Buddhism’s Psycho-ethics of Non-harm and Restraint for All Sentient Beings During Armed Conflict
12 November 2024
Author: Andrew Bartles-Smith
In this post Bartles-Smith highlights the importance of looking at religious and non-Western thought systems to complement and reinvigorate dominant Western conceptions of humanitarian action. Drawing on examples of Buddhist perspectives on armed conflict, Buddhist psychology and central Buddhist concepts of non-harm and restraint, Bartles-Smith illustrates how alternative frames of reference beyond the boundaries of International Humanitarian Law can contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the negative lived experiences of armed conflict.
About the Beyond Compliance Blog Symposium
The Beyond Compliance Symposium has been developed within the framework of our research programme on Building Evidence on Promoting Restraint by Armed Actors. It brings together scholars and practitioners across the humanitarian, human rights, development and security sector fields to reflect on the conceptualisation of everyday negative lived experiences of armed conflict.
Understanding the personal, material, temporal and spatial scope of (civilian) harm and (humanitarian) need, as well as the characteristics and motivations of actors experiencing, causing, and exercising protective agency in relation to harm + need, represent crucial first steps in articulating effective responses. Contributions to the symposium also include reflections on legal and extra-legal strategies to prevent, reduce and redress harm + need, including through promotion of compliance with international humanitarian law and international human rights law and efforts aimed at generating restraint from violence and abuse.
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