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Despite the emergence of much critical discourse on the conventional history of international humanitarian law (IHL) over the last decades, the way in which this conventional history is told and re-told remains virtually unaltered in one key area of dissemination: teaching materials. By conducting an in-depth examination of these materials, this article uncovers the techniques used over time to generate and perpetuate the conventional IHL history. In so doing, it helps to explain how and why the conventional IHL history continues largely unchanged in textbooks to this day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper examines the critical role of professional military ethics in educating future officers in the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC). The author argues that LOAC cannot be taught in isolation, the principles of military ethics representing the bedrock of forging and instilling a specific ethos in future officers that can help them transcend the cold letter of law in operational situations. By examining how military ethics is taught in various countries, the paper analyses the challenges in implementing a military ethics program and proposes a structured approach to military ethics education in the Romanian Land Forces Academy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scope of protection of the environment in relation to armed conflict has continued to expand since the issue was first introduced on the international agenda in the 1970s. Today, it is recognized that the environment is a prima facie civilian object and as such it is entitled to the same layers of protection during an armed conflict as any civilian person or object. Thus, there is a legal obligation to prevent environmental harm in armed conflict, before the event. Given the magnitude of environmental damage that can be anticipated in relation to armed conflict, the obligation to prevent such damage in the first place is critical. In this regard, it is important to note that the legal obligation to prevent environmental harm originates from international environmental law. Furthermore, the obligation to prevent harm is an ongoing obligation. This article illustrates that the general preventive obligations found in international environmental law can shed much-needed light on the general preventive obligations already established under the law of armed conflict, in furtherance of environmental protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The archival record makes clear that killing large numbers of civilians was the primary purpose of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima; destruction of military targets and war industry was a secondary goal and one that "legitimized" the intentional destruction of a city in the minds of some participants. The atomic bomb was detonated over the center of Hiroshima. More than 70,000 men, women, and children were killed immediately; the munitions factories on the periphery of the city were left largely unscathed. Such a nuclear attack would be illegal today. It would violate three major requirements of the law of armed conflict codified in Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions: the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution. There could be great pressure to use nuclear weapons in future scenarios in which many American soldiers' lives are at risk and there is no guarantee that a future US president would follow the law of armed conflict. That is why the United States needs senior military officers who fully understand the law and demand compliance and presidents who care about law and justice in war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The body of international law that regulates the conduct of armed conflicts has been known, at various points in time, as the law of war, the law of armed conflict, and international humanitarian law. While 'the law of war' was a term widely used in State practice throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, both 'the law of armed conflict' and 'international humanitarian law' were terms introduced in the 20th century by one organisation: the International Committee of the Red Cross. In this paper, we use international law and corpus linguistic tools in a pilot study, examining how the terms were first introduced into international law and how quickly they were incorporated (if at all) into the practice of States. Using the ongoing conflict involving Israel and its neighbours, this pilot study charts the appearance and recurrence of these terms in the practice of States in the United Nations to examine how the terms were received and used. We conclude by offering some initial assessments, noting that, while the terms were largely considered unproblematic at their introduction, practice in relation to their deployment suggests deep tensions regarding the nature and purpose of the law and how and when it applies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I propose five principles to make U.S. nuclear deterrence policy more just and effective in the future: sever the link between the mass killing of innocent civilians and nuclear deterrence by focusing targeting on adversaries' military power and senior political leadership, not their population; never use or plan to use a nuclear weapon against any target that could be destroyed or neutralized by conventional weapons; reject "belligerent reprisal" threats against civilians even in response to enemy attacks on one's own or allied civilians; replace nuclear "calculated ambiguity" threats against biological or cyberattacks with "deterrence by denial" strategies; and work in good faith toward eventual nuclear disarmament. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Armed conflicts, whether international or not, result in the degradation or even destruction of parts of the natural environment, including animals, vegetation, soil, water systems and ecosystems. In some situations, the impact may extend over large areas and continue for years or even decades after hostilities end. Although a certain level of environmental damage is inherent in armed conflict, it cannot be unlimited. As part of the environment, animals benefit from protection deriving from the principles and provisions of the law of armed conflict that provide direct and indirect environmental safeguards. The notion of environment, for the purposes of international humanitarian law, encompasses all animals (including farm and companion animals) and, in particular, wildlife and their habitats, as well as the relationship that these beings maintain with the ecological system in which they exist. Our work aims to examine and analyze the obligations of the rules contained in the law of armed conflict that protect the natural environment in order to detect the main ways of protection that can be applied to animals, as parts of the natural environment, to this regard. The interest in approaching this research topic lies in the love I have for animals and in the scarce doctrinal literature in Spanish that has been located on the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ethical Principle of Proportionality requires combatants not to cause collateral harm excessive in comparison to the anticipated military advantage of an attack. This principle is considered a major (and perhaps insurmountable) obstacle to ethical use of autonomous weapon systems (AWS). This article reviews three possible solutions to the problem of achieving Proportionality compliance in AWS. In doing so, I describe and discuss the three components Proportionality judgments, namely collateral damage estimation, assessment of anticipated military advantage, and judgment of “excessiveness”. Some possible approaches to Proportionality compliance are then presented, such as restricting AWS operations to environments lacking civilian presence, using AWS in targeted strikes in which proportionality judgments are pre-made by human commanders, and a ‘price tag’ approach of pre-assigning acceptable collateral damage values to military hardware in conventional attritional warfare. The article argues that application of these three compliance methods would result in AWS’ achieving acceptable Proportionality compliance levels in many combat environments and scenarios, allowing AWS to perform most key tasks in conventional warfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to address the issue of alleged hybrid warfare attacks on Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland. The scope of the article covers the Belarus operations conducted in 2021. Firstly, the author addresses the issue of pushing migrants from a descriptive perspective. Secondly, he debates whether Belarus operation was conducted within the scope of hybrid warfare, hybrid threat, and lawfare? The author concludes that the Republic of Belarus has operated lawfare falling within the hybrid threat spectrum. It means that the situation is not to be classified under the law of armed conflict from the perspective of international and non-international armed conflicts and ius ad bellum violation. Thirdly, the author claims that Belarus has violated international law, so certain legal redress is appropriate and justified. Belarus's actions may result in a court proceeding before the International Court of Justice and before other international institutions.

Within a broader discussion as to the place and role of self-defence within Rules of Engagement, this article seeks to describe some of the drafting and application issues that often present when employing Rules of Engagement – as a distillation of law, policy, operational context, and capability – to resolve, or to encapsulate the resolution achieved, in each mission-specific dialogue between operational context and the law of individual self-defence. To this end, the analysis will focus primarily (but not exclusively) upon the availability to military members of the 'right' of individual self-defence in otherwise law of armed conflict-governed operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What does proportionality reasoning mean for decision support in international humanitarian law (IHL)? We first consider contemporary IHL commentaries on proportionality as an analogue form of decision support through a paradigmatic example. Over time, proportionality in IHL has changed from being a rule-specific space for discretionary decision making to a much broader compromise-seeking within boundaries marked by law. Today, proportionality is a master norm in IHL, remaking rules by stealth and enabling the accommodation of novel master technologies as lawful. Artificial Intelligence (AI) support for military decision making is one such master technology that resonates particularly well with the inner structure of proportionality thinking: both build on cost-benefit analysis and engender the quantification of the world through data collection. We analyse how cost-benefit analysis and digitalization and algorithmic processing intersect in the U.S. legal context, to then proliferate into U.S. warfare and decision support systems, and onwards into IHL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In regulating military applications of artificial intelligence (AI), the relationship between humans and the AI systems they operate is of central importance. AI developers commonly frame the desired human–AI relationship in terms of 'trust', aiming to make AI systems sufficiently 'trustworthy' for the task at hand and foster appropriate levels of human 'trust' in complex, often inscrutable, AI systems. Meanwhile, in legal and ethical discussions, the challenge is generally framed as ensuring that humans retain 'control' over AI such that responsible operators can reliably guide the behaviour of AI systems as required by legal and other norms. Surprisingly, few have asked whether the paradigms of 'trust' and 'control' are guiding development of the human–AI relationship in the same direction. This paper outlines the nature of trust and control as they relate to regulation of the human–AI relationship and surveys some challenges which arise in regulating the military uptake of AI systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Yearbook of International Law is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract Background French military doctors are currently deployed in the Sahel to support the armed forces of Operation Barkhane, in medical or surgical units. As well as supporting French soldiers, their other missions are diverse and complex: medical assistance to civilians and persons under control (PUC), advice to commanding officers. These tasks can create ethical dilemmas when decisions are forced upon doctors that may be in conflict with medical values or fundamental principles. Little is known about the specific dilemmas experienced by French military doctors in overseas operations. We therefore conducted a qualitative study among doctors and surgeons recently deployed to the Sahel to explore and better understand this question. Method Semi-structured, face-to-face interviews were conducted with 20 French military doctors or surgeons deployed since January 2016 in medical or surgical facilities in Mali and Chad. Results All interviewed doctors reported having faced several ethical dilemmas during missions. All reported dilemmas involved the treatment of civilians (while delivering community medical assistance) or of PUC. The dilemmas involved choices as to which patients to treat, the use of care as a means to an end by military authorities, and the level of care attainable in the absence of any possible hospital follow-up. Questions of delivering care at the risk of their own safety or the mission’s and of treating openly hostile patients were also brought up. Several dilemmas stemmed from the dual loyalty problem, namely the conflict between military doctors’ duty of care to patients and to the military institution, but this was not the only factor involved. Contextual factors (restricted resources and security constraints) and psychological factors (especially hostility towards the enemy) were also associated with many of the reported dilemmas. Conclusion This is the first reported study focusing on the ethical dilemmas encountered by French military doctors in overseas operations. It provides unique insights into their ethical experiences and should prove useful in improving operational training for healthcare personnel deployed on overseas missions.

In an effort towards better explaining the authority of international humanitarian law (IHL) on the African continent, the Regional Delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Pretoria recently examined the relationship between African traditional customs and modern-day principles of IHL. Evidence of a clear correlation would illustrate a respect for the law of war on the African continent. The outcome of the research conducted by the ICRC was the creation of the "Tool on African Traditions and the Preservation of Humanity during War", which illustrates eleven African traditions and the related principles of contemporary IHL. The Tool is a living project, which will continue to be updated, and which is presented in various formats that can be used for both pedagogical and operational outreach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The law of armed conflict prevents the coerced extraction of information from Prisoners of War (PoWs). We claim, however, that the letter of that law involves too broad a concept of coercion. On a natural reading, there is a sense in which any extraction of information—by any method—is coercive. We respect the notion that PoWs ought not be treated poorly, but we argue "coercion" should not be understood so broadly. With respect to its use in international law, we favor a moralized notion of "coercion," as opposed to a non-moralized one. We explain what this means, and argue why this is a better reading of the law. We think a moralized notion of coercion is more intuitive, is more in line with both actual practice and the intent of the framers of international law, and has practical benefits as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an emerging and largely unfamiliar form of cultural heritage, digital cultural property remains something of an enigma. Under the law of armed conflict, States are bound to protect cultural property from harm, yet the rules applicable to traditional cultural property do not transfer neatly to digital works. It is unclear, for example, how the twin obligations to safeguard and respect cultural property, as outlined in the 1954 Hague Cultural Property Convention, should apply to digital creations – or even what digital material appropriately qualifies as cultural property. Can only new digital creations, otherwise known as "born-digital" material, be cultural property? What about high-quality copies of existing works, such as an extremely high-resolution image of the Mona Lisa? Does it matter whether a digital work has been reproduced in large quantities? Given the ubiquity of digital media and the growing popularity of digital art and other works, protecting digital cultural property in the event of armed conflict will require States to consider and resolve as-yet undecided questions concerning the nature of digital creations and the reasons why certain works should be preserved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Marmara Üniversitesi Hukuk Fakültesi Hukuk Araştırmaları Dergisi is the property of Marmara University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Background: French military doctors are currently deployed in the Sahel to support the armed forces of Operation Barkhane, in medical or surgical units. As well as supporting French soldiers, their other missions are diverse and complex: medical assistance to civilians and persons under control (PUC), advice to commanding officers. These tasks can create ethical dilemmas when decisions are forced upon doctors that may be in conflict with medical values or fundamental principles. Little is known about the specific dilemmas experienced by French military doctors in overseas operations. We therefore conducted a qualitative study among doctors and surgeons recently deployed to the Sahel to explore and better understand this question.Method: Semi-structured, face-to-face interviews were conducted with 20 French military doctors or surgeons deployed since January 2016 in medical or surgical facilities in Mali and Chad.Results: All interviewed doctors reported having faced several ethical dilemmas during missions. All reported dilemmas involved the treatment of civilians (while delivering community medical assistance) or of PUC. The dilemmas involved choices as to which patients to treat, the use of care as a means to an end by military authorities, and the level of care attainable in the absence of any possible hospital follow-up. Questions of delivering care at the risk of their own safety or the mission's and of treating openly hostile patients were also brought up. Several dilemmas stemmed from the dual loyalty problem, namely the conflict between military doctors' duty of care to patients and to the military institution, but this was not the only factor involved. Contextual factors (restricted resources and security constraints) and psychological factors (especially hostility towards the enemy) were also associated with many of the reported dilemmas.Conclusion: This is the first reported study focusing on the ethical dilemmas encountered by French military doctors in overseas operations. It provides unique insights into their ethical experiences and should prove useful in improving operational training for healthcare personnel deployed on overseas missions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Training on the Law of armed conflict (LOAC) employs different rationales to motivate soldiers and to induce their compliance with LOAC rules. Of these, none is as controversial, or as potentially contradictory, as the Golden Rule. This article analyzes the role of the Golden Rule in historical and contemporary LOAC training material, including manuals, pamphlets, circulars, and films. Research findings suggest that the Golden Rule message corresponds with changes in military training and doctrine that emerged as a result of Vietnam War violations. Furthermore, the Golden Rule is conceptually dynamic, having both positive and negative formulations that are tied to the larger concept of reciprocity. This article concludes with a discussion of possible contradictory interpretations of the Golden Rule and prospects for future research. Since this is the first systematic examination of the Golden Rule in LOAC training material, the author hopes that it will provide a foundation for further dialogue and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-international armed conflict between States and organised armed groups is a reality of warfare. Since the emergence of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, this form of conflict has been regulated by international humanitarian law. However, a subset of this category known as 'transnational armed conflict' has seen aggressive proliferation over recent decades as groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria have taken advantage of the internet and other technologies to expand their reach beyond national frontiers and strike States around the world. This phenomenon has left the geographical extent of international humanitarian law – which has historically relied on State boundaries to determine its ambit – unclear. This article examines the main options for delimiting the geographical reach of the regime in transnational armed conflict. It considers approaches based on international boundaries; 'hot battlefields'; 'global application' and 'territorial control' before ultimately concluding that a method based on 'military presence' would be the most suitable standard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Nordic states and their allies embark on ever more challenging military operations abroad, the complexity of the applicable rules – and legal consequences they may have – is growing rapidly. In addition to the specific terms of the mandate and the underlying principles of the UN Charter, there are two regimes that govern the conduct of military and other security forces across the war-peace spectrum: the law of armed conflict (LOAC) and international human rights law (IHRL). The exact application of these regimes and their interaction remain matters of debate. Yet, the most vexing question is: what happens when it is not one state’s own forces, but those of a partner that run afoul the LOAC and IHRL standards? This article maps and disentangles the relevant international rules and regimes under which responsibility may arise for states due to abuse committed by their partners in military operations abroad. It considers the general rules of state responsibility – in particular, the rule on state complicity – and the relevant substantive rules under the LOAC and IHRL as well as the Arms Trade Treaty and the UN Human Rights Due Diligence Policy. By and large, states have to abstain from any form of assistance that could contribute to the commission of IHRL and LOAC violations by their partners. Under certain circumstances, they even have to actively and continuously assess the risk of such misconduct occurring and take mitigating measures. Nevertheless, these obligations do not necessarily translate into an effective system of accountability.

Autonomous machines are moving rapidly from science fiction to science fact. The defining feature of this technology is that it can operate independently of human control. Consequently, society must consider how ‘decisions’ are to be made by autonomous machines. The matter is particularly acute in circumstances where harm is inevitable no matter what course of action is taken. This dilemma has been identified in the context of autonomous vehicles driving under the regulation of domestic law and, there, governments seem to be moving towards a utilitarian solution to inevitable harm. This leads one to question whether utilitarianism should be transposed into the context of autonomous weapons which might soon operate on the battlefield under the gaze of humanitarian law. The argument here is that it should because humanitarian law includes the core principle of ‘proportionality’, which is fundamentally a utilitarian concept – requiring that any gain derived from an attack outweighs the harm caused. However, while human soldiers are always able to come to a view on proportionality, albeit subjective, there is much doubt over how an autonomous weapon might determine what is proportionate. There is a very large gap between our embryonic understanding of utilitarianism in relation to autonomous vehicles manoeuvring around a city on one hand; and what would be required for armed robots patrolling a battlespace on the other. Bridging this gap is fraught with difficulty but perhaps the best starting point is to take Bentham’s expression of utilitarian mechanics and build upon them. With conscious effort and, ideally, collaboration, states could use the process of applying his classic theory to this very modern problem to raise the standard of protection offered to those caught up in conflict.

Copyright of Turkiye Klinikleri Journal of Medical Ethics-Law & History / Türkiye klinikleri tıp Etiği, Hukuku ve Tarihi Dergisi is the property of Turkiye Klinikleri and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

As aerial weapons become more accurate and precise, they paradoxically expose civilians to greater harm. They make the use of military force feasible where previously it had not been. While these weapons are subject to legal review to certify that they are capable of being deployed in a discriminate manner, weapons review practice in the US and UK lends cursory approval to weapons that are as likely to harm civilians as enemy combatants. This article argues that a robust contextualized review of weapon's effects on civilians and combatants is both legally required and in states' strategic security interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Annales de la Faculté de Droit d'Istanbul is the property of Annales de la Faculte de Droit d'Istanbul and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article examines the redirection of incoming missiles when employed by defending forces to whom obligations to take precautions against the effects of attacks apply. The analysis proceeds in four steps. In the first step, the possibility of redirection is examined from an empirical standpoint. Step two defines the contours of the obligation to take precautions against the effects of attacks. Step three considers one variant of redirection, where a missile is redirected back towards the adversary. It is argued that such acts of redirection would fulfil the definition of attack under the law of armed conflict, and that prima facie conflicts of obligations could be avoided through interpretation of the feasibility standard embedded in the obligation to take precautions against the effects of attacks. Finally, step four analyzes acts of redirection against persons under the control of the redirecting State. Analyzing this scenario calls for an inquiry into the relationship between the relevant obligations under international humanitarian law and human rights law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Armed reprisals are the limited use of military force in response to unlawful actions perpetrated against states. Historically, reprisals provided a military remedy for states that had been wronged (often violently) by another state without having to resort to all-out war in order to counter or deter such wrongful actions. While reprisals are broadly believed to have been outlawed by the UN Charter, states continue to routinely undertake such self-help measures. As part of the roundtable, "The Ethics of Limited Strikes," this essay examines the doctrine of armed reprisals in light of recent instances of states using force "short of war" in this manner. We argue that the ban on reprisals has been largely ignored by states, and that recent attempts to apply the laws of armed conflict to the cyber domain (such as the Tallinn Manual) are further weakening this prohibition. We conclude that this is a potentially dangerous development that lowers the bar for resorting to military force, risking escalation and thereby further destabilizing the international system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1996, the International Court of Justice issued an opinion that the use of nuclear weapons is “scarcely reconcilable” with international humanitarian law and concluded that nations have an obligation to pursue good-faith negotiations leading to disarmament. The 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference reaffirmed the need for all states to comply with international humanitarian law, which governs the use of nuclear as well as conventional weapons. When the rules of war are applied to nuclear weapons, it becomes clear that these weapons cannot comply with international law. The effects of nuclear weapons are inherently uncontrollable and do not meet international criteria for discrimination between military and civilian targets, for proportionality, and for necessity. Arguments made by the United States as to why some uses of nuclear weapons could be lawful do not stand up to scrutiny. Nuclear weapon states should make immediate changes to any missions, deployments, and targeting policies and practices that facilitate the use of nuclear weapons. Not only does international law preclude the use of nuclear weapons, but it also precludes threats to use nuclear weapons. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]