The ‘debate’ section of the Review aims at contributing to the reflection on current ethical, legal, or practical controversies around humanitarian issues.
In this issue of the Review, we invited two experts in international humanitarian law (IHL) and multinational peace operations – Professor Eric David and Professor Ola Engdahl – to debate on the way in which the involvement of a multinational force may affect the classification of a situation. This question is particularly relevant to establishing whether the situation amounts to an armed conflict or not and, if so, whether the conflict is international or non-international in nature. This in turn will determine the rights and obligations of each party, especially in a context in which multinational forces are increasingly likely to participate in the hostilities.
In war military necessity to some extent justifies breaches to some international humanitarian law rules. However, there is no justifiable causes for breaching rules with the objective to reduce humanitarian suffering. Professor Gabriella Blum is the creator of the humanitarian necessity theory which investigates the possibility for humanitarian necessity as a ground for freedom from responsibility in armed conflicts.
By applying the humanitarian necessity theory to the Moscow Theater Hostage Crisis case this thesis strives to investigate how a humanitarian necessity theory would affect international humanitarian law on an operational level of war.
The result of the analysis shows that the theory would weaken existing international humanitarian law and have high risks of blurring the limits between legitimate targets and protected persons. The implementation of the theory could result in creating an even more complex environment where the humanitarian necessity theory causes negative humanitarian effects instead of decreasing humanitarian suffering.
Approximately 15%, one billion persons, of the world’s population have a disability or impairment. A disability or impairment can be either physical or psychological, or both.
Civilian casualties are often occurring in armed conflicts. In 2019 alone, more than 20 000 civilians were killed in armed conflicts. According to International Humanitarian Law (IHL), actors in armed conflicts have a specific obligation to protect and respect the civilian population. To be able to protect civilians to the greatest extent possible in accordance with IHL it must be acknowledged that civilians are not a homogenous group of people. Civilians are of different sexes, ages, races, they have different cultural, social, and religious backgrounds and can have different types of physical or psychological disabilities and impairments.
This thesis has been inspired by the recent report from Geneva Academy on the issue ‘Disability in Armed Conflict’ which highlights how the lack of a disability perspective might adversely affect persons with disability when applying different IHL provisions during armed conflict.
The focus of this thesis is persons with disabilities in armed conflicts and how their protection is affected by being a person with disabilities or impairments. Due to the scope of this thesis the protection focus will be on the principle of precaution and more specifically the precautionary measure of advance warning. Thus, investigating if IHL’s lack of a disability perspective when requiring advance warnings to be ‘effective’ adversely affect the legal protection of civilians with physical and/or psychological disability against attacks.
The current focus on an ever-increasing sophistication of weapons systems usually overlooks efforts of states to enhance the physical and mental capabilities of human soldiers. While such techniques and technologies have a long history (e.g. the use of drugs and alcohol in order to overcome fear and fatigue; the use of night-vision goggles etc.), they have attained a new quality. For instance, certain armed forces are introducing wearable robotics suit (Powered exoskeletons). Furthermore, the development of military applications of brain-computer interfaces continues, which would allow for direct communication between a human brain and a computer – and eventually vice-versa. These technologies raise a number of pertinent international legal issues, such as: What are the potential consequences for compliance with the rules and principles of the law of armed conflict? What implications may such technologies have for the accountability of states and individuals? And what would the use of such technologies mean for the human rights of the human soldier?
Advances in technologies that could endow humans with physical or mental abilities that go beyond the statistically normal level of functioning are occurring at an incredible pace. The use of these human enhancement technologies by the military, for instance in the spheres of biotechnology, cybernetics and prosthetics, raise a number of questions under the international legal frameworks governing military technology, namely the law of armed conflict and human rights law. The article examines these frameworks with a focus on weapons law, the law pertaining to the detention of and by “enhanced individuals,” the human rights of those individuals and their responsibility for the actions they take while under the influence of enhancements.
This article cautions against the notion that the good intentions of European human rights law necessarily undermine international humanitarian law. In Al-Jedda, despite some suggestions to the contrary, the European Court did not misconstrue the law of belligerent occupation. The court erred, however, in assuming that the duty of non-detention under Article 5(1) of the European Convention can only be ‘displaced’ by a counter-duty of security detention. Whereas the law of belligerent occupation does not impose such a counter-duty, it does empower the occupation authorities to detain on security grounds, and exercising this power would frustrate observing Article 5(1) and vice versa. The norm conflict was soluble, but the would-be need to modify the scope and/or content of Article 5(1) or the law of belligerent occupation, rendered the European Court ill suited for the task. Nevertheless, the court’s ruling against the UK need not mean that European occupying powers suddenly have no choice but to kill rather than detain without charge (and risk lawsuits later) when countering security threats. On the contrary, the law of belligerent occupation helps the occupiers devise Al-Jedda-compliant detention regimes. The judgment’s repercussions are direr for the internment of prisoners of war.
This chapter asserts that States placing themselves under the umbrella of nuclear-weapon States may not join the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons without being in breach with one of its core provisions. The author considers four questions: How did the Treaty come to include a prohibition on threatened use? What does the prohibition mean for threatened self-defensive use of nuclear weapons under jus ad bellum? Does the prohibition cover nuclear deterrence? Does threatening to use nuclear weapons include threatening to have these weapons used on one’s behalf by its nuclear-armed ally? Whilst promoting universal adherence clearly coheres with the Treaty’s object and purpose, it is doubtful whether such considerations warrant a narrow construal in the hope that umbrella States would accede to the treaty without having to abandon their dependence onextended nuclear deterrence.
What does it mean to say that international humanitarian law (IHL) strikes a realistic and meaningful balance between military necessity and humanity, and that the law therefore 'accounts for' military necessity? To what consequences does the law 'accounting for' military necessity give rise? Through real-life examples and careful analysis, this book challenges received wisdom on the subject by devising a new theory that not only reaffirms Kriegsräson's fallacy but also explains why IHL has no reason to restrict or prohibit militarily unnecessary conduct on that ground alone. Additionally, the theory hypothesises greater normative significance for humanitarian and chivalrous imperatives when they conflict with IHL rules. By combining international law, jurisprudence, military history, strategic studies, and moral philosophy, this book reveals how rational fighting relates to ethical fighting, how IHL incorporates contrasting values that shape its rules, and how law and theory adapt themselves to war's evolutions.
A period of sustained efforts to codify and develop the rules of war, which began in the mid-nineteenth century, peaked with the 1899 and 1907 Hague Peace Conferences. Participating delegates adopted numerous binding instruments covering various aspects of peaceful dispute settlement and war-fighting. This paper places the two Hague Peace Conferences within the context of humanity’s attempts to regulate warfare. It identifies the main factors that made them successful at the time; shows how these factors have changed over time; and assesses the conferences’ contemporary relevance in view of such changes.
With the ad hoc tribunals completing their mandates and the International Criminal Court under significant pressure, today's international criminal jurisdictions are at a critical juncture. Their legitimacy cannot be taken for granted. This multidisciplinary volume investigates key issues pertaining to legitimacy: criminal accountability, normative development, truth-discovery, complementarity, regionalism, and judicial cooperation. The volume sheds new light on previously unexplored areas, including the significance of redacted judgements, prosecutors' opening statements, rehabilitative processes of international convicts, victim expectations, court financing, and NGO activism. The book's original contributions will appeal to researchers, practitioners, advocates, and students of international criminal justice, accountability for war crimes and the rule of law.
Seventy-five years after a US tribunal in Nuremberg acquitted Lothar Rendulic of devastating and forcibly evacuating Northern Norway, the Rendulic Rule stands firmly in international law. This concluding chapter summarises the anthology’s main historical, legal, and military-ethical findings. It provides an overview of the historical developments that culminated in the scorched earth tactics applied by the retreating German 20th Mountain Army under Rendulic’s command. It then discusses the preparations and legal peculiarities of the trial, as well as reactions to the judgment. The chapter shows that the case against Rendulic is arguably the wrong foundation for the no second-guessing rule, since he did not consider the complete devastation of Northern Norway and the forcible evacuation of its entire civilian population militarily necessary. Although the Rendulic Rule rests on meagre legal forensics, it has acquired legal significance in primary rules of conduct in the shape of the reasonable commander test in international humanitarian law and the mistake of fact defence in international criminal law. Numerous domestic, regional, and international courts and tribunals have applied the rule that nowadays has a strong legal standing. Yet, despite rapidly evolving military and information technology, reasonableness, empathy, and (institutional) bias in combat remain challenging issues
This book marks the 75th anniversary of the 1948 Hostage Case in which a US military tribunal in Nuremberg acquitted General Lothar Rendulic of devastating Northern Norway on account of his honest factual error. The volume critically reappraises the law and facts underlying his trial, the no second-guessing rule in customary international humanitarian law (IHL) that is named after the general himself, and the assessment of modern battlefield decisions.
Using recently discovered documents, this volume casts major doubts on Rendulic’s claim that he considered the region’s total devastation and the forcible evacuation of all of its inhabitants imperatively demanded by military necessity at the time. This book’s analysis of archival and court records reveals how the tribunal failed to examine relevant facts or explain the Rendulic Rule’s legal origin. This anthology shows that, despite the Hostage Case’s ambiguity and occasional suggestions to the contrary, objective reasonableness forms part of the reasonable commander test under IHL and the mistake of fact defence under international criminal law (ICL) to which the rule has given rise. This collection also identifies modern warfare’s characteristics—human judgment, de-empathetic battlespace, and institutional bias—that may make it problematic to deem some errors both honest and reasonable. The Rendulic Rule embodies an otherwise firmly established admonition against judging contentious battlefield decisions with hindsight. Nevertheless, it was born of a factually ill-suited case and continues to raise significant legal as well as ethical challenges today.
The most comprehensive study of the Rendulic Rule ever to appear in English, this multi-disciplinary anthology will appeal to researchers and practitioners of IHL and ICL, as well as military historians and military ethicists and offers ground-breaking new research.
Seventy-five years have passed since Hostage, a post-World War II case in which Lothar Rendulic was acquitted of Northern Norway’s devastation and forcible evacuation on account of his faulty yet honest judgment. This introductory chapter surveys the current state of our knowledge about honest errors in modern combat decision-making by synthesising the findings of the anthology’s contributing authors. First, contemporaneous sources suggest that Rendulic did not consider it militarily necessary to devastate the region in its entirety or to evacuate all of its residents by force. Second, even though Rendulic’s acquittal was factually contentious, it was arguably on firmer legal ground. His case has led to the emergence of an eponymous rule against second-guessing difficult combat decisions, the reasonable commander test in international humanitarian law and the mistake of fact defence in international criminal law. Third, assessing the reasonableness of battlefield errors remains challenging because of the limitations of modern information technology, the diminishing room for empathy in the soldierly profession, and the salience of institutional bias.
Michael Oakeshott’s distinction between ‘civil association’ and ‘enterprise association’ has inspired international society theorists to conceive of international society as not just a ‘purposive association’ constructed by states to satisfy their interests but also as a ‘practical association’ providing formal and pragmatic rules that are not instrumental to particular goals of state policy. While this article is supportive of the Oakeshottian turn in international society theory, it suggests that somewhat different conclusions can be drawn from it. The article sketches out an alternative conception of international ‘civil association’, one that transcends the boundaries of communities. It is argued that such a notion of civil association is both possible and at the same time anchored in the experiences of the modern state. It is suggested that this notion of international civil association, when sustained by an adequate legal conception, promotes the enforcement of moral and political responsibility across borders. Finally, it is argued that European governments post-Brexit should strive to retain, as much as possible, the element of civil association present in European relations in order to preserve the civil condition, the rule of law, and in order to enhance political responsibility across borders.
Against the background of a significant number of compliance mechanisms that the law of armed conflict (LoAC) provides for, on the one hand, and the fact that violations remain a pervasive feature of contemporary armed conflict, on the other, the present chapter examines five distinct compliance-related clusters. It begins by a reminder of the various existent compliance mechanisms and a plea for an honest, inter-disciplinary stocktaking of their efficacy. This is followed by another plea, namely for contextualizing compliance and compliance mechanisms and for moderating the expectations as to what they can achieve as counterweights to the myriad of factors that are prevalent in armed conflicts and that cause violations of the LoAC. The chapter then proceeds with addressing three particular trends that pose particular challenges in relation to compliance: the prevalence of non-international armed conflicts; that the current discourse about compliance is dominated by a culture of repression rather than prevention; and that compliance is increasingly individualized at the expense of addressing the collective nature of the violence inherent in armed conflict as the context in which violations occur.
The International Law Association Study Group on the Conduct of Hostilities in the 21st Century was established in 2011 and held its first meeting in 2012. The Study Group has explored numerous issues arising from the relationship between international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law in the conduct of military operations, technological challenges posed by new weapons systems, and the basic principles of IHL in the conduct of hostilities. In 2015, the Study Group established three working groups focusing on core issues within IHL in relation to the conduct of hostilities in modern warfare. These working group topics were military objectives, the principle of proportionality, and precautions in attacks. Each of these working group reports contributed to this final report, which the Study Group presented at the 77th International Law Association Conference in Johannesburg, South Africa on August 7–11, 2016.
The "organization" of the non-State armed group and the "intensity" of the violence between it and its opponent(s) have emerged as the two key criteria to determine the temporal scope of the law of non-international armed conflict. These criteria have served to lift the fog of law in some important respects. Yet, several aspects of the temporal scope of the law of non-international armed conflict remain unsettled. This article addresses three of them, namely the assertion that the factors for ascertaining organization and intensity that have evolved in the jurisprudence of international criminal courts and tribunals are indicative rather than determinative, to whom the criterion of organization is to be applied, and whether the requisite level of intensity of armed violence can be cumulative when multiple organized armed groups are pitted against each other and government forces even though the armed violence that arises in the bilateral relations between two opposing parties does not reach the requisite level of intensity.
Traditionally, international humanitarian law (IHL) is conceptualized as a body of mutually binding, horizontal international legal rules that are agreed upon by States and that govern the relationships between parties to armed conflicts. Yet, there is discernible evidence that contemporary IHL – and the broader normative environment that pertains to the regulation of armed conflicts in which it is situated – is incorporating elements of unilateralization, manifested in legal and non-legal norms that regulate armed conflicts taking the form of commitments whose validity is not dependent on being reciprocated. This article examines some of the systemic implications of unilateralization of IHL and considers its pitfalls and potential.