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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.