INDISCRIMINATE ATTACK

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 ICTY has been the first international judicial body since WW II to investigate and adjudicate attacks violating the principle of distinction. The reason why the ICTY OTP first and the ICTY Chambers later have resorted to art. 3 ICTYS is the crime of wanton destruction not justified by military necessity does not allow for the prosecution of civilian deaths and injuries resulting from unlawful military operations whenever they are justified by military necessity. It is important to remark that attacks against civilian objects, or attacks against military objectives which are expected to incidentally cause excessive civilian damage, are not criminalized in the RS in relation to all kinds of armed conflict. A different matter is the possible inclusion of indiscriminate attacks in the crime of directing attacks against the civilian population or civilian persons and in the crime of directing attacks against civilian objects.Keywords: civilian persons; ICTY; indiscriminate attacks

CIVILIAN OBJECTS

MILITARY OBJECTIVES

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.

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.

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’.

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.

In the age of remarkable technological innovations such as AI, quantum computing, IoT, and blockchain, one could argue that the world is becoming an increasingly connected, advanced, enlightened, and peaceful place. Nevertheless, paradoxically, conflicts and wars are still born deeply rooted in complex strategic, historical, and economic dynamics, and continue to arise finding a direct representation in both physical and digital battlefields through powerful and dynamic environments like social media. This environment enabled unprecedented connectivity and ideas, thoughts, ideologies, and experiences exchange shaping the narrative, amplifying ideas, feelings, and experiences while directly addressing the underlying causes, dynamics, and implications of conflicts and war through a multifaceted and multi-nuanced approach. The outbreak and ongoing war in Ukraine took the international community off guard representing a significant turning point in the contemporary era that received immediately intensive global attention, united global humanitarian, and strategic efforts to support and help the ones in need, and reflected its geopolitical and economic global complexities, dynamics, and implications. At the same time, a high degree of disinformation and misinformation exists surrounding different aspects about this war e.g., actions taken, and impact produced on civilians, which contributes to creating an altered perspective of reality. While different conventional media and social media outlets together with research, governmental, and practitioner efforts revealed and reflected on the nature, major incidents, and their known impact on civilians and civilian objects as well as military personnel and military objects, yet limited attention and a lower voice is given through dedicated studies to thoughts and emotions of Ukrainian users in unconventional social media platforms like Telegram. This represents the knowledge gap tackled in this research by building a set of Machine Learning-based solutions for analysing the discourses and sentiments of Ukrainian users using the Design Science Research methodology in a Data Science research approach. From this analysis, reflection is provided to important days and incidents experienced by Ukrainian population since February 2022 in the first year of war.

Status of Bridges: Military or Civilian Object?

CHAPTER 2 - Historical Perspective of Chemical Warfare Agents

<b><span>CONCEPT OF GOOD FAITH IN INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAW - A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF IHL INSTRUMENTS AND CUSTOMARY INTERNATIONAL LAW</span></b>

Since the two World Wars, the structure and order of international politics have undergone considerable changes. In particular, the creation of the collective security system, new forms of warfare and new problems and threats emerging from globalization and regionalization, challenge the value of ”neutrality” in the new international environment. But in practice, contrary to stated facts, states continue to make use of the concept under international law or in international politics. Thus, this article tries to provide an overview of the origin of ”neutrality” and its dual developments into both an international normative institution and a policy tool in international politics. From the legal perspective, the international law of neutrality has not been abolished, although its function is greatly limited under United Nations' collective security. Its existing normative contents also seem to lag behind new needs of the changing international environment. On the political level, the general perception toward the nature and function of neutrality has changed from traditionally more passive to positive. Even those countries that upheld ”absolute neutrality” in the past now concede that ”neutrality” is no longer the only policy option for guaranteeing national interest and security. In fact, the interest of an individual state is closely interwoven with the collective value and interest of the international community. A neutrality policy based on complete self-isolation is neither conducive to promoting good relations with other states nor to international cooperation and peace. This article concludes that whether as an international law institution or a policy tool, ”neutrality” will continue to exist for some time to come. However, its future relevance will depend on the development of international politics, including the collective security system.

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.

Putting Lethal Force on the Table: How Drones Change the Alternative Space of War and Counterterrorism