Suchergebnisse

Few violations of the law of armed conflict (LOAC) are as pernicious as using civilians to shield military objectives from attack. This unlawful tactic unfortunately seems to be an all too common practice of organized armed groups, especially in conflicts against tactically superior conventional state armed forces. The very term "human shielding" presupposes, however, the ultimate objective is to prevent an opponent from attacking the shielded military objective or, in the alternative, substantially complicate that attack decision. But is a shielding effect always the ultimate objective of such civilian exploitation? This article argues that the answer is no; that there is a more aggravated form of "human shielding" that occurs when the party exploits civilians in an effort to "bait" the opponent into launching an attack in the hope that it will actually produce civilian casualties, casualties that can be exploited in the broader "legitimacy battle." Thus, unlike the conduct-based violation of human shielding condemned by the LOAC, this tactic seeks to produce the far more egregious result of civilian casualties by exploiting the attacking force as an "innocent agent" to launch an attack. In this situation, the defending force effectively uses the attacking force to "indirectly" attack civilians by executing an attack on the shielded military objective even though the attack is assessed as lawful. This aggravated form of civilian exploitation is not fully captured by the concept of human shielding. Accordingly, this article argues that more effort needs to be devoted to identifying when and how such "indirect attacks" on civilians can be identified and condemned.

The protection of civilians is a highly topical issue at the forefront of international discourse, and has taken a prominent role in many international deployments. It has been at the centre of debates on the NATO intervention in Libya, UN deployments in Darfur, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and on the failures of the international community in Sri Lanka and Syria. Variously described as a moral responsibility, a legal obligation, amandated peacekeeping task, and the culmination of humanitarian activity, it has become a high-profile concern of governments, international organisations, and civil society, and a central issue in international peace and security. This book offers a multidisciplinary treatment of this important topic, harnessing perspectives from international law and international relations, traversing academia and practice

AbstractThere is a widespread view that civilians are worse off in today' wars than ever before. Civilians are often deliberately targeted by belligerents or are victims of 'collateral damage'. They form the majority of victims of landmines. They are used as human shields. They are displaced from their homes, even from their country. They are affected, often more than soldiers, by the pestilence, famine and displacement that wars bring in their wake. They are often particularly vulnerable in the types of war that are most prevalent in the world today – including civil wars and asymmetric conflicts. Children are forced to become soldiers. How can it be that the lot of civilians in war remains so dire, when so much attention has been paid to the protection of civilians in war – not just in international treaties, but in the work of international organizations and also that of numerous humanitarian bodies?

On 14 January 1986, Vinicio Cerezo of the Partido Democrata Cristiano Guatemalteco took office as Guatemala's first civilian president for 16 years. The paper focuses on the major internal dimensions which have dictated the rationale for Guatemala's political process: the return to civilian rule as an integral part of the army's security plan, and the celebration of elections as an urgent palliative to the country's worst economic crisis for fifty years

Civilian-owned and -operated entities will almost certainly be a target in cyberwarfare because cyberattackers are likely to be more focused on undermining the viability of the targeted state than on invading its territory. Cyberattackers will probably target military computer systems, at least to some extent, but in a departure from traditional warfare, they will also target companies that operate aspects of the victim nation's infrastructure. Cyberwarfare, in other words, will penetrate the territorial borders of the attacked state and target high-value civilian businesses. Nation-states will therefore need to integrate the civilian employees of these (and perhaps other) companies into their cyberwarfare response structures if a state is to be able to respond effectively to cyberattacks. While many companies may voluntarily elect to participate in such an effort, others may decline to do so, which creates a need, in effect, to conscript companies for this purpose. This Article explores how the U.S. government can go about compelling civilian cooperation in cyberwarfare without violating constitutional guarantees and limitations on the power of the Legislature and the Executive.

This Article examines the notion of superior responsibility of civilians for international crimes committed in civilian settings. The doctrine of superior responsibility grew out of the military doctrine of command responsibility, and its evolution is informed by this origin. Jurisprudence and academic writers emphasize that the doctrine is applicable to civilian superiors of military or paramilitary organizations, but there has never been a detailed analysis of the doctrine's relevance and applicability in civilian settings. The Article argues that the claim that customary international law extends the doctrine of superior responsibility to civilians, let alone in civilian settings, is inaccurate. In judicial practice, including recent rulings, civilians have rarely been convicted under the doctrine even as leaders of military organizations, and when they have, these convictions were generally secondary to their direct responsibility. The Article elaborates various challenges to the application of the doctrine in civilian settings, particularly in the determination of the existence of a superior-subordinate relationship. Despite the difficulties in transposing the doctrine to the civilian sphere, the Article argues that, as a matter of policy, civilians should also be subject to the doctrine. It also contends that the normative distinctions between civilians and military superiors, today entrenched in Article 28 of the International Criminal Court Statute, are neither absolutely necessary nor practicable.

"Civilian Victimization During Conflict" published on by Oxford University Press.