The Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict
Yesterday's analysis was fun, so I'm going to do another one today. I will use the second article on the Oxfam website. It concerns Oxfam's calling for urgent protection of civilians in the conflict between Israel and Palestine. In other words, the problem in this part of the world also involves another conflict causing the suffering of innocents. Except here, Oxfam is getting closer to the root cause of the matter in the way it is addressing the issues.
Preventing harm to civilians in a military conflict is clearly a popular leftist issue. It is one of the focuses in Singer's The President of Good and Evil as well. I want to focus on this as a topic of research. It might even be an issue on which Singer and I actually have some common ground. If only because it does not seem to involve rampant self-sacrifice, and just might be in everyone's interests for a change.
It is important to use clear and commonly shared terminology in such matters. The headline for the Oxfam article is "Oxfam calls for urgent protection of civilians". I have just performed a web search for "protection civilians military conflict". The top-ranked web page is called "PROTECTION OF CIVILIANS IN ARMED CONFLICT". I have just performed a web search for "protection civilians armed conflict". I get a different page with the same phrase, from the same website. A search for that exact phrase confirms the same page coming up, so I think I've found my key phrase. Here is the page. It belongs to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Having read the article, my first question is basic. Why is there now a concern for the "protection of civilians in armed conflict"? Haven't civilians always died in armed conflict en masse? In World War II, civilians had to go to air raid shelters for cover, but many were not so lucky. All this emphasis on protecting civilians simply sounds as though these people are trying to sanitise war in the first place. There is no nice way to wage war. Civilians will always be killed in armed conflict, and not necessarily because they were targets. Of course it is immoral to target non-combatants, nor do responsible governments engage in such practices. But it would be just as dangerous to ignore legitimate targets just because civilians will be killed as well. It will only make the enemy think that he is safe if he surrounds himself with civilians. Consequently, he will keep himself surrounded in civilians. According to the CIA, "In past confrontations with the West, Iraqi President Saddam Husayn has used thousands of foreign and Iraqi civilians as human shields in bids to manipulate domestic and international opinion and deter military action against his regime." This will either compound civilian casualties, or frustrate legitimate military aims in war. Talk of protecting civilians sounds problematic and I certainly don't remember it occurring when I was doing my Masters degree.
According to the site's chronology, there's no reason you should have. UN awareness of these concerns did not become official until 12 February 1999. On that date, the President of the Security Council issued a statement "requesting for the first time that the Secretary-General report on recommendations for how the Council could improve the physical and legal protection of civilians in situations of armed conflict". According to this statement, "The Security Council expresses its grave concern at the growing civilian toll of armed conflict and notes with distress that civilians now account for the vast majority of casualties in armed conflict and are increasingly directly targeted by combatants and armed elements." This actually jibes with something someone I know said a few weeks ago at the dinner table, about how much more inhuman the world was becoming. His wife didn't believe it for a second, thinking that the world has always been this bad. Thinking about Romans feeding Christians to the lions and the Spanish Inquisition, I can understand that. But Dad said that people didn't use to target non-combatants in war. Obviously he has been reading more of the news more recently than I have.
So we have decided that the issue of protecting civilians in armed conflict is legitimate. It's all about how we play by a set of rules, and I can accept that. The enemy does not necessarily play by those rules, but it is better all around if we still do. It would fall under the rules of armed conflict, as we learned them when I was in the army reserve. There are both principled and pragmatic reasons for following those rules. The principled reasons are obvious. But the practical reasons include reciprocity; there is no reason to expect that the enemy will play by these rules if we don't play by them ourselves. There is also reparation. It is much easier to reconcile with the nation in peacetime if we have kept certain civilised rules operative in wartime. So I don't really find anything controversial about Oxfam's standpoint on this issue.
Preventing harm to civilians in a military conflict is clearly a popular leftist issue. It is one of the focuses in Singer's The President of Good and Evil as well. I want to focus on this as a topic of research. It might even be an issue on which Singer and I actually have some common ground. If only because it does not seem to involve rampant self-sacrifice, and just might be in everyone's interests for a change.
It is important to use clear and commonly shared terminology in such matters. The headline for the Oxfam article is "Oxfam calls for urgent protection of civilians". I have just performed a web search for "protection civilians military conflict". The top-ranked web page is called "PROTECTION OF CIVILIANS IN ARMED CONFLICT". I have just performed a web search for "protection civilians armed conflict". I get a different page with the same phrase, from the same website. A search for that exact phrase confirms the same page coming up, so I think I've found my key phrase. Here is the page. It belongs to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Having read the article, my first question is basic. Why is there now a concern for the "protection of civilians in armed conflict"? Haven't civilians always died in armed conflict en masse? In World War II, civilians had to go to air raid shelters for cover, but many were not so lucky. All this emphasis on protecting civilians simply sounds as though these people are trying to sanitise war in the first place. There is no nice way to wage war. Civilians will always be killed in armed conflict, and not necessarily because they were targets. Of course it is immoral to target non-combatants, nor do responsible governments engage in such practices. But it would be just as dangerous to ignore legitimate targets just because civilians will be killed as well. It will only make the enemy think that he is safe if he surrounds himself with civilians. Consequently, he will keep himself surrounded in civilians. According to the CIA, "In past confrontations with the West, Iraqi President Saddam Husayn has used thousands of foreign and Iraqi civilians as human shields in bids to manipulate domestic and international opinion and deter military action against his regime." This will either compound civilian casualties, or frustrate legitimate military aims in war. Talk of protecting civilians sounds problematic and I certainly don't remember it occurring when I was doing my Masters degree.
According to the site's chronology, there's no reason you should have. UN awareness of these concerns did not become official until 12 February 1999. On that date, the President of the Security Council issued a statement "requesting for the first time that the Secretary-General report on recommendations for how the Council could improve the physical and legal protection of civilians in situations of armed conflict". According to this statement, "The Security Council expresses its grave concern at the growing civilian toll of armed conflict and notes with distress that civilians now account for the vast majority of casualties in armed conflict and are increasingly directly targeted by combatants and armed elements." This actually jibes with something someone I know said a few weeks ago at the dinner table, about how much more inhuman the world was becoming. His wife didn't believe it for a second, thinking that the world has always been this bad. Thinking about Romans feeding Christians to the lions and the Spanish Inquisition, I can understand that. But Dad said that people didn't use to target non-combatants in war. Obviously he has been reading more of the news more recently than I have.
So we have decided that the issue of protecting civilians in armed conflict is legitimate. It's all about how we play by a set of rules, and I can accept that. The enemy does not necessarily play by those rules, but it is better all around if we still do. It would fall under the rules of armed conflict, as we learned them when I was in the army reserve. There are both principled and pragmatic reasons for following those rules. The principled reasons are obvious. But the practical reasons include reciprocity; there is no reason to expect that the enemy will play by these rules if we don't play by them ourselves. There is also reparation. It is much easier to reconcile with the nation in peacetime if we have kept certain civilised rules operative in wartime. So I don't really find anything controversial about Oxfam's standpoint on this issue.
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