How is civil society in South Sudan engaging with armed actors to protect civilians? And what can humanitarian actors do? In this episode of Beyond Compliance: In Conversation, Katharine and Florian talk to Rev Peter Tibi, Gemma Davies and Leigh Mayhew about how different types of actors can strengthen civilian protection.

Cited Documents:

Davies, Gemma, Gray, Felicity, Barbelet, Veronique, Keeping protection paramount amidst a ‘humanitarian reset’: the need for proactive protection action to reduce civilian harm, HPG policy brief, London: ODI Global, 2025.

Davies, Gemma, Mayhew, Leigh, with The Bridge Network, Community engagement with armed actors in South Sudan: reducing violence and protection risks, HPG case study. London: ODI, 2024.

Davies, Gemma, Barbelet, Veronique and Mayhew, Leigh, Reducing violence and strengthening protection of civilians: debuking assumptions, HPG policy brief, London: ODI Global, 2024.

Guest Bios:

Rev. Tibi has served as the Principal at Imatong Bible College in Juba, Sudan. He served as an administrator and Assistant Executive Secretary for Africa Inland Church-Sudan, and worked within AIC for 13 years. He moved on to the New Sudan Council of Churches, where he served as the Deputy Executive Secretary; then in the Sudan Council of Churches as Acting Executive Secretary and General Secretary. Rev. Tibi has served as the Executive Director of RECONCILE, International, since November of 2009.

Gemma Davies is a Senior Research Fellow for the Humanitarian Policy Group at ODI. She has extensive experience working with a range of international humanitarian and human rights organisations, as well as the Department for International Development, in several conflict and fragile affected states, predominantly in Sub-Saharan (East, Horn and Western) Africa. Gemma specialises in a range of issues including protection of civilians, forced displacement and humanitarian negotiations.

Leigh Mayhew is a Senior Research Officer within ODI’s Global Risks and Resilience programme, and a fellow at The Centre on Armed Groups. His research focuses on armed group dynamics, illicit economies and development, smuggling networks and the intersection with armed conflict, radicalisation, and the security dimensions of climate change. Currently, Leigh’s work is focused on how communities engage armed actors to advance community self-protection.

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 first series of this podcast series is also 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.

How are women in India’s violence-affected Manipur State shaping not only conflict dynamics, but also trade and mobility? And how do ideas around gender influence, produce and challenge understandings of the principle of distinction under IHL? In this episode of Beyond Compliance: In Conversation, Katharine and Florian talk to Shalaka Thakur and Helen Kinsella about the synergies between their research.

Cited Documents:

Kinsella, Helen, Settler Empire and the United States: Francis Lieber on the Laws of War, American Political Science Review, 2023.

Kinsella, Helen & Mantilla, Giovanni, Contestation before Compliance: History, Politics, and Power in International Humanitarian Law, International Studies Quarterly, 2020.

Thakur, Shalaka & Mampilly, Zachariah, Rebel Taxation as Extortion or a Technology of Governance? Telling the Difference in India's Northeast, Comparative Political Studies, 2024.

Guest Bios:

Helen Kinsella is a Professor of Political Science and Law at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She holds affiliate faculty positions in the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies, the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, the Human Rights Center at the Law School, and the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change. As of June 2023, she is also a Visiting Scholar, at the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. She has a PhD in Political Science and an MA in Public Policy from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and a BA in Political Science and Gender Studies from Bryn Mawr College.

Shalaka Thakur is a postdoctoral researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) on the project 'Trade-based statecraft: the new spatial logic of the state' (TRADECRAFT), which explores the role of checkpoints and transit taxes in state-making. Her fieldwork focuses on the borderlands between India and Myanmar, analysing how checkpoints, civilians and authorities interact to shape order and the economy. She holds a PhD in International Relations / Political Science from the Graduate Institute, Geneva, and an MSc in Conflict Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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 first series of this podcast series is also 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.

What was the role of civil society in the Basque Country conflict transformation process? How did civil society succeed to even influence the process of ETA's disarmament? And could this happen elsewhere? Florian and Katharine talk to Dr. Véronique Dudouet and Urko Aiartza Azurtza to find out more about how the conflict moved towards peace, whether lessons could be replicated elsewhere and the role of international law in the process.

Cited Documents:
Dudouet, Véronique, From the Street to the Peace Table: Nonviolent Mobilization during Intrastate Peace Processes, United States Institute of Peace, 2021

Basque Permanent Social Forum, ETA's disarmament in the context of international DDR guidelines: Lessons learnt from an innovative Basque scenario, Berghof Foundation, Transition Series No. 12, 2017

Guest Bios:

Urko Aiartza Azurtza was deeply committed to promoting peace in the Basque Country through extensive involvement. Member of the Gipuzkoa Bar, he was involved in many human rights cases in Basque Country and he is currently CoPresident of the European Lawyers Association For Democracy and World Human Rights. He stood as Senator in Madrid from 2011 to 2015. In recent years, he has been actively providing advice on peace and mediation to public and private international institutions in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. He is senior advisor at EIP and a consultant at OCHA's Humanitarian Negotiation Unit as well as a fellow of the Centre on Armed Groups. Since 2019, he has taken on the role of director at the Olaso Dorrea Foundation and its “TM eLab”, a centre for generating innovative ideas in the Basque Country, his birthplace and current residence.

Dr. Véronique Dudouet is a Senior Advisor at the Berghof Foundation (Berlin, Germany), where she serves as focal point for inclusive peace processes, and conducts research, trainings and policy advice on conflict transformation, with a specific focus on non-state armed groups and social movements. In 2019, she was a Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow at USIP, Washington DC. She is the (co-)author of four books, including Civil Resistance and Conflict Transformation: Transitions from Armed to Nonviolent Struggle (Routledge 2014). She has a PhD in conflict resolution from Bradford University, UK (2005).

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 first series of this podcast series is also 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.