By Thameen Kheetan

AMMAN - Staff from international NGOs, media and public institutions are in Amman this week for training to enable them to identify violations of international law.

The Harvard programme on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research (HPCR) and the Amman-based Regional Centre for Conflict Prevention (RCCP) are teaming up to provide courses on advanced principles of humanitarian law and policy, occupation law and peacebuilding in addition to Islamic law (sharia).

The three courses are designed to help humanitarian workers utilise international law to assist investigators in crisis areas, according to HPCR Director Claude Bruderlein, who said 30 trainees are expected to apply their new legal knowledge to humanitarian situations in the places where they work.

Judges and international legal bodies "do not respond to facts, but to violations of humanitarian law", he said, underlining the importance of legal knowledge in order to identify such crimes.

"When you say 'someone was killed in Gaza' is different from saying 'a war crime was committed in Gaza’," Bruderlein told The Jordan Times on the sidelines of a training session earlier this week.

In addition to encouraging networking and experience exchange among participants, the sessions will provide them with the necessary tools to determine what is legally relevant to include in reports.

New York-based UNICEF emergency officer Junko Toda said she needs such tools in risk assessment.

"As you experience and work in the field, you find how it is useful and important to know [the law] in order to make a difference… It helps to tell our staff in areas of operation if what is going on is a violation of the humanitarian law," Toda told The Jordan Times.

For Swiss Public Television Middle East correspondent André Marthy, legal knowledge about war crimes was critical in covering the recent conflict in Gaza, in which Israel was accused of using internationally-banned weapons such as white phosphorus.

Marthy, who is based in Tel Aviv, said he also needs to know more about Islam and sharia to cover the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

For this purpose, HPCR and RCCP included a workshop on "Islamic law and protection of civilians" to help workers in the humanitarian sector understand situations in countries where Islamic law is applied.

"If you are working in Saudi Arabia or Somalia, for example, it's not for you to go change the law, but it is good to know the law and how to deal with people… in order to respect the traditions," HPCR senior associate Naz Modirzadeh explained.

RCCP Director Yasar Qatarneh agreed, highlighting the importance of finding “common points between Islamic law and international laws" in certain countries.

The training workshop, which will end on March 1, is also held by HPCR in Jakarta, Brussels, New York and Boston.