Humanitarian Law

International Humanitarian Law (IHL) — also called the law of armed conflict — governs how wars are fought. It doesn't address whether a war is legal (that's jus ad bellum). It addresses how combatants must behave during war (jus in bello) — regardless of which side is "right."

The Geneva Conventions (1949)

The four Geneva Conventions are the foundation of IHL. They've been ratified by every country on Earth — 196 parties, making them the most universally accepted treaties in existence.

The Additional Protocols (1977) expanded protections, particularly for civilians and guerrilla fighters.

Core Principles

• Distinction — combatants must distinguish between military targets and civilians. Deliberately targeting civilians is a war crime.
• Proportionality — attacks must not cause civilian harm excessive in relation to the military advantage gained
• Military necessity — force may only be used to achieve legitimate military objectives
• Humane treatment — POWs, wounded soldiers, and civilians must be treated humanely

The Enforcement Challenge

IHL violations are widespread:

• In Syria, government forces used chemical weapons against civilians multiple times
• In Yemen, the Saudi-led coalition struck hospitals, schools, and weddings
• In Myanmar, the military conducted systematic ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya
• Allegations of IHL violations arise in virtually every modern conflict

Enforcement depends on:

• The ICC — can prosecute individuals, but only has jurisdiction over member states (Russia, the US, China, and Israel are not members)
• Special tribunals — created for specific conflicts (Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone)
• National courts — under universal jurisdiction, some countries prosecute war crimes committed anywhere
• Naming and shaming — documentation by the ICRC, UN commissions, and NGOs like Human Rights Watch

Worked Example: Turning Law into a Verdict — the Tadić Case

International humanitarian law only means something when individuals are actually convicted. The 1997 judgment in Prosecutor v. Duško Tadić at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was the first international war-crimes conviction since Nuremberg. Tadić, a Bosnian Serb, was found guilty of crimes against Muslim civilians in the Prijedor region, including abuses at the Omarska camp.

Why One Case Reshaped the Law

The case mattered far beyond one defendant. In deciding it, the tribunal's Appeals Chamber ruled that serious violations of IHL committed in internal armed conflicts — not just wars between states — can be prosecuted as war crimes. Before Tadić, much of the Geneva law was assumed to apply mainly to international wars. After it, a government could no longer treat atrocities in a civil war as a purely domestic matter beyond the reach of international criminal law.

The principle of individual criminal responsibility — that "following orders" is no defense, and that even a low-ranking guard can be tried — was reaffirmed for the modern era and later written into the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The lesson is that the abstract principles of distinction and humane treatment become real only when a court is willing to attach a name, a verdict, and a prison sentence to their violation.