Siege warfare has been employed throughout the ages and remains dramatically relevant today. Questions of the compatibility of this practice with international humanitarian law (IHL) arise when besieged areas contain civilians as well as enemy forces. This briefing addresses those rules of IHL that are particularly relevant to sieges.
Emanuela-Chiara Gillard is an associate fellow with the International Law Programme at Chatham House, a senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict, and a research fellow in the Individualisation of War project at the European University Institute.
