New Geneva Conventions Needed
Written for a Different Age Updated Conflict Rules Required
Sep 9, 2009
In January 2003, an informal meeting of experts from the governments of several countries, the Red Cross, and a number of scholars was held at Harvard University in the United States.
The aim was to set an agenda for further discussion and research on how to control armed conflict.
Disobeying the Rules of War a Common Problem
Tougher protocols to the original Geneva Conventions were introduced in 1977. However, many nations have yet sign on to these rules. Neither India nor Pakistan, who have fought each other three times and are both having to deal with insurgencies, have agreed to obey the protocols.
The protocols also lack the signatures of Afghanistan, Burma, Iran, Israel, Malaysia, and the United States; although, many other nations who have added their signatures with pomp and flourish, pay no attention to them.
What is a Legitimate Military Target?
One issue that needs to be addressed is what constitutes a legitimate military target. There’s not much doubt that ammunition storage depots or factories building tanks are fair game; but, what about a radio or television station?
In NATO’s 1999 bombing campaign against Serbia, the Radio-Television of Serbia studio was targeted and 16 people killed. Should this have been considered a military objective? The current conventions and protocols offer little guidance.
Although The Independent’s Robert Fisk, who was in Belgrade at the time of the bombing, felt the TV station should have been off limits. On April 24, 1999, he reported: “Surely NATO wouldn’t waste its bombs on this tiresome station with its third-rate propaganda and old movies, let alone kill its staff. Yesterday morning, the moment I heard the cruise missile scream over my hotel roof, I knew I was wrong.”
Do Terrorists belong under the Geneva Convention Umbrella?
Another head-scratcher is what to do about terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda? Professor Steven Ratner of the University of Michigan Law School worries about bringing such people under the umbrella of the Geneva Conventions. Doing that offers terrorists some legitimacy. It extends to them protections they have shown clearly they won’t extend to others.
Why, ask those engaged in armed conflict with terrorists, should they be forced to fight clean when their enemies fight dirty?
War Crime or Retaliation in Iraq?
Without explicit rules for dealing with terrorists the kind of thing that Mary Mostert wrote about on the renewamerica.org website on November 19, 2004 is going to happen
“MSNBC reported on Wednesday in the Fallujah fighting that ‘a U.S. Marine was killed and five others were wounded when the booby-trapped body of a dead insurgent exploded.’ ”
Mostert pointed out that this happened on “the same day that NBC’s Kevin Sites reported that a U.S. Marine killed ‘a wounded and apparently unarmed Iraqi prisoner inside a mosque.’ Sites observed that ‘the Iraqi was a wounded prisoner and did not pose a threat.’ ”
There have been many such stories told from recent armed conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan. Trying to bring some civility and humane behaviour to such emotionally charged situations is going to prove extremely difficult.
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