If You Can’t Distinguish, Don’t Use It.If You Can’t Distinguish, Don’t Use It.

Remember the “principle of distinction” which says that the fighting parties must never target civilians and their properties? This basically derives from it: if a weapon cannot be directed only at military objectives, then it should not be used.

Those weapons, called “indiscriminate weapons”, encompass cluster bombs (see short clip HERE to know what is is), landmines, nuclear weapons, and barrel bombs, all shown on the design.

Using them is such an “indiscriminate” manner (i.e. to target civilians) is of course a war crime, and sadly we’ve witnessed too many attacks with those weapons, too many civilian dead and wounded, too many destroyed civilian properties.

While there are international conventions prohibiting their use, some States continue to use them, continue to violate the law, and more importantly kill civilians (mainly States indeed as most of the armed groups either do not have those weapons or planes or helicopters to drop them).

Let’s take for example the Mine-Ban Convention of 1997 (also known as the “Ottawa Treaty”), signed by 164 States, which in fact considerably reduced their use, or the 2008 Cluster Munitions Convention signed by 110 States. But guess what: neither China, the United States, Russia or Syria signed them. There is also a recent treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons (entered into force in Jan. 2021, 86 signatories), but of course the nuclear-weapon states (China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, and the United States) did not sign it.

But as a kind reminder to them, the fact that they did not sign those specific conventions does not mean that they can use those weapons. Killing civilians remains a war crime (remember “I’m Not a Target” or “War is for Warriors, Not Civilians”.

A simple design and a simple key message but a complex problem with dire consequences.