Data

This page is regularly updated to include empirical data related to my research, which cannot for space reasons be included in the relevant publications.

In my book on Internationalized Armed Conflicts in International Law (OUP 2018), I discuss the states’ reluctance to engage publicly in the legal qualification of armed conflicts (see, in particular, pages 7–8). One of the resulting challenges is the difficulty of identifying states’ positions with regard to the relevant international legal rules. In order to address this issue for the purposes of my research, I attempted to determine these positions by way of direct collection of data just as I was beginning my doctoral project.

Accordingly, in mid-2011 I prepared and dispatched a questionnaire concerning states’ views on the applicability of the law of armed conflict to internationalized armed conflicts. I sent the questionnaire by post to 163 diplomatic and consular missions in London and to the UK’s Inter-departmental Committee for International Humanitarian Law. The addressees were requested to either answer the questions set out in the questionnaire or to forward it to the appropriate department of the respective state’s government.

Out of the 33 responses I received in the following seven months, only 11 contained substantial or otherwise relevant answers. Given this limited number, the utility of the returned questionnaires can thus at best be described as illustrative. Nonetheless, in the interest of transparency, I am sharing here the full text of the questionnaire as well as all 11 relevant replies (see below).