Naming and Shaming the Bombers

2021 ◽  
pp. 185-210
Author(s):  
Michiel Hofman
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Access To Services ◽  
Medecins Sans Frontieres ◽  
Médecins Sans Frontières ◽  
Naming And Shaming ◽  
The Way

This chapter recounts how Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) failed to turn the tide against the attacks on hospitals through its approach of naming and shaming the perpetrators of hospital bombings. It speculates that the failure to stop the attacks was either caused by the way in which the international humanitarian law (IHL) is wired to provide exemption for warring parties or MSF’s inability to deliver consistent messages necessary to generate pressure on offending nations. It also mentions the Syrian government’s denial of assistance to the population and disrespect to the laws of war that centered the state as both perpetrator and aid responder. The chapter looks at the Syrian government’s ability to deny and allow access to services that served to amplify its control and project its sovereignty. It elaborates how the Syrian state centered its own sovereign control by being the focus of diplomatic efforts to ensure humanitarian access.

scholarly journals Ocena ataku na szpital w Kunduzie w świetle międzynarodowego prawa humanitarnego

2018 ◽  
pp. 153
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Szpak
Keyword(s):  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Governmental Organization ◽  
Medecins Sans Frontieres ◽  
Médecins Sans Frontières

Evaluation of the attack on the Kunduz hospital in the light of international humanitarian law The article concentrates on the recent US attack on a hospital led by the international non-governmental organization Médecins Sans Frontières. The hospital was located in Kunduz in Afghanistan and the attack took place on October 2, 2015. The author briefly analyses the legality of the attack in the light of international humanitarian law, especially in the light of the rules of targeting military objectives.

Part I: Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tilman Rodenhäuser
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Basic Principle ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Connected Group ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Contemporary Practice

Analysing the development of the concept of non-state parties to an armed conflict from the writings of philosophers in the eighteenth century through international humanitarian law (IHL) treaty law to contemporary practice, three threads can be identified. First, as pointed out by Rousseau almost two and a half centuries ago, one basic principle underlying the laws of war is that war is not a relation between men but between entities. Accordingly, the lawful objective of parties cannot be to harm opponents as individuals but only to overcome the entity for which the individual fights. This necessitates that any party to an armed conflict is a collective, organized entity and not a loosely connected group of individuals. Second, de Vattel already stressed that civil war is fought between two parties who ‘acknowledge no common judge’ and have no ‘common superior’ on earth....

Laws of War, Morality, and International Politics: Compliance, Stringency, and Limits

2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
HENRY SHUE
Keyword(s):  
International Politics ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Political Arena

AbstractA person with moral commitments can respect International Humanitarian Law (IHL) only if the permissions granted by it do not depart radically from their basic morality, but the features of contemporary war require considerable departures from morality in the content of any rules applicable to war. The features of the contemporary international political arena, in turn, and especially the dominant interpretation of sovereignty, require that IHL be the same for all parties. But, contrary to the arguments of some influential analytic philosophers, such ‘symmetry’ in the laws need not involve their content's departing excessively from basic morality. Insisting on the same rules for all, however, leads to the problem that, other things equal, the more stringent the content of a set of rules, the greater the temptation on the part of self-interested parties to flout the rules. However, a hard-headed view of IHL requires no concessions to terrorists or anti-terrorists.

The Banality of Humanity (as an Absolute)

2019 ◽  
pp. 297-304
Author(s):  
Knut Traisbach
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
International Human

This chapter is a comment on a reflection by Frédéric Mégret on the limits of the laws of war. It proposes a jurisprudence of limits that focuses less on absolute ideals but on the compromising and enabling space ‘in-between’ these absolutes. Relying on Hannah Arendt’s views on different conceptions of humanity, the comment critically engages with a thinking in terms of inherent opposing interests and oscillations between them. A conception of limits as reproducing inherent absolutes is disabling and passive. Instead, limits can be understood as facilitating a space that enables us to judge and to act, also through compromise. International humanitarian law and international human rights law, perhaps more than other areas of international law, depend on preserving and actively seeking this politically relevant space.

scholarly journals Do attackers have a legal duty of care? Limits to the ‘individualization of war’

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janina Dill
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
The State ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Duty Of Care ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Legal Situation ◽  
Legal Duty ◽  
The Individual

AbstractDoes International Humanitarian Law (IHL) impose a duty of care on the attacker? From a moral point of view, should it? This article argues that the legal situation is contestable, and the moral value of a legal duty of care in attack is ambivalent. This is because a duty of care is both a condition for and an obstacle to the ‘individualization of war’. The individualization of war denotes an observable multi-dimensional norm shift in international relations. Norms for the regulation of war that focus on the interests, rights, and duties of the individual have gained in importance compared to those that focus on the interests, rights, and duties of the state. As the individual, not the state, is the ultimate locus of moral value, this norm shift in international relations, and the corresponding developments in international law, are morally desirable. When it comes to IHL, the goal of protecting the interests of the individual creates strong reasons both for and against imposing a legal duty of care on the attacker. The enquiry into whether IHL does and should impose a legal duty of care therefore reveals that the extent to which war can be individualized is limited.

Engaging or Shaming? An Analysis of UN’s Naming and Shaming of Child Abusers in Armed Conflict

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Nyamutata
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Causal Link ◽  
Deterrent Effect ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
The Public ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
Naming And Shaming ◽  
The Impact

The impact of armed conflict on children has been recognized for some time as a major humanitarian problem. In 1999, the United Nations (UN) Security Council began taking up the abuse of children during armed conflict as a regular thematic issue. As part of the protective framework, the UN adopted a “strategy” of “naming and shaming” government forces and rebel groups recruiting, killing, maiming, raping or other sexual abusing of children during conflict. The philosophical justification of the public exposures is premised on the supposed stigmatic and deterrent effect on named and shamed offenders. However, little analysis has gone into the impact of this UN policy. This paper has the modest aim of assessing the UN’s naming and shaming practice since inception of the policy in 2002. The efficacy of shaming sanctions is contestable. The recent UN annual statistics on the exposed parties do not seem to evince a convincing causal link between of naming and shaming and adherence to international humanitarian law and international human rights law, particularly among armed non-State groups (ANSAs) so far. Naming and shaming represents an antagonistic modus operandi. This paper argues that humanitarian engagement with ANSAs offers a non-confrontational and corrective approach and thus greater promise for compliance and protection of children during armed conflict than naming and shaming.

Part 1 Freedom of Religion or Belief, 1.3.2 Places of Worship

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bielefeldt Heiner, Prof ◽  
Ghanea Nazila, Dr ◽  
Wiener Michael, Dr
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
The State ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Sacred Sites ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter discusses various human rights violations that arise in the context of constructing, owning, accessing, using, protecting, and preserving places of worship or other religious sites. When members of religious communities wish to construct and own places of worship they often face restrictions that are imposed by the State or competing claims by other religious communities. In this context, the conversion of places of worship as well as their confiscation and unfair restitution provisions may lead to further problems for religious communities. Furthermore, access to religious sites and their use is often unduly restricted by the State, impeded in practice by non-State actors, or hampered by religious precepts which discriminate against some people within the same religious or belief community. The chapter also discusses issues of interpretation, including the relationship between international human rights law and international humanitarian law in the context of religious sites, the obligations of various duty-bearers, and sacred sites of indigenous peoples.

A Hobbesian Approach to Cruelty and the Rules of War

2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-313
Author(s):  
LARRY MAY
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
The State ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Philosophical Writing ◽  
Nature Play ◽  
The Way

AbstractContrary to the way Hobbes has been interpreted for centuries, I will argue that Hobbes laid the groundwork for contemporary international law and for a distinctly moral approach to the rules of war. The paper has the following structure. First, I will explain the role that the laws of nature play in Hobbes's understanding of the state of war. Second, I will explain Hobbes's views of self-preservation and inflicting cruelty. Third, I reconstruct Hobbes's important insight that rationality governs all human affairs, even those concerning war. Fourth, I explicate the idea of cruelty moving from what Hobbes says to a plausible Hobbesian position. Fifth, I address recent philosophical writing on how best to understand the rules of war. Sixth, I then turn to legal discussions of cruelty's place in debates about the laws of war, showing how my Hobbesian approach can ground these laws.

scholarly journals Fiqh al-Jihād in Modern Warfare: Analyzing Prospects and Challenges with Reference to International Humanitarian Law

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 241
Author(s):  
Fajri Matahati Muhammadin ◽  
Thara Kunarti Wahab
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Jus In Bello ◽  
Literature Research ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Jus Ad Bellum ◽  
Modern Warfare ◽  
The Way

In discussing the compatibility of the Islamic concept of jihād and international law, most researches focus on the jus ad bellum (justifications of war) of fiqh al jihād and less on the jus in bello (lawful conducts of war). This article observes the relation between fiqh al-jihād and modern international humanitarian law, and sets out both the prospects and challenges of such a concept in modern times. It is argued that some challenges are due to the lack of emphasis on the principles of fiqh al-jihād that are shared with modern International Humanitarian Law, or the existence of differing opinions between Islamic scholars. Using a literature research, this article finds that the way to address this is to make a unified code of fiqh al-jihād, involving scholars from all schools of thoughts, to agree on a common set of rules.

scholarly journals Unearthing the Problematic Terrain of Prolonged Occupation

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-167
Author(s):  
Yutaka Arai-Takahashi
Keyword(s):  
Geneva Convention ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Legal Regime ◽  
Historical Perspectives ◽  
Additional Protocol ◽  
Occupied Territory ◽  
Argumentative Structure ◽  
Insight Into

This article will explore the travaux préparatoires of the key legal instruments on the laws of war and international humanitarian law (IHL) with a view to obtaining crucial insight into the ‘original’ understandings of their drafters as to the provisional nature and the temporal length of occupation. The findings of the travaux show the general premise of the framers of the ‘classic’ instruments on the laws of war that the legal regime of occupation should be provisional. In the concurrent doctrinal discourses this premise was endorsed by most scholars. Examination of the records of the negotiations on the drafting of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 reveals that even the proponents of ‘transformative occupation’ did not seem to envisage occupation that would endure for decades. Nevertheless, by the time the 1977 Additional Protocol I was drafted, several instances of protracted occupation already existed, which seems to have led to a decisive shift in the argumentative structure. There is no disputing the applicability of IHL to any occupied territory, irrespective of the length of the occupation. Yet the suggestion that nothing under IHL would forestall an occupying power from engaging in protracted occupation departs from the traditional premise that occupation ought to be provisional. This also seems to be paradoxical in historical perspectives.

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