Chapter IV. Specific Objective Elements

Military necessity is a legal concept used in international humanitarian law (IHL) as part of the legal justification for attacks on legitimate military targets that may cause harm, even worse conditions affecting civilians and civilian objects. Thus, the principle of military necessity means that military forces in planning their military operations are allowed to take into account the practical needs of the military situation at a certain moment and the necessity to win the war. This study aims to limit the application of military necessity principles by focusing on the Lieber Code focused as an appropriate limitation called the "greatest theoretical contribution to the modern law of war" so as prevent war victims. This qualitative research used a descriptive approach to collect data systematically, factually, and quickly according to the situation when the research is carried out. The results of this study showed that the Lieber Code does not limit all military necessities but only to some necessary elements for obtaining military objectives. Therefore, military necessity is not an exception to the law of armed conflict but rather explicitly states the restrictions that have been regulated in the law of armed conflict.

Customary international law 619. The importance of the environment is universally acknowledged. As the ICJ articulated the idea in its Advisory Opinion on Nuclear Weapons : the environment is not an abstraction but represents the living space, the quality of life and the very health of human beings, including generations unborn. Attacks in wartime against military objectives (as defined supra 275) often jolt the environment. The prime example is an attack against oil facilities (on their nature as military objectives, see supra 330). An air strike against an oil refinery may give rise to toxic air pollution. When an oil storage facility is demolished, the oil may seep into the ground and poison water resources. When an oil tanker is sunk at sea, the resultant oil spill may be devastating to marine life. 620. The Advisory Opinion on Nuclear Weapons went on to say: States must take environmental considerations into account when assessing what is necessary and proportionate in the pursuit of legitimate military objectives. Respect for the environment is one of the elements that go to assessing whether an action is in conformity with the principles of necessity and proportionality. The principle of proportionality has been discussed supra 408 et seq . It follows from the Court's dictum that, in keeping with the principle of proportionality, ‘an attack on a military objective must be desisted from if the effect on the environment outweighs the value of the military objective’. 621. The legal position under present-day customary LOIAC is that, when any attack is launched, ‘due regard’ must be given to the protection of the environment. Since, broadly speaking, the environment as such is a civilian object (see infra 641), even if an attack is planned in an area with little or no civilian population, it may have to be abandoned should the harm to the environment be expected to be ‘excessive’ in relation to the military advantage anticipated (see supra 408). Conversely, (i) it is very difficult to measure on a purely speculative basis the expected damage to the environment from a conventional attack; and, anyhow, (ii) ‘if the target is sufficiently important, a greater degree of risk to the environment may be justified’.

INDISCRIMINATE ATTACK

This article explores the international legal mechanisms designed to shield civilian objects from harm during armed hostilities, focusing on international humanitarian law (IHL) provisions. The research scrutinizes core tenets – distinction, proportionality, and precaution – as they appear in the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols, paying close attention to how these norms function in today’s urban combat environments. By examining recent policy developments such as the 2022 Political Declaration addressing explosive weapons use in populated areas, Security Council Resolution 2573, and documented breaches in current conflicts, this work highlights persistent discrepancies between legal prescriptions and their real-world application. The methodological approach combines doctrinal legal examination with analysis of customary IHL norms, drawing on the ICRC’s comprehensive study encompassing 161 rules. Research outcomes reveal that despite a solid legal foundation for protecting civilian objects, persistent difficulties emerge in enforcement, accountability, and responsiveness to evolving warfare technologies. Concluding recommendations emphasize the need for strengthened compliance through better national-level implementation, enhanced civilian casualty documentation systems, and more robust international accountability mechanisms. The analysis further demonstrates that contemporary hostilities increasingly blur the operational boundaries between civilian and military spheres, particularly through the widespread use of dual- use infrastructure, cyber capabilities, and remotely operated weapons systems. Urban density, the intermingling of civilian objects with military objectives, and the reliance on networked command-and- control architectures complicate the practical application of distinction and precaution, often producing cumulative patterns of harm that are difficult to attribute to discrete attacks. This structural complexity necessitates a re-examination of how legal and operational frameworks assess proportionality in environments where effects are temporally diffuse and spatially dispersed. It also underscores the need for enhanced accountability mechanisms capable of tracing indirect and systemic impacts on civilian populations beyond the immediate kinetic event. Finally, it highlights the growing importance of integrating technological, legal, and humanitarian perspectives to ensure that civilian protection remains a central normative constraint in the conduct of modern warfare.

MILITARY OBJECTIVES

CIVILIAN OBJECTS

The requirement of proportionality in the conduct of war, as distinct from the resort to war, now in force in conventional and customary international law treats disproportionate attacks as one species of indiscriminate attacks, that is, as a particular way of violating the prohibition on attacks on civilians expressed by the principle of discrimination. Current law, as a result of a substantively meaningless diplomatic maneuver during the negotiations over the Geneva Protocol I (1977), always uses the term “excessive” instead of “disproportionate,” but the terminological switch has no non‐political significance whatsoever. Thus, what most people would simply call a disproportionate attack is, strictly speaking, indiscriminate in that it may be expected to cause excessive civilian harm. In Protocol I indiscriminate attacks are prohibited and next defined in general terms: “Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited. Indiscriminate attacks are … of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without discrimination” (Art. 51(4)). Then, one important sufficient condition of an indiscriminate attack is stated: “Among others, the following types of attacks are to be considered as indiscriminate: … an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated” (Art. 51(5) (b)). Thus, an attack is indiscriminate in the sense of disproportionate if the losses of civilian life, injuries to civilians, or damage to civilian objects are predictably “excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.” Importantly, the strongest military power, the United States, has officially and expressly recognized this fundamental treaty article concerning proportionality, Article 51, as expressive of customary international law, even though the United States has never ratified Protocol I as a whole (Matheson 1987: 426).

The article is devoted to tendencies of development of modern international law and the international justice authorities. Globalization of the modern world and the interaction of States at all levels: political, economic, commercial, educational, and others - determines the relevance of the article. The interaction leads to conflicts and disputes between States, between States, legal and physical persons, between legal and physical persons from different countries, they require resolution at the international level. The increase of number of international contacts is followed by the increase of conflicts between the parties and, respectively, the number of international judicial processes. International law and the international judicial bodies play a special role in solving the problems of the peaceful settlement of international conflicts. Certain trends characterize the current stage of development of international law. These are diversification and fragmentation resulting in the proliferation of international judicial bodies. Strengthening the rule of law in international relations is the main positive point of the main trends in international law. The sphere of international relations, which are not covered by international law, are reduced. The main negative aspect of modern tendencies in the field of international justice is: the possibility of multiple interpretations of international law, especially the regional courts, as well as increasing the risk of issuing conflicting, sometimes inconsistent, decisions of different international judicial bodies. The possibility of finding a forum shopping is a negative consequence as well. This creates a legal conflict, delays, problems with recognition of international judicial bodies, their jurisdiction, for failure to execute court decisions. This leads to a reduction of efficiency of activity of international courts in General. The main task of modern international law is to overcome or mitigate conflicts of jurisdictions of the various international judicial bodies, as well as to set the stable matches between international courts and the enforceability of their decisions. Studies of the leading Russian and foreign lawyers play an important role for overcoming contradictions in the sphere of international law and the activities of international judicial bodies. Scientists note in their works that the modern trends of development (diversification, fragmentation, proliferation, imperativity) is an objective phenomena, they are caused by the development of pluralism of the modern world.

This doctoral thesis, now published as a monograph, provides a thorough analysis of one of the most crucial concepts of the modern law of armed conflicts (LOAC), namely military objectives. The concept is crucial because the targeting of such objectives is directly linked to the principle of distinction, which in turn is a cardinal tenet of LOAC. It requires that the belligerents must always make the distinction between civilian objects and persons on the one hand, and military objectives (persons and objects) on the other, and attack only the latter to the exclusion of the former (Article 48 of the Additional Protocol I of 1977 (AP I)). Thus, the concept of military objectives is cast amidst the protection of civilians during the conduct of hostilities (whereas Geneva Convention IV of 1949 concerns their protection outside the context of combat action). It stands to reason that this protection is an essential part of the modern law of armed conflicts. Moreover, it is only superficially surprising that AP I was the first treaty to generally define military objectives. In the nineteenth century, the civilian hardly appeared in the LOAC. It was at that time simply taken for granted that civilians were outside the reach of military action; they would not participate in it and concomitantly would be spared from attacks. The social environment of the past was such that military action and civilian presence were reasonably distinct: the battlefield was the pitch for military action, other areas were bluntly aloof from such action. The twentieth century completely changed these parameters. Air power allowed a belligerent to wreak heavy havoc into all the lands of the adverse party. Industrialization and modernization of the army made civilian objectives relevant from a military standpoint, in particular industrial plants. Finally, the difference between civilians and military personnel was blurred, since civilians participated in a variety of forms to military operations (guerilla warfare is but one of the most emblematic forms of such participation). All these factors, among others, explain that the majority of victims in modern armed conflicts are civilians, not rarely up to a proportion of 90 per cent.1 The question of military objectives remains also highly relevant when viewed from another perspective. It is a concept often applied in modern military campaigns, where air power is of the essence. However, it gives rise to uncertainties at least on two accounts. First, the definition is open-ended and contextual; it must be operationalized in single cases and this gives rise to legal uncertainty. Indeed, Article 52, § 2, AP I, the cardinal provision in this regard, provides only for criteria which have to be applied by the belligerent to single sets of facts in order to determine if an object is a military objective. Second, there are marked differences of interpretation between the US and the continental European conceptions of military objectives, especially in certain areas of targeting such as ‘economic targets’ (i.e. targets chosen for their economic value to the war-sustaining effort). Notwithstanding the relevance of the concept of military objectives, there is hardly a wealth of monographic treatment of the subject matter. Indeed, no monograph in the English language was directly and exclusively devoted to that notion before the present publication. This new monograph is thus more than welcome.

The enhancement of environmental awareness in both domestic and international level has been accompanied by the growing number of internal authorities and international bodies within which environmentally related disputes can be addressed. Over the years, environmental issues have been discussed by different international judicial courts and arbitration tribunals. Their contribution to enhance the legitimacy of international concerns to the protection of environment is a significant one. They have acted to clarify the international environmental rules within the international legal order and have augmented the ability of domestic legal systems to deal with associated problems more effectively. The international judicial bodies as well as arbitration tribunals have been faced with a rather vague set of rules and principles that made it an enormous task to apply the law to the particular facts of a case in question. Issues relating to the existence, contents and meaning of the certain related concepts took considerable spaces in the contributions of international courts and tribunals in<em> </em>the course of developing international environmental law, particularly the concepts of environmental damage and the liable party to make reparation.<em> </em>International judicial bodies mostly relied on procedural obligations of states and arbitration tribunals on damage itself and the necessity to compensate them. While the damage is mostly confined to significant damage of value-use aspects of the environment, and liable party is focused on the damage causing activities of the operator, the reparation modes are unsteady between only financial compensation and, if possible,<em> </em>near to<em> </em>restitution.

This chapter explores the rule of distinctions, which governs the conduct of hostilities in international humanitarian law (IHL). It clarifies that the rule particularly targets objects under the two 1977 Additional Protocols, other IHL treaties, and customary law. The 1977 Additional Protocol explicitly focuses on the overarching obligation to distinguish between civilian objects and military objectives in the conduct of hostilities. The chapter also recognises how certain objects have no military function by their nature, but the virtue of their location makes an effective contribution to military action. Moreover, any civilian object could become a military objective as a consequence of its use for military functions. The chapter then highlights the special protection to hospitals and cultural property.

Many international judicial bodies have prescribed the procedures allowing NGOs to participate in the proceedings generally as non-parties as amicus curiae, expert or witness for the purpose of the good administration of justice.These possibilities are well developed in judicial bodies where the nature of proceedings concerns the issues that international law recognizes as the collective interests of the international community.In the International Court of Justice, on the contrary, NGOs do not have such possibility to make contributions as they have done in other international judicial bodies.The development of the elaboration of the texts on the Court proceedings and the restrictive interpretation of these texts reflect the restrictive approach of the Court towards NGOs' participation.The Court should offer the scope to access NGOs since they have legitimate right to represent the views of international civil society in an international democratic process and can contribute to assist the Court to protect the collective interest of the international community.

The attack launched by Hamas against Israel, rooted in a long-standing historical conflict dating back to 1948, culminated in the events of October 7, 2023. Israel’s military response to the attack has sparked widespread debate, particularly regarding potential violations of international humanitarian law. This study aims to provide an in-depth analysis of the legal violations committed by Israel during its retaliatory attacks against Hamas, as well as the international community’s response. The research adopts a normative juridical approach, referencing primary legal sources from international humanitarian law governing armed conflict, and is supported by secondary literature such as books, accredited academic journals, and scholarly articles. Data were collected through document studies and literature reviews, and analyzed through data reduction, presentation, and conclusion drawing. The findings reveal that Israel has violated several fundamental principles of international humanitarian law, including the principles of humanity, proportionality, distinction, and military necessity. International responses appear polarized; most European countries expressed support for Israel, while many Asian and Arab nations condemned its actions due to the significant impact on civilian populations. This polarization reflects a growing imbalance in the application of humanitarian principles in the context of armed conflict.

The concept of “military advantage” is an underexplored, but essential aspect of the humanitarian law governing targeting. The precise meaning of military advantage has proven difficult to articulate, although in general terms it has a particular resonance with “military necessity”. The analysis of military advantage has often centered on two almost polar opposite interpretations: one focused on tactical gains, and the other more strategically on “the advantage anticipated from the attack considered as a whole and not from isolated or particular parts of the attack.” Considered together these two approaches only begin to scratch the surface of the complexity of the issue. Separately, they appear to significantly under-represent the challenge facing practitioners, legal analysts and courts when dealing with targeting issues arising from complex contemporary security operations. Practical considerations of military advantage are often masked by the use of terms such as “high-value target”, and assessing the “effects” of an attack to achieve a particular objective. The focus of this article is on adding “flesh” to the textual “bones” provided under Additional Protocol I. The term “military advantage” plays a critical role in identifying the wide range of objects that may be targeted as military objectives, and further acts as the counterweight to collateral civilian effects when assessing the proportionality of an attack. Military advantage is a “value” based concept, with the anticipated advantage being interpreted as an indication of the importance of the target to the military effort. While a particular focus has been placed on “high-value targets” there are targets, which by virtue of their status (e.g., people) or remoteness from the war effort that might justify only limited, or even no collateral civilian effects. It is also evident from the 2011 bin Laden raid that determining a target is particularly important will not automatically lead to a large number of collateral civilian casualties. The military advantage requires a broader assessment of factors than simply the importance of the target and the potential collateral damage (i.e., the need to confirm the target is killed). To date the courts have not dealt in a comprehensive manner with the concept of military advantage. The frequent use of science based analytical approaches for assessing both that advantage, and the related concept of proportionality requires close scrutiny. Like strategy, the assessment of anticipated military advantage designed to attain conflict goals does not lend itself to precision, or an entirely scientific resolution. This is evident in the conclusion that proportionality, which requires the weighing of military advantage against the collateral effects of an attack, cannot be measured to a “standard of precision”. Understanding the context within which military advantage is assessed is an essential aspect of applying that legal standard. In this respect the conduct of a strategic air campaign; the concurrent impact of jus ad bellum principles when acting in self-defense; and participation in a counterinsurgency can all influence how military advantage is assessed.

INTRODUCTION. The article examines the evolution of the concept of the integrity of the person in international law. An analysis of universal and regional international legal acts, as well as cases considered by international judicial and quasi-judicial bodies, confirms the dual nature of this concept, which consists of the right to physical integrity and the right to mental integrity of the person. The article pays particular attention to the challenges posed by the rapid development of neurotechnology, which require a rethinking of the concept of the integrity of the person, particularly its mental component. The doctrine considers approaches that propose either the creation of new, so-called neurorights, or their inclusion within the existing right to mental integrity of the person, protected by analogy with the experience of safeguarding the right to physical integrity.MATERIALS AND METHODS. The study is based on a comprehensive analysis of international legal acts and the case law of international judicial bodies. Its methodological basis comprises general scientific methods (analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, systematic approach) and specific legal methods (formal-logical, structural-legal, comparative-legal). Particular emphasis is placed on the combined use of the comparative-legal method and the systematic approach in analysing the protection of the right to the integrity of the person among fundamental human rights at the universal and regional international levels. In addition, the author applies the ‘stairs study’ method when examining the practice of international judicial bodies in this field.THE RESEARCH RESULTS. It has been established that the concept of the integrity of the person enshrined in international law is dual in nature, covering physical and mental integrity. It is shown that while the physical aspect has been developed in sufficient detail, the mental component has long remained in the shadows and has only recently become the subject of active discussions. It has been revealed that the development of neurotechnologies (neurostimulation, neurohacking, memory manipulation) poses threats to mental autonomy and cognitive freedom of a person, which actualizes the issue of the need for a new system of guarantees.DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS. The article discusses various doctrinal approaches to protecting mental integrity: from broadening the interpretation of existing rights (the right to respect for private life, human dignity, freedom of thought) to creating new special rights (the right to mental privacy, the right to cognitive freedom, the right to mental self-determination). The author agrees with the prevailing view that neurorights should be considered not as entirely new rights, but as a logical development of the right to mental integrity of the person. It is concluded that mental integrity should be legally defined and specified, by analogy with physical integrity, while considering modern neurotechnological risks, in order to ensure the effective protection of fundamental human rights and dignity.