The performative resilience of international humanitarian law in a time of discursive amnesia

D'Aspremont, Jean (author)

This article starts by diagnosing the discursive amnesia that came to surround international humanitarian law in contemporary public discourse in 2023–2025. While violations of IHL have proliferated, the legal categories that render warfare legible - civilian, combatant, proportionality, distinction - have been systematically evacuated from political and media narratives. It is submitted here that this silence is as dangerous as the violations themselves, as it condemns international humanitarian law’s prescriptions to oblivion. The article identifies five plausible causes of this discursive amnesia: intra-norm competition with the legal rules on genocide, complexity in asymmetric conflicts, the narrative monopoly of jus ad bellum discourse, critical discomforts with the colonial and gendered histories of international humanitarian law, and the emergence of zones of incriticability. Against this diagnosis, the article argues that international humanitarian law has lost none of its performative lustre, which can be tapped and mobilized through sustained, institutionally-backed articulation of its core categories. The article concludes with an invitation to mobilize the performativity of international humanitarian law across legal, educational, operational, and communicative registers.

• Language: English
• Keywords: international humanitarian law, discursive amnesia, performativity of law, jus in bello, distinction and proportionality, public discourse and media narratives
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: PF - Faculty of Law
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Publication date: 30.12.2025
• Year: 2025
• Number of pages: Str. 19-34, 251-252
• Numbering: Letn. 85
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-180350
• UDC: 341.33/.34
• ISSN on article: 1854-3839
• DOI: 10.51940/2025.1.19-34
• COBISS.SI-ID: 270299907
• Publication date in RUL: 06.03.2026

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Zbornik znanstvenih razprav
• Shortened title: Zb. znan. razpr.
• Publisher: Pravna fakulteta
• ISSN: 1854-3839
• COBISS.SI-ID: 223437312

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Title: Performativna odpornost mednarodnega humanitarnega prava v obdobju diskurzivne amnezije

Abstract

Ta članek se začne z diagnozo diskurzivne amnezije, ki se je v letih 2023-2025 v sodobnem javnem diskurzu okrepila okoli mednarodnega humanitarnega prava. Kršitve mednarodnega humanitarnega prava so se razširile, hkrati pa so se pravne kategorije, ki vojskovanje napravijo normativno opisljivo, kot so civilist, borec, sorazmernost in razlikovanje, sistematično umaknile iz političnih in medijskih narativov. Avtor zagovarja stališče, da je ta molk enako nevaren kot kršitve same, saj lahko zaradi tega molka pravila mednarodnega humanitarnega prava utonejo v pozabo. Avtor opredeli pet verjetnih vzrokov te diskurzivne amnezije: znotrajnormativno konkurenco s pravnimi pravili o genocidu, kompleksnost uporabe in razlage pravil v asimetričnih konfliktih, monopolizacija razprave s perspektivo ius ad bellum, kritične zadržke zaradi kolonialnih in spolno zaznamovanih zgodovinskih genealogij mednarodnega humanitarnega prava ter pojav področij, na katerih kritika ni zaželena. Na podlagi te diagnoze utemeljuje, da mednarodno humanitarno pravo ni izgubilo svoje performativne moči, ki ga je mogoče uporabiti in mobilizirati s trajnim, institucionalno podprtim artikuliranjem njegovih osrednjih kategorij. Avtor sklene s povabilom k mobilizaciji performativnosti mednarodnega humanitarnega prava na pravnem, izobraževalnem, operativnem in komunikacijskem področju.

• Keywords: mednarodno humanitarno pravo, diskurzivna amnezija, performativnost prava, razlikovanje in sorazmernost, javni diskurz in medijski narativi