Prevention is often framed in terms of compliance and enforcement. From your perspective, how do norms influence behaviour in ways that go beyond formal rules and sanctions?

Social norms are unwritten rules that motivate behaviour in a group, organization or society at large. Whether we are talking about littering and recycling behaviours, childcare being assigned as a woman’s responsibility, appropriate dress codes, or the use of violence being considered acceptable under certain circumstances (such as past duelling norms to uphold one’s honour), norms shape what is socially appropriate, expected, prohibited or obligatory, and what deserves praise or condemnation. As shared understandings and informal guides for action, norms influence behaviour by framing individuals’ motivations and becoming established in organizations. They become embedded in organizations such as the parliament, workplace or schools, or in military forces and non-State armed groups, through implicit ideas about how actors within these organizations should behave and by becoming markers of group identity and belonging.

Understanding these norms is especially urgent given the rise in serious violations of international humanitarian law [IHL] impacting civilians. Informal norms differ from formal rules, which include laws, policies, constitutions and mandates that have statutory recognition and are enforced by official entities, policemen, judges, bosses and organizational management. In contrast, informal norms, such as social norms, influence behaviour in a decentralized manner, relying on shared understanding and informal mechanisms that can both be visible and unseen. They are enforced through social sanctions, including by generating social approval or disapproval, violence against those perceived to deviate from them, mocking, or internalized feelings of shame and guilt.

Formal rules and sanctions may interact with informal norms and practices in multiple ways. They may substitute, compete with or complement one other. For one, existing norms may go against laws and formal restrictions, obstructing their effective implementation, if those laws are not accepted by the local population. There may be laws for social equity in the workplace, but discrimination continues because of biases in hiring and promotion practices, for example. Social norms and laws may also complement each other or co-exist, with people navigating between them depending on the context; in certain situations they follow social norms, while in others they follow formal rules. Here we may think of formal and customary property rights, or anti-corruption laws that complement informal checks and balances. In other cases, social norms and laws may strengthen each other: passing a law may change what behaviours are expected and normalized by signalling that a new behaviour is legitimate. Global norms such as IHL, when embedded in domestic laws and regulations, can influence practice through gravitational force even without direct enforcement mechanisms.

Social mechanisms may motivate restraint more effectively than formal sanctions; this can be the case in community security groups or bottom-up justice mechanisms. Legal reforms and formal codes of conduct may also reflect dominant social norms, which are then codified and cemented through formal enforcement mechanisms.

These interactions between formal rules and informal norms can help explain why legal frameworks don’t always ensure compliance and why institutional reforms can produce unexpected and contradictory effects. For States and other institutional actors, the challenge – and the opportunity – is to understand how society and law can work together, to deliberately align legal frameworks, trainings systems, leadership models and broader socialization processes, so that respect for IHL becomes embedded in institutional culture and reinforced throughout society, preventing dehumanizing practices and extreme violence from becoming normalized.

In the context of IHL, what distinguishes a norm that is formally accepted from one that actually shapes the day-to-day behaviour of relevant actors?

Formal legislation, awareness-raising and training in international and domestic law, while essential, are rarely sufficient on their own to ensure compliance. Knowledge matters, but it doesn’t automatically translate into behaviour, especially under conditions of stress, rigid hierarchical structures or group pressure, or where violence has become normalized. In these situations, armed actors may defer to ingrained behavioural patterns or replicate what they observe from their peers or commanders.

What differentiates a formally accepted IHL norm from one that actively shapes conduct is a combination of legitimacy, internalization and active social reinforcement. People are more likely to act in accordance with formal laws when these rules resonate with their sense of identity, group belonging and shared expectations about ethical conduct. In armed forces specifically, this means that IHL compliance is more likely to be reliable when it is experienced not only as a legal obligation but as an expression of professionalism, leadership and institutional identity – when it becomes lived practice within armed forces and the societies that sustain them. Durable compliance requires aligning multiple levers: policy frameworks, moral and professional norms, institutional culture, peer networks and the conduct of influential figures. Where these reinforce one another, formally accepted norms have a greater chance of shaping what armed actors actually do.

Based on your research, through what processes do norms become embedded in routine practices and decision-making over time?

Norms become embedded in routine practices and decision-making through varied processes operating at multiple levels – from early socialization in the home, education, peer dynamics, and structural power. These varied influences make harmful practices difficult to prevent because they are reinforced at multiple levels, but they also mean that States and other actors have several entry points for prevention and enforcement. I’ll discuss five processes that contribute to entrenching or maintaining norms: socialization and internalization, communication and repeated messaging, power dynamics and legitimacy, moments where norms become salient, and structural or contextual shocks.

Socialization and internalization constitute one important pathway through which norms are learned and sustained, where they become habitual and create internal predispositions to act in certain ways. As conflict scholars have argued, violence is reproduced by being socialized and normalized across spheres: in the home and the street, in schools, in the media, in government spaces and military camps. Long-standing socialization happens through education and transmission across generations, but short-term military training and indoctrination are also spaces for socialization and reshaping identities to build loyalty and commitment. The 2018 Roots of Restraint in War report by the International Committee of the Red Cross [ICRC] highlights that organizational and authority structures within armed groups shape how codes of conduct are socialized, enforced and monitored.Footnote ² The time span, overlapping spaces and emotional intensity of socialization processes may play a role in how much these experiences become ingrained.

Norms are also learned and transmitted across communication and information dynamics. They are reinforced through recurrent messaging and interactions across hierarchical and peer relationships, and become woven into broader webs of values, ideologies and social relations. This has practical implications for prevention efforts as isolated interventions or single messaging campaigns are unlikely to shift entrenched norms or practices precisely because these are reproduced through multiple, overlapping channels. Information and communication are not neutral; power is critical to how and which norms emerge and persist. Dominant norms are not simply shared agreements but reflect histories of contestation and the interests of those with the power to institute, enforce and legitimate those norms, producing structural legacies which outlive the conditions that created them. Powerful actors can resist new norms, selectively comply with existing ones, or face fewer consequences for non-compliance. Norms also gain legitimacy when they are framed as long-standing traditions and are buttressed by symbols, religion or moral doctrine, making them appear natural or inevitable. These power dynamics make the role of social justice, the justice system and working against a culture of impunity at the global and national level essential.

Norms acquire an unspoken quality as they become routine and automatized, but there are also occasions where otherwise tacit values and expectations are made visible and actively transmitted. These occur, for example, during the formation of new groups, the joining of new recruits, induction ceremonies, hazing, indoctrination practices or pre-combat rituals. These moments matter because they present opportunities where norms can be discussed, questioned or redefined. Opportunities for reinforcing IHL and norms of restraint also occur in interventions where humanitarian practitioners engage in dialogue with community members or armed groups, or in weapons transfers and peace negotiations. The ICRC and partners can leverage these moments to introduce and reinforce IHL norms.

Shocks and structural changes can disrupt or shift norms, leading others to take hold. Abrupt events such as political transitions or institutional reforms, as well as the more gradual shifts in protracted conflicts through changing authority structures, fragmentation of armed actors, new alliances, and evolving relations with communities, can open space for new practices to emerge. Whether through abrupt shocks or the evolving nature of many protracted conflicts, changed environments can lead actors to re-evaluate their practices, emphasizing how compliance and protection can never be taken for granted.

These processes illustrate that norms are not static or self-sustaining – they require active processes of transmission, enforcement and legitimation to remain embedded in routine practice. In designing effective prevention and compliance strategies, it is important for States, the ICRC and their partners to consider these varied social mechanisms and broader social forces both within and outside armed forces, understanding which mechanisms are more active in each context and where they are most vulnerable to change.

Which actors are most influential in shaping behaviour in practice, and how do their roles differ in reinforcing or challenging existing norms?

Actors’ ability to influence behaviour depends on, firstly, whether they seek to challenge or maintain existing norms, and secondly, their position within broader power structures, as authority figures, institutional designers, or challengers to the status quo. Any analysis must account for these power relations, recognizing that different actors have different capacities to institute, enforce or resist norms.

Within armed forces, senior, mid-level and junior commanders are strategic targets for engagement. As issuers of orders, they set the moral tone at the front line and shape what counts as ethical conduct and balancing military tactics with civilian security. Fellow soldiers matter too; peer dynamics establish informal standards of behaviour that can either reinforce or undermine formal doctrine. “Norm pioneers” – individuals willing to deviate from harmful established practices and model restraint – can be powerful role models, but this bottom-up channel of influence is constrained in highly hierarchical military settings that prioritize obedience over individual judgement.

Beyond the military chain of command, a wider set of actors shapes the social environment in which armed forces operate. Engaging with those affected by violence and IHL violations, who often operate in more informal processes, as well as involving active combatants, can lead to more widespread and sustainable change and set up social control mechanisms that complement the law and military doctrine. Authoritative figures such as faith leaders, village elders, customary court judges and business elites serve as important intermediaries between armed forces, government officials and communities. Research on network dynamics shows that well-connected individuals can have disproportionate influence on the behaviours of those around them, suggesting that identifying and engaging these figures strategically can be effective.

Community-led protection mechanisms and social movements can be critical to filling accountability gaps, preventing harms and building social consciousness. Social leaders, peace activists and civil society groups play important roles advocating for change, building coalitions and sustaining pressure over time. They can be important mediators to negotiate and encourage armed actors to limit violence on civilians and critical infrastructure. Women, in their roles as mothers, teachers or community leaders, have influenced the behaviour of armed groups in some conflicts, with Liberia being a prominent example. In Colombia, the advocacy of social leaders and civil society organizations over decades of non-international armed conflict was instrumental in securing the recognition of gender-based violence in the peace process, illustrating how collective mobilization by civic actors can impact legal change. Youth and diaspora communities represent additional constituencies whose engagement can contribute to more contextually appropriate responses and durable social repair.

These examples point toward whole-of-society approaches that build coalitions across varied actors – including those not usually considered in protection or IHL programmes – in order to support activism and more effective accountability that can exert cumulative pressure on armed actors to act ethically, while reinforcing values of dignity and humanity across society.

How do institutions shape behaviour by translating abstract legal norms into operational expectations, incentives or constraints relevant to prevention?

Abstract legal norms become embedded and operationalized in institutional entities through their organizational rules, socialization processes that communicate organizational culture, and formal and informal reward and accountability systems. Effective prevention requires looking beyond written codes of conduct to the social and hidden forces that shape how directives are actually applied in decision-making, including how organizations and armed groups are run, their leadership and recruitment processes, how strategic decisions and tactics are made, and the implicit ideas about what constitutes a model soldier or combatant, or visual markers that signal group membership such as clothes or haircuts. Any rule, formal or informal, leaves much unspecified and is not always consistently followed, especially in combat situations of extreme stress and unforeseen ethical dilemmas. Prevention therefore requires much more than symbolic claims and vague aspirations: it needs explicit doctrines and directions, specific curricula, and promotion and disciplinary mechanisms backed by credible monitoring.

Institutional entities can make IHL violations costly and prevention practices respected through both formal and informal means, by cultivating a culture of compliance and restraint through top-down leadership and doctrine but also horizontally, through media, storytelling, and public awareness campaigns grounded in local context. Recasting concepts like honour, loyalty and ethical behaviour in concrete terms, drawing on broader moral frameworks – including indigenous ones such as ubuntu in South Africa or customary authorities – and creating internal accountability committees all deepen and concretize institutional influence. States can reinforce this further by integrating IHL into leadership development, promotion criteria and command evaluations, not just technical training, while coordinating across ministries of defence, education and justice, and anchoring these efforts in foreign policy and National Action Plans for Women, Peace and Security.Footnote ³ Through this dual strategy of explicit specification and building coherence across mechanisms, institutions can actively shift and reinforce the values embedded in organizational culture.

To what extent can institutional routines, bureaucratic procedures or professional standards function as behavioural scripts that guide action in concrete situations?

Institutional routines, bureaucratic procedures and professional standards have ideational and interpretive power insofar as they introduce language and narratives that influence how actors read a situation and determine appropriate responses, but their effectiveness as behavioural scripts depends in part on how they are framed and communicated. At times, making obligations more salient can drive non-compliant behaviour underground, especially if those obligations are perceived as disconnected from local values, military efficacy or lived experience. Concepts like “restraint” or “protection” are inherently vague and can be used to justify violations and civil harm under “exceptional” circumstances. Definitions can be made more concrete by drawing on benchmarking, past conduct and similar cases to give abstract standards practical meaning.

Prevention strategies are more likely to land when armed actors are engaged as active participants and when they are connected to shared values and histories. This means involving national experts, veterans, educators and respected figures in the design and delivery of trainings and operational practices, as well as participatory approaches that allow military personnel and armed actors to reflect on the dilemmas they face and connect legal rules to their own experiences and realities. Legitimacy matters, as practices and behaviours are internalized more readily when they are framed as consistent with national traditions and existing moral frameworks. Evidence shows that change often begins by reinterpreting or reframing established values and moral principles rather than introducing entirely new ones. States and other organizations can work to strengthen legitimacy by grounding IHL training and doctrine in national traditions, ethical codes and historical narratives that emphasize restraint and respect for civilians or the importance of essential services and infrastructure for well-being, for example. They can work with armed actors and authorities to reframe what “courage”, “honour” or “loyalty” mean and to help embed these moral principles explicitly within institutional procedures and professional standards through consultation and engaged critical reflection. Institutional mechanisms that foster group loyalty and a shared sense of identity around these reframed values can further reinforce compliance.

How do policies such as doctrines, guidelines or national frameworks affect behaviour on the ground, and what conditions make these tools more likely to influence practice rather than remaining merely symbolic?

Formal policies and frameworks can affect behaviour on the ground by communicating what is acceptable and legitimate, creating incentives, or introducing guard-rails. However, the relationship between written policies and actual conduct is rarely direct. Even well-designed national frameworks face implementation and accountability gaps, especially where there are competing pressures such as military necessity.

Several conditions appear to matter for closing these gaps. The credibility of enforcement is important: where violations go unaddressed, they signal that standards are negotiable. Policies perceived as too far removed from operational realities risk encountering resistance from both those responsible for enforcing them and those required to follow them, which could be counterproductive and increase mistrust for IHL standards and international organizations. This highlights the underappreciated role of intermediaries and norm enforcers – trainers, legal advisers, unit commanders – to actively promote compliance and translate abstract standards into context-specific guidance.

Beyond institutional channels, sustaining normative pressure requires building public consciousness and enabling group deliberations around these frameworks. Civic education, historical commemorations and national narratives that emphasize restraint and protection of civilians can embed policy goals in social meaning, maintaining pressure even when political will at higher levels is inconsistent. Community-led protection, monitoring and response mechanisms impose informal limits on armed group behaviour, especially in hybrid conflicts where institutional presence and humanitarian access are limited and where non-State armed actors are heavily embedded in local communities. Efforts to build a broader culture of peace, non-violent mediation, equality, justice and respect for law may provide a supporting environment for the enactment of policies and national frameworks.

When preventive norms encounter resistance, how does this resistance manifest at the behavioural level?

Resistance can manifest in individual and commander rationalization, institutional implementation failures, or inaction and absence of sanctions at the broader international level. A common manifestation at the behavioural level is not outright rejection of norms but their active reframing and workarounds to justify non-compliance. Commanders and authorities redefine situations and leverage grey areas to carve out exceptions, arguing for example that military necessity and efficacy override prevention, invoking religious or other ideological justifications, blurring the distinction between civilians and combatants, or dehumanizing the opposite side. Rather than openly defining IHL, these actors manipulate the normative frame to present unlawful conduct as legitimate or unavoidable. The increasing complexity of armed conflicts and the actors involved – including, for example, the challenges presented by urban warfare – creates ambiguity that provides greater room for these reinterpretations.

Further attention should be given to the role – and values and worldviews – of policy-makers and legislators responsible for implementing accountability mechanisms. Their willingness or reluctance to conduct prosecutions, enforce convictions and apply standards is critical. Selective enforcement and institutional cultures of impunity send powerful signals that norms are negotiable, eroding the credibility of IHL frameworks from within and worsening disenchantment with global norms’ effectiveness.

Resistance is also exhibited at the global level where States withdraw from multilateral commitments, block accountability mechanisms, fail to condemn or sanction blatant IHL violations, or tolerate or perpetrate attacks on international organizations and their workers on the ground. Dangerous slippages in international norms, where previously unacceptable conduct becomes expected, make the work of international organizations as “norm brokers” increasingly difficult and lead to a diminishment of the capacity to protect those norms.

What indicators or forms of evidence can help us assess whether changes in norms are actually producing sustained changes in behaviour?

Measuring whether changes in norms translate into sustained behavioural change presents several challenges. Social norms are informal and often invisible – people may not even be aware they are conforming to them. Enforcement often takes place through social as much as official processes, making such mechanisms difficult to observe directly. Building evidence to assess what changes are happening and how they are impacting behaviour requires both new research tools and the creative repurposing of existing data.

To comprehensively assess how norms are changing requires indicators around three interconnected dimensions: first, behaviours and practices; second, ideologies, beliefs and values; and third, power relations and social influence. In other words, we have to understand what people do, what they think, and how they influence one another.

Within these dimensions, several types of indicators are useful. Attitudinal surveys – such as the World Values Survey or regional barometers measuring trust, confidence in different institutions (such as the press, police, government or military) or justifications for violence – are the most commonly used measures for norms. However, personal attitudes alone are insufficient, as they do not always predict behaviour; there are often gaps between what people report as their personal beliefs and what happens in practice, and these can be exacerbated in IHL and prevention contexts because discussing hypothetical situations is no guarantee that these values will be respected in the future. In other words, reported attitudes don’t always translate directly into action.

Measures of second-order beliefs – what people believe others think and do – and community-level perceptions of what behaviours are typical and acceptable can be used to complement reported attitudes. Tracking sanctions and responses to violations can be integrated into diagnostic tools: what people expect as the social or political consequences of indiscriminate violence or how disputes are resolved in the community (by the police or armed groups, for example), and how this has changed, may provide insights into norms of restraint. Perceptions of civilian safety around armed actors and the military can serve as a related indicator. Network analysis can map how opinions spread and can help identify key actors of influence or authority structures. These can be integrated into tools used by humanitarian organizations like power analysis or conflict sensitivity in order to understand which sources of influence should be targeted to increase compliance.

Finally, questions about the direction and pace of change – how practices compare to the past or perceptions about how practices are likely to evolve – can complement snapshots of current practices. Further measures need to be developed around the factors that determine norm strength – how resistant norms are to change and how much leeway exists to deviate from them. These considerations emphasize the value of mixed methods: understanding informal social practices requires both quantified measures of how frequent or common observable behaviours are, and qualitative insights into individual interpretations, meanings and values.

From a norm and behaviour perspective, what should initiatives focused on the prevention of IHL violations prioritize if their aim is to influence how actors actually behave?

Rather than discussing specific initiatives to prioritize, I suggest two broad approaches that States, technical partners and external stakeholders such as the ICRC can apply to strengthen prevention beyond awareness-raising and support lasting compliance with IHL.

Firstly, start with what is already there. Preventing IHL violations at the domestic level is not only a matter of rules and sanctions, but also socialization, values-based leadership and institutional culture and identity. By applying behavioural and social insights within IHL systems, States can strengthen the conditions under which respect for IHL becomes sustainable and embedded within armed forces and throughout society. It is important to start with an understanding of what is happening – that is, to have robust knowledge of the attitudes, ideologies, group-level dynamics, economic factors, historical legacies and social grievances that contribute to compliance or non-compliance with global norms in each context. Even when harmful practices exist, they are rarely uncontested – whether explicitly or subtly, there are often counter-narratives, people who disagree with established norms, and examples of good practices, even if they remain marginal. Amplifying positive narratives and examples highlighting the good practices and ethical leadership that are already taking place, can be an effective strategy. A second step is then to incorporate lessons learned and positive deviance into training, codes of conduct and after-event reviews.

Identifying the barriers that need to be addressed and the local resources that can be used to prevent IHL violations requires actively engaging with armed forces, communities and power holders to understand their viewpoints and experiences. Collaborating with academics and activists with long histories in and deep understanding of the region ensures that prevention strategies are culturally resonant and grounded in local realities, and more likely to gain the trust and buy-in necessary for both lasting change and the ability to react to abrupt shifts in conflict dynamics.

Secondly, create ecosystem change. Norms and behavioural change initiatives are not enough on their own. The relationship between national frameworks and practical norms, and between norms, values and behaviour, involves multiple feedback loops and mediating factors that make top-down social engineering neither feasible nor desirable. A more promising approach, but one that requires a shift in logic, is building an ecosystem of complementary conditions and influences that can reinforce each other – rather than only pursuing direct or targeted interventions – in order to lay the foundations for more enduring change. This implies identifying synergies across humanitarian clusters, security systems and State projects that reinforce behavioural change through multiple strategic entry points. Complementarities with criminal law, justice and security system reform, and routine interactions in health-care delivery, water servicing, infrastructure projects and vocational training, can ensure that efforts address not only legal knowledge but also the material and institutional conditions that enable compliance. Socialization programmes that are accompanied by livelihoods initiatives or multi-service centres have been found to be potentially more effective than messaging campaigns and group deliberations activities on their own, as they address material deprivations, the economic and physical risks associated with the presence of armed forces, and grievances that drive behaviours. Likewise, education and public campaigns can be more effective when they are connected to long-standing social movements for, and national conversations on, peace, human rights and civic responsibility.

From a norm change perspective, long-term sustained strategies are essential. Due to the evolving and protracted nature of many armed conflicts, where fragmentation of violence patterns and changing group dynamics increase their complexity, the scope for action must span the full conflict and peace spectrum, from active combat through conflict resolution to peaceful transitions of power. Financing and investing resources away from military spending and the weapons trade and towards collective prevention efforts is equally critical, as is addressing deeper structural conditions linked to social injustice and processes of dehumanization. Cycles of impunity at the national and global levels are particularly dangerous as their cascading effects erode red lines and limits built from years of multilateral cooperation.