Global Virtual Event of the Beyond Compliance Consortium: Emergent Themes Across Eight Contexts of Armed Conflict

Date: Thursday 26 March 2026

Part I (Sessions 1-2): 10:00-12:00 GMT
Part II (Sessions 3-4): 13:30-15:30 GMT
Format: Online Zoom Webinar

The Beyond Compliance Consortium is a co-productive, socio-legal research partnership that traverses the fields of international law, conflict studies, humanitarian protection work and human rights policy, and brings together these communities of scholarship and practice with people with lived experience of conflict. Funded with UK International Development from the UK government, we are undertaking a three-year theoretical, empirical, and operational research programme “Building Evidence on Promoting Restraint by Armed Actors,” with the aim to contribute to the effective prevention and reduction of humanitarian need and civilian harm, and the facilitation of full(er) protection in war. The Global Virtual Event brings together insights from extensive empirical data collected in eight contexts of armed conflict by Country Research Units (CRUs) comprising local researchers and partner organisations. It showcases emergent themes across these contexts with a focus on gendered and intersectional experiences of armed conflict, mental harm, intangible harm + need and factors of compliance + restraint.

Programme

The programme is split into two parts. Delegates can choose to attend one or both parts of the programme.

PART I: 10:00-12:00 GMT

Session 1: Problematising gender, age and vulnerability

CRUs: DRC and Yemen
Speakers: Jaël Zawadi (War Child), Mohamed al-Iriani (Yemen Policy Center) and Anki Sjöberg (Fight for Humanity)
Moderator: Ioana Cismas (University of York)

Session 2: Informal and community-based protection

CRUs: Somalia and Syria
Speakers: Rahma Abikar (Centre on Armed Groups), Ashley Jackson (Centre on Armed Groups), Marie Kortam (War Child) and Mehmet Balci (Fight for Humanity)
Moderator: Anastasia Shesterinina (University of York)

PART II: 13:30-15:30 GMT

Session 3: Intangible harm + need and factors of compliance + restraint

CRUs: Colombia and Ukraine
Speakers: Lina Maria Acosta Hilamo (the Nasa Indigenous community), Piergiuseppe Parisi (University of York), Lauren Spink (CIVIC) and Vladyslav Iierusalymov (Kyiv School of Economics)
Moderator: Katharine Fortin (Utrecht University)

Session 4: The omnipresence of mental harm

CRUs: Myanmar and South Sudan
Speakers: Samantha Holmes (University of York) and Sworo Paul Duku (War Child)
Moderator: Ezequiel Heffes (Humanitarian Affairs Expert)

Download the event flyer/programme