Beyond Compliance: In Conversation
What does everyday life during war and armed conflict look like? How do ordinary people engage with armed actors? And how can the law contribute to protecting civilians? Join Katharine Fortin and Florian Weigand in their discussions with leading academics, researchers, and practitioners working and conducting research in this area, shedding light on armed groups, civilian protection, and international law.
Beyond Compliance: In Conversation
S2 EP 4: Domicide & Reparations
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What does the loss of home during conflict mean for those affected? And how well does international law capture and address this experience? In this episode, Katharine and Florian talk to Luke Moffett, Chair of the Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law at Queen's University Belfast, and Ammar Azzouz, Research Fellow at the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford, about the weaponisation of architecture during armed conflict, and how the emotional and social meaning of home challenges existing legal approaches.
Cited Documents:
Moffett, Luke, Justice for Victims before the International Criminal Court, Routledge, 2014.
Moffett, Luke, Reparations and War, OUP, 2023.
Moffett, Luke, Algorithms of War: The Human Cost of AI in Conflict, Bristol University Press, 2026.
Azzouz, Ammar, Domicide: Architecture, War and the Destruction of Home in Syria, Bloomsbury, 2023.
Azzouz, Ammar, Re-imagining Syria: Destructive reconstruction and the exclusive rebuilding of cities, 2020, City, 24(5–6), 721–740.
Azzouz, Ammar, Return to Syria: what i found amid the ruins of Homs, Financial Times, 2025.
Guest Bios:
Professor Dr Luke Moffett is chair of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law at Queen's University Belfast. His research focuses on victims' rights, reparations, civilian harm, and the increasing algorithmic turn in armed conflict. He has conducted fieldwork in over a dozen conflict/post-conflict societies and worked with different victim groups in advocating and litigating for redress. He is author of Justice for Victims before the International Criminal Court (Routledge 2014), Reparations and War (OUP 2023), and Algorithms of War (BUP 2026).
Ammar Azzouz is a British Academy Research Fellow at University of Oxford. His research focuses on destruction and reconstruction of cities, cultural heritage and art in exile. He is the author of Domicide: Architecture, War and the Destruction of Home in Syria, published by Bloomsbury in 2023. He has written for a wide range of platforms including the New York Times, Financial Times and the Guardian.
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. It is funded by UK International Development. The second season is funded by UK International Development, while the first season was funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).
Katharine Fortin is an Associate Professor in human rights law and international humanitarian law at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, Utrecht University.
Florian Weigand is the Co-Director of the Centre on Armed Groups.
