legal Office at SHAPE); Geneva Call; the Italian Red Cross, IHL Commission; the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (see below ‘Past Projects’).

In 2024/2025 students of the IHL Legal Clinic will:
A) Acquire a sound knowledge of international humanitarian law through introductory lectures.
B) Be involved in research and practice-oriented projects commissioned by relevant stakeholders as International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Geneva Call (TBC). See below for further details: ‘2024-2025 Projects’;
C) Be involved in dissemination activities after the completion of the clinical project with relevant stakeholders and partner institutions.

A selection process will permit to identify interested students due to some limits related to the management of the IHL Legal Clinic – eg. max. around 10/12 students (see below ‘relevant dates and application process’). Any student enrolled at the Department of Law (including Erasmus students or other foreign students involved in exchange projects) are invited to join the selection process.

Course Learning Objectives
• To provide students with a proper understanding of international humanitarian law and its relevance in the regulation of armed conflicts. A preliminary set of lectures managed by Prof. Bartolini will permit students to get familiar with international humanitarian law and issues of public international law relevant for this course. It is not required for students to have previously attended courses on public international law or international humanitarian law.
• To permit students to professionally interact with international institutions acting in the area of international humanitarian law through the participation in research projects and clinical activities commissioned by organizations partners to the Roma Tre IHL Legal Clinic
• The IHL Legal Clinic is inspired by a ‘learning by doing’ approach permitting students to develop their competences in legal research, drafting, writing and organization of activities, to facilitate the transfer of theoretical analysis into a practical and humanitarian-oriented perspective.

Course Learning Activities:
To achieve the above objectives, students will have to:
• Actively participate in the projects of the IHL Legal Clinic;
• Acquire a sound knowledge of international humanitarian law also through the textbook.
• Engage in class discussions/debates.

Assessment tools and attendance policy:
Students will be assessed on the basis of their contribution to the projects carried out the IHL Legal Clinic. Projects developed by the IHL Legal Clinic also require students to prepare draft reports and other preliminary material to be presented in class. Students are expected to participate in all classes as attendance is mandatory.

2024/2025 Projects and activities of the IHL Legal Clinic:
The IHL Legal Clinic will be managed in two phases:
A) Students will get familiar with international humanitarian law: Prof. Bartolini will manage
a series of lectures aimed to make students familiar with international humanitarian law (October-mid November 2024 see calendar below). Presentations by external speakers as officers of the Armed Forces will also be arranged. Students will be required to get familiar with the textbook: Nils Melzer, International Humanitarian Law. A Comprehensive Introduction (downloadable for free here). Relevant sections of the textbook will be discussed in class.

B) Clinical activities: From mid-November onwards, students will start to manage research projects involving relevant stakeholders.
In particular students will work on:
- Partnership with the International Committee of the Red Cross: “International Humanitarian Law in Action” database (https://ihl-in-action.icrc.org/). Students elaborate reports aimed at identifying real case-studies on compliance with international by States and organized armed groups based on open-access information. The ICRC has received positive feed-backs on this new instrument, to be used in training and dissemination activities for armed forces/organized armed groups, students and civil society, and has made reference to it in the 2018 statement to the UN Security Council open debate on protection of civilians in armed conflict.

- Cooperation with the International Committee of the Red Cross on ‘Test and train a large-language model on international humanitarian law’. Artificial intelligence (AI) holds the potential to assist ICRC legal advisers in finding relevant information and providing summaries and initial analysis based on pre-defined sources (‘datasets’). Thus, the ICRC has started collaborating with the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) Essential Tech Centre to explore the development and assess the performance of an ICRC internal, non-public IHL-trained large-language model (LLM). As part of this process, the ICRC is seeking support from IHL students to test, evaluate, and train the LLM.

Relevant Dates and Application Process:
Students are invited to apply for the IHL Legal Clinic according to information provided below.
- A preliminary informal meeting to present the activities of the IHL Legal Clinic and provide relevant information will take place on Monday 23rd September 2024 at 12:00. The meeting will be held on-line through Teams. Please use this link to connect through Teams

- Students interested to take part in the IHL Legal Clinic are required to send an email to giulio.bartolini@uniroma3.it by Wednesday 25th September 2024 at 15:00 (earlier submissions are kindly encouraged). In this email students are kindly invited to provide: a) a letter of motivation for their interest to take part in the IHL legal clinic; b) as well as relevant information (e.g. through a CV) on: Their academic career (year of study, number of passed exams, average grade); Previous exams related to international law issues or legal clinics; Languages known.
- The selection process will imply an interview to be carried out in-presence (Room 1, Via Ostiense 161) or on-line on Thursday 26th September at 14.30. The interview will permit to assess the interest and capacity of candidates to take part in this innovative project also based on information provided above.
The selection will be held in-presence or on-line through Teams. Please use this LINK to connect through Teams.

Nils Melzer, International Humanitarian Law. A Comprehensive Introduction (free download)