The Centre for International Law Research and Policy (CILRAP) seeks to contribute to academic activities in international law and to practitioners and policy makers in international law. It is a knowledge platform that includes and tries to bridge scholarship, publication, training and other forms of knowledge-transfer, and the development of knowledge tools. Its knowledge-generation should be informed of and where meaningful contribute to practical needs.   

The Centre has two main departments: the Forum for International Criminal and Humanitarian Law (FICHL) and the Case Matrix Network (CMN). Each department has a broad range of activities.

The FICHL conducts expert seminars on carefully selected topics in international criminal law, international humanitarian law, transitional justice and international law more widely. The seminars take place in different locations around the world. The Forum has established three publication series: the Publication Series, the Occasional Paper Series and the Policy Brief Series. The publications are available online and in print. To strengthen its open access publication programme, it has established the Torkel Opsahl Academic EPublisher.

The CMN is a knowledge-transfer and capacity building platform in international criminal law. It seeks to empower those working on core international crimes cases, or the documentation of serious human rights violations that may amount to core international crimes, by providing access to legal information, legal expertise and through a number of additional knowledge tools. The CMN is active in more than 25 countries.

Contributing to the democratization of access to legal information is a main objective of the Centre. It does so through the activities of the FICHL and CMN and by use of the Internet and other information technology. Some of the leading legal informatics experts in the world are working with the Centre. For this reason, the Centre has its own Legal Informatics Section.

The Centre is incorporated as an international non-profit organization in Brussels, Belgium, by Royal Decree WL 22/15.887 dated 15 June 2010, with the incorporation number 0827.424.153. The Director of the Centre is Morten Bergsmo. Its members include distinguished professionals and students around the world.