Fundamental to the correct application of the rules of international humanitarian law are the understanding and implementation of the principle of distinction between combatants and civilians (and ...other protected persons). This principle has evolved over time, from strict rules of differentiation (wearing a uniform or a fixed distinctive sign; carrying the arms openly), to a minimalistic reformulation of the conditions for recognition of combatant status and the right to be a prisoner of war, by the provisions of art. 44 of the Additional Protocol I of 1977 (carrying his arms openly when the combatant is preparing or participating in military actions and is in sight of the opponent, even if he does not wear distinctive signs). These provisions are very important for the correct definition of the notions of combatant, non-combatant and civilian and for the proper identification of cases of perfidy which represent war crimes. The biggest problem in the application of these norms, for the Romanian armed forces, is the legal translation and interpretation of international treaties when the Romanian legislator adopts them. We find such a situation in the case of Article 37/1/c of the Additional Protocol I of Geneva of 1977 regarding the prohibition of perfidy in connection with the use of the notions of civilian and non-combatant.
Norge er internasjonalt forpliktet til å avstå fra våpeneksport dersom det er overveiende sannsynlig at materiellet som eksporteres kan brukes i humanitærrettsbrudd. I tillegg har Norge nasjonale ...vedtak om å ikke eksportere våpen til krigende land uten at eksporten er sikkerhetspolitisk motivert, fortrinnsvis av alliansehensyn. Likevel vedvarte Norges eksport av militærmateriell til flere land i den Saudi-Arabia-ledede koalisjonen under krigen i Jemen; en koalisjon som har begått utallige humanitærrettsbrudd i Jemen, og som Norge eksporterer til på kommersielt grunnlag. Denne artikkelen undersøker hvordan norske myndigheter har legitimert våpeneksporten til land som kriger i Jemen. Artikkelen finner at legitimeringen er konstruert rundt fem dimensjoner, hvorav fire tar form som offentlig kommuniserte forsikringer om at norske myndigheter har full kontroll og følger regelverket. En femte dimensjon, bevisst utelatt og ikke-kommunisert av myndighetene, men synlig i lekkede kilder, omhandler bekymringer om at stans i eksporten kan skade forsvarsindustriens markedsmuligheter i regionen. Artikkelens konklusjon er todelt: For det første viser kombinasjonen av forsikringer og utelatelse at legitimeringen av eksporten til koalisjonslandene i stor grad er ment å berolige kritikere. For det andre viser innholdet i legitimeringen at eksporten hviler på en tidvis feilaktig fortolkning av retningslinjene for våpeneksporten.
Abstract in English:Legitimation Between Norms and Interests. Norway’s Arms Exports to Countries at War in YemenNorway is internationally obliged to abstain from arms exports in the presence of an overriding risk that the exported equipment can be used in international humanitarian law violations. In addition, Norwegian national decisions state that Norway should not export weapons to warring countries without the export being motivated by security policy, particularly alliance considerations. Nevertheless, Norway’s arms exports to several countries in the Saudi Arabia-led coalition persisted during the war in Yemen; a coalition that has committed numerous humanitarian law violations in Yemen, and to which Norway exports on a commercial basis. This article examines how the Norwegian government has legitimized its arms exports to countries in the coalition. The article finds that the government’s legitimation is constructed around five dimensions, four of which take the form of publicly communicated reassurances that the government is in full control and follows the regulations. A fifth dimension, deliberately omitted and not communicated by the government, but visible in leaked sources, contains concerns that stopping exports could damage the defence industry’s market opportunities in the region. The article’s conclusion is twofold: First, the combination of reassurances and omissions shows that the legitimation is largely intended to reassure critics. Secondly, the content of the legitimation shows that exports are based on sometimes incorrect interpretations of the guidelines for arms exports.
The urgency of the problem is determined by the war waged by the Russian Federation against Ukraine. There at more than a thousand educational institutions were destroyed or damaged, and 60% of ...Ukrainian children were forced to become refugees: acquire internally displaced persons in Ukraine or migrate to different countries. During the Russian military aggression in Ukraine in 2022, more than 563 children were injured, 202 children died, and more than 361children were wounded (as of April 17, 2022). Nowadays, when in some regions of Ukraine there is a real threat to life and health of citizens, and in most regions the air alarm is repeatedly announced during the day, the organization of the educational process even by distance learning or using its elements is becoming an increasing problem.
The aim of the article is to highlight the historical experience of protecting education from hostilities, forming a legal framework for the protection of civilians and children as a particularly vulnerable category in armed conflict, the formation of a modern system of international humanitarian law to protect the right of children and youth to education. The author used general scientific methods of analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, and methods of historical research: periodization, historical-comparative, historical-genetic, historical-systemic.
The article presents facts from world history that testify to the protection of educational institutions, civilians and children during military conflicts. It is emphasized that in the XX-XXI centuries schools and universities were widely used by the combatants for military purposes: to house personnel or as bases and ammunition depots, detention centers and other military purposes, which affects participants in the educational process and educational staff institutions at risk. The author notes that the right of children and young people in education is violated in most countries affected by conflict or instability. The consequences of attacks on educational institutions are injuries and deaths, destruction of educational infrastructure, reduced quality of education and training, lack of social protection of participants in the educational process, which makes it impossible for countries to realize the right of children and youth to education.
The article focuses on modern Ukrainian realities determined by Russian military aggression.
This is open access volume of the NL ARMS offers an interdisciplinary view on the domain of Compliance and Integrity in International Military Trade (CIIMT), integrating defence economics, ...international law, arms export control frameworks and policies, information management, organizational sciences and ethics. Although, in academia, and from an interdisciplinary perspective, CIIMT constitutes a relatively novel research domain, across private and public defence-related sectors, the subject evokes high levels of attention and interest, instigating a need for critical thinking, reflection and creativity to address ensuing multi-faceted issues and problems. The Faculty of Military Sciences at the Netherlands Defence Academy extends an in-house MSc programme on CIIMT, which, by integrating practice-based and scientific-based knowledge, aims to contribute to this need. The MSc programme on CIIMT is concerned with exploring, analysing, understanding, explaining, controlling and improving the military dimension in international military trade. More particularly, CIIMT studies managerial questions regarding strategic trade control of military and dual-use goods and services. CIIMT ties in with the Netherlands Defence Academy’s vision on scientific education, embedded in the reflective practitioners' paradigm uniting both management and leadership skills needed to decide and operate in high-tension and high-risk knowledge intensive environments. The Faculty of Military Sciences uses the reflective practitioners’ paradigm to refer to critical thinking, reflection and Bildung that characterize its thinking doers, the so-called Thinking Soldiers, either at the academic Bachelor’s or Master’s level. In view of the complexity of the international trade regarding military and dual-use goods and services, the rapid evolvement of strategic trade control and frameworks, and its importance to procurement processes, defence organizations require innovative thinking doers, who, based on an in-depth understanding, from an interdisciplinary perspective can be expected to find - and take responsibility for - creative solutions to problems. NL ARMS 2021 comprises, amongst others, contributions from students and lecturers partaking in this programme. All the editors are affiliated with the Faculty of Military Sciences of the Netherlands Defence Academy in Breda, The Netherlands.
Abstract
The use of social network analysis (SNA) during the War on Terror has been a topic of significant political and academic discourse. SNA is an empirical method that graphically and ...mathematically represents interactions or relationships between nodes (eg, individuals, organizations) and the ties that connect them. The nature and degree of interdependence among nodes are believed to provide insights into the relationships and behaviour of members within a social network. The scarcity of precise and comprehensive data on the structure, functioning, and activities of terrorist groups has prompted some states to incorporate SNA into their intelligence efforts and rely on its data for counterterrorism activities, including lethal operations. However, the compatibility of SNA with international law remains underexplored. In this article, we adopt a legal-empirical approach to elucidate SNA in accessible terms and examine the challenges it presents for international law. We contend that SNA is fundamentally incompatible with international humanitarian law (IHL) targeting rules, as the data it provides do not pertain to legally relevant criteria. Nevertheless, SNA offers valuable insights for IHL by illuminating intra-group dynamics to facilitate conflict classification, identifying legally relevant characteristics in armed groups’ internal networks, and determining the strength of relations between armed factions. Our findings underscore the importance of a nuanced understanding of SNA’s applications and limitations in the context of international law.
The development of technologies based on artificial intelligence (AI) is a major leap of society towards a new era which, in theory, should be a progress for humanity. But there was no time to ...discern what are the possible advantages and areas in which AI could assist the development of human society, nor to carefully calculate the disadvantages and risks of its use, that we found ourselves in the midst of a raging arms race based on AI. This new technology is developing in two directions: one of assisting human decision in battle and another that receives its own decision in battle. If the first does not raise big problems, the decision-making belonging to the human factor, the second is a new element in human society and involves major risks for it. From the divine supreme right over life and death, we have gone through the regulation of the right to life and the abolition of the death penalty, and in a mad rush of development, we transcend to a world where a machine becomes “providence” through its ability to decide alone over the life and death of a human being. This article proposes a solution so that such devaluation of the human being never happens.
•The data for this paper is a newly developed corpus of the international laws of war, available through the sydney corpus lab.•The paper explores the texts of the laws of war drawing on methods from ...corpus linguistics.•The paper shows that the key category in the laws of war, the lexical item war, is virtually undefined, and yet construed as naturalized and legitimate.•In the laws of war, the words war and violence maintain a very clear separation, occurring in distinctive lexical environments.
As a crucial register of modernity, the laws of war provide a discursive environment for the production and/or maintenance of key categories associated with organized violence. The register hosts the concepts which are used to refer to mass organized violence (war, armed conflict), and has both constructed and/or amplified categories of person that have been developed to legitimate war and give coherence to the international laws of war (e.g., prisoners of war, civilians). With the key texts of the international laws of war including such well-known instances as the 1949 Geneva Conventions now available in a searchable corpus format via the Sydney Corpus Lab, this paper explores the usage and meaning of war in this register where, in principle, the word war is a central part of a body of law which purports to put limits on organized violence. The method is essentially corpus driven: it takes the usages of this lexical item in this register and explores its frequency, its typical local lexical environments, and its collocates. The analysis shows that while the concept of war is essential to the laws of war, it remains ill-defined, indeed virtually undefined, at the same time that its collocational habits affirm its naturalness and legitimacy. As has been found elsewhere, in the laws of war, war and violence are treated as distinct phenomena, operating in distinct lexical environments. The paper is a contribution from corpus linguistics to the work of understanding the ideological effects of this highly significant legal register.
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