One year of the Stockholm Manual
24 September 2026One year ago today, the IHL Centre launched the Stockholm Manual: A Practitioner’s Guide to Conducting IHL Assessments and Advocacy. The Manual is an innovative, practical tool designed to help actors such as humanitarian practitioners, policy makers, the media, and civil society organisations in their humanitarian diplomacy and advocacy efforts.
The Stockholm launch of the Manual was an important milestone for the IHL Centre and for IHL-supported humanitarian advocacy. But the real test of a practical tool is what happens after it is launched. Over the last year, we have had the opportunity to introduce the Manual to a wide range of audiences and to deliver training workshops both in person and online on how it can support humanitarian advocacy. Some examples include:
- the launch event in Stockholm brought together high-level representatives from the Swedish Government, the European Commission, as well as Nordic civil society and humanitarian organisations
- in New York City, we engaged with diplomats during an International Law Week side event
- in Nairobi we trained humanitarian practitioners working across contexts such as Sudan and Ethiopia
- in Kyiv we delivered a specialised workshop to Ukrainian civil society organisations
- and in Brussels we trained a range of staff from across the European institutions.
What's next?
The Stockholm Manual is currently being translated into French and Arabic, helping make it accessible to a wider community of practitioners globally. And we are continuing to deliver tailored training and workshops for humanitarian practitioners, journalists, diplomats and others. In February 2027, the IHL Centre will convene a three-day regional workshop on the Stockholm Manual in Amman, Jordan. The workshop will bring together around 25 humanitarian and civil society practitioners working across the Middle East to explore how to apply the Manual to issues including civilian harm, starvation, obstruction of humanitarian assistance and forced displacement, and how to translate IHL analysis into context-appropriate advocacy.
📅 Save the date: 2–4 February 2027 | Amman, Jordan
If you would like to explore a training session or workshop for your organisation or network, either in person or remotely, please contact us at sm@ihlcentre.org.
Main photo: Brussels presentation of the Stockholm Manual to colleagues in the EU institutions, November 2025
Photo 1: Stockholm Launch event, september 2025
Photo 2: Therese Hydén (Director-General for Legal Affairs, Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs) holds a copy of the Stockholm Manual at the official International Law Week side event organised by the IHL Centre in New York, October 2025.