Dr Hugo Slim’s latest book will be released on the 27th of January 2022. The book is titled “Solferino 21: Warfare, Civilians and Humanitarians in the Twenty-First Century” and is being published by Hurst.

To mark the publication, Professor Dapo Akande will chair a panel to discuss what today’s changes in warfare mean for military ethics and humanitarian aid with Dr Hugo Slim, Sorcha O’Callaghan (Director of the Humanitarian Policy Group) and Professor David Whetham (Professor of Ethics and the Military Profession at King’s College London). The event will take place at the Blavatnik School of Government and via Zoom. The event is on Tuesday 22 February, 5-6pm. The event is free and open to the public.

Please see the Blavatnik School of Government’s event page for more details and to register to attend.

“War is at a tipping point: we’re passing from the age of industrial warfare to a new era of computerised warfare, and a renewed risk of great-power conflict. Humanitarian response is also evolving fast—‘big aid’ demands more and more money, while aid workers try to digitalise, preparing to meet ever-broader needs in the long, big wars and climate crisis of the future.

This book draws on the founding moment of the modern Red Cross movement—the 1859 Battle of Solferino, a moment of great change in the nature of conflict—to track the big shifts already underway, and still to come, in the wars and war aid of our century. Hugo Slim first surveys the current landscape: the tech, politics, law and strategy of warfare, and the long-term transformations ahead as conflict goes digital. He then explains how civilians both suffer and survive in today’s wars, and how their world is changing. Finally, he critiques today’s humanitarian system, citing the challenges of the 2020s.

Inspired by Henri Dunant’s seminal humanitarian text, Solferino 21 alerts policymakers to the coming shakeup of the military and aid professions, illuminating key priorities for the new century. Humanitarians, he warns, must adapt or fail.”

Dr Slim is a Senior Research Fellow at the Las Casas Institute for Social Justice, Blackfriars Hall, Oxford. He was previously a Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict, based at Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government.

The book is available for pre-order here.