The Use of Banned Weapons in the 20th and 21st Centuries
Pauline Nguyen and Sung Sohn
November 22, 2024
Introduction
Since ancient times, the use of certain weapons in war and specific wartime conduct was prohibited. In Ancient Greece and Rome, for example, poison and poisoned weapons were forbidden on the grounds of honorable conduct. During the Middle Ages, the English chivalric code helped establish standards of honorable conduct in battle, prohibiting certain weapons considered dishonorable; in particular, the crossbow faced early scrutiny. Its ease of use meant that ordinary citizens could wield a weapon capable of piercing knights’ armor, shifting military power away from traditional, noble forces and toward ordinary individuals capable of arming themselves (Watts, 2015). The destruction caused by World War I and II led to international treaties and bans on chemical and, later, nuclear weapons, introducing new frameworks to prevent further devastation. Today, the rapid globalization of technology has enabled advanced developments in fields like chemistry, microbiology, and nuclear physics, presenting new ethical and legal challenges for weaponry in warfare. Without a balance between technological advances and moral considerations, the use of banned weapons risks disproportionately harming civilians and destabilizing communities. Following the introduction of international laws against banned weapons and war conduct regulations, this brief examines their continued use and impact on civilians in the 20th and 21st centuries.
International Laws Against Using Weapons that Inflict Excessive Danger to Civilians
The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 were the first significant attempts to codify international laws of war and work toward international disarmament, laying down a foundation for rules that belligerents must follow during hostilities. In 1925, in response to the widespread use of chemical weapons during World War I, the Geneva Gas Protocol—formally known as the Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare—was drafted and signed by major powers, including the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, China, France, Germany, and Italy. This protocol banned the usage and production of chemical and biological weapons and agents in warfare. These rulings were later supplemented by the Geneva Conventions of 1949, Additional Protocols of 1977, and the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW, adopted in 1980 and entered into force in 1983), which required clear distinctions between civilians and combatants to be made at all times and prohibited the use of weapons that inflict excessive injury or suffering on combatants. Although none of the treaties governing weapon usage have been signed by all world governments, all countries are expected to honor the principles of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), created in 1863 and 1864 when the first Geneva Convention was adopted, and the fourth Geneva Conventions, which in 1993, the UN Security Council adopted it as Customary International Law (CIL). Article 8, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, adopted in 1998, states the use of weapons causing “unnecessary suffering” to be a war crime.
Examples of banned weapons include soft-point bullets, cluster munitions, and landmines. The Hague Convention of 1899 prohibits the use of soft-point bullets, also known as lead bullets. These bullets expand once they penetrate flesh, causing a wound diameter greater than the bullet diameter. With the passing of Assembly Bill 711 in October 2013, California also prohibits its use in hunting wildlife. Cluster munitions refer to munitions designed to disperse, such as airdropped cluster bombs and ground-launched rockets. They are used to indiscriminately attack targets within a given range (Rappert & Moyes, 2009). Landmines come in two types, anti-personnel and anti-vehicle. Both methods of attack have been condemned for the degree of immediate danger they pose to civilians, as well as the risk of unexploded munitions and mines harming civilians even after conflicts have ended. While the Anti-Personnel Landmines Convention (1999) bans anti-personnel landmines, such as Claymore mines used in the Vietnam War, the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM, 2010) prohibits the usage, development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, and transfer of cluster munitions. Among other banned weapons, nuclear weapons—which have drastically changed global war and security since their conception, development, and use in WWII—inflict the most catastrophic damage to humans and the environment. Despite the consequences, nuclear-armed states frame nuclear disarmament as a matter of national security against “foreign threats,” including nuclear threats. The issue of nuclear non-proliferation and de-escalation came to the forefront post-WWII and during the Cold War period. In January 2021, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TNPW) was officially implemented, including a comprehensive set of prohibitions on the development, testing, production, acquisition, possession, and threat of using nuclear weapons.
Use of Banned Weapons in the 20th Century
Coming off the heels of WWI and WWII, a massive use of banned weapons characterized the Korean War and the Vietnam War in the 20th century. The first known and documented use of banned weapons in war took place during the Korean War (1950–1953). The U.S. Army obtained data on human medical experimentation from Japan’s Unit 731, a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army active during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and WWII. Having granted Unit 731 personnel immunity from war crime prosecution in exchange for their bacterial weaponry research, the U.S. developed its biological warfare (BW) program (Powell, 2017). In 1948, the U.S. released Nobusuke Kishi (1896–1987) after three years of imprisonment, citing a lack of evidence to prosecute him as a Class A war criminal despite his role as a high-ranking official in Imperial Japan and co-signatory of the 1941 declaration of war against the U.S. Often known as “America’s favorite war criminal,” Kishi served as Japan’s prime minister from 1957 to 1960. Notably, he was also the maternal grandfather of Shinzo Abe (1954–2022), Japan’s longest-serving prime minister. The Korean War marked the U.S.’s first major military involvement in the Cold War era and was also the first conflict in which the U.S. allegedly tested its BA program. Between 1950 and 1952, the U.S. was found to have deployed aircraft to release deadly pathogens and infected vectors—such as fleas and flies—over targeted sites in North Korea and northeastern China. Documented airplane incursions correlated with “anomalous insect appearances, outbreaks of illness, and pathology reports” (Powell, 2019); dropped canisters full of plague- and smallpox-infested insects were intended to force a movement of the battle lines and break a long-standing stalemate in the area. The CIA ran the BW operation, making a paper trail nearly impossible. However, interrogated U.S. pilots described the mechanisms of these BW attacks and recanted their statements upon returning to the U.S. (Powell, 2017). After over 700 rounds of meetings began in 1951, the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed in 1953 at Panmunjom within the Korean Demilitarized Zone, effectively ceasing hostilities on the Korean Peninsula. However, because a formal peace treaty was never signed, this agreement left the Korean War technically ongoing, making it America’s longest war.
The most prominent banned weapons the U.S. used during the Vietnam War (1955–75) were chemical agents like Agent Orange, a chemical herbicide, Claymore mines, and napalm, an incendiary (Claar and Kovačević, 2022). Agent Orange was intended to serve as a means of destroying food crops and foliage, providing enemy cover. Despite concerns regarding civilian safety, administration officials insisted that the gas was nonlethal and that its effects were temporary in an attempt to separate it from “the poison gases [sic] against which international conventions and humanitarian feelings are directed.” Scientists later discovered evidence linking Agent Orange to birth defects. However, but by the time proper longitudinal studies could be conducted and the full extent of its adverse effects on health were discovered, the war was already over. Birth defects and adverse health effects caused by Agent Orange continue to be seen in Vietnamese people more than 30 years after the end of the war (Yamashita & Trinh, 2022). For indiscriminately hitting combatants and civilians, Claymore mines were banned by the Anti-Personnel Landmines Convention (1999). Napalm, a sticky incendiary, was intended to destroy dense areas of jungle and fortifications where Viet Cong forces took cover. In practice, it caused indiscriminate and massive damage, including several high-profile incidents that led to civilian casualties; the infamous war photograph “The Terror of War” by Nick Ut depicted a nine-year-old South Vietnamese girl running naked down a road away from napalm strikes on her village, her clothes burnt off and her face contorted in fear and pain. The horror of this photograph helped shift public perception of the war and ultimately contributed to its end (Miller, 2004). While the public outcry over the use of napalm ultimately led the U.S. to limit its usage, it is still not labeled as a chemical weapon or entirely outlawed.
Use of Banned Weapons in the 21st Century
The 21st century has been a tumultuous period with heightened tensions and aggression between states with already tenuous relationships. In 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, a violation of the UN Charter (Arai, 2023). In doing so, Russia violated multiple international humanitarian laws, including deliberate attacks and bombardments on health facilities, children’s hospitals, and critical infrastructure that increased civilian casualties (Nasution and Raudia, 2022). The 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) defines the cluster munitions deployed more than 24 times by Russia over population centers in Ukraine as banned weapons. After ratification by 30 states, CCM became a binding law in 2010. However, Russia, Ukraine, and the U.S. were not among the original 30 countries and still have not joined the cluster munitions treaty. Russia’s cluster munitions caused severe casualties and fatalities; Ukraine followed suit and used cluster munitions supplied by the U.S. in a bid to push through Russia’s fortifications (Hudson & Khurshudyan, 2023). In addition to using banned cluster munitions, the UN indicates that both Russian and Ukrainian troops have abused and brutalized prisoners of war (2022). Worse yet, the war poses a serious threat of nuclear weapon use; Russia has leveraged nuclear threats against both Ukraine and NATO in the face of setbacks or losses (Hampton, 2024).
Another recent and devastating war began with Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The Hamas attack resulted in 1,200 Israeli casualties and 243 Israeli hostages taken (Byman, 2024). Israel responded with a wide-scale ground and air war against Hamas in Gaza and has been suspected of using banned weapons. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, thermal weapons, also referred to as “vacuum bombs,” may have been used by Israel, with allegations suggesting their application in civilian areas. These bombs are typically deployed for demolishing caves and tunnel networks. However, when used against humans, these bombs are known to produce such intense heat that victims’ bodies evaporate. Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has documented instances where bombing victims appear to have suffered extreme thermal effects, with reports of bodies showing signs consistent with evaporation or melting, raising concerns about indiscriminate impacts on civilian populations. The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, the Geneva Conventions of 1949, and international humanitarian law all forbid the use of thermal bombs against civilians in populated civilian areas.
The Israeli army’s indiscriminate bombing and destruction of residential areas in Gaza has resulted in devastating casualties. As of Oct. 28, 2024, Gaza’s Ministry of Health reported more than 43,000 Palestinian fatalities, with thousands more presumed trapped under rubble. On Nov. 8, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that nearly 70 percent of these deaths were women and children, thus describing the human loss as “a systematic violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law, including distinction and proportionality.” The report also indicated that approximately 80 percent of the fatalities occurred in residential or similar housing structures, with 44 percent of the deceased being children and 26 percent women. The devastation to civilian infrastructure—including hospitals, refugee camps, and schools—has caused massive casualties, internal displacement, starvation, and disease (Nijim, 2023). This is on top of a blockade that has been in place since 2021, throttling the flow of vital supplies and essential aid needed for civilians, and Israel barring outside aid and medical workers from entering Gaza (FAJR Scientific, 2024). The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has also been targeted by Israel, with 160 UNRWA employees killed, facilities targeted and destroyed, and aid convoys barred from entry (Hamdan, 2024).
On Nov. 21, Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on the grounds of allegedly committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during the war between Israel and Hamas. The Chamber said their war crimes include starvation, while their crimes against humanity include murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts. The warrant was the first of its kind to accuse a sitting leader of a major Western ally of war crimes and crimes against humanity by a global court of justice. The impact of these warrants will, in part, depend on whether the ICC’s 124 member states decide to enforce them. While several European countries have said they respect the court’s decisions, the U.S., along with Israel, Russia, China, and India—is not one of the ICC’s 124 member states—rejected the decision.
The aggression suffered at the hands of war aggressors, especially Russia and Israel must end immediately, and the countries supporting them must be held accountable. Western powers like the U.S. and UK imposing sanctions on Russia while also offering Israel substantial military aid (Maulana, 2024) undermines international law. If the world condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’ attack on Israel, so must Israel’s atrocities in the Gaza Strip and elsewhere be condemned. The international community has witnessed a discrepancy between the responses to each of these conflicts and their resulting humanitarian crises. World leaders must no longer delay responding to the international community seeking peace and human rights with accountability.
Conclusion
The use of banned weapons and war conducts that international laws prohibit pose a severe threat to all, especially civilians, whose lives are equally valuable irrespective of their gender, race, religion, or political beliefs. Indiscriminate usage of these weapons has caused significant casualties, mass displacement of civilians, destruction of critical infrastructure, destabilization of communities and nations, and abject human suffering affecting people and their communities. The consequences leave a trans-generational mark on those who have nothing to do with the warfare. In Vietnam, more than 800,000 tons of unexploded munitions still cause casualties and injuries decades after the war (Nguyen & Van, 2022). Conflicts escalate conflicts. Two days after U.S. President Joe Biden allowed Ukraine to use U.S.-made Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missiles to strike deep into Russia, on Nov. 19 (European time), Russian President Vladimir Putin lowered the threshold for a nuclear strike in response to a broader range of conventional attacks, such as U.S.-made ATACMS missiles. Ukraine struck Russia with ATACMS on Nov. 19 and UK-made Storm Shadow missiles and U.S.-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) on Nov. 21. In response, Russia fired an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) at Ukraine on Nov. 21. An ICBM is capable of delivering a nuclear attack. Abiding by international laws that ban the use of certain weapons and war conducts is not an option, but a globally shared responsibility to ensure people can live in peace, reach their fullest potential, and pass it on to the next generation. The human race that created destruction holds the power to stop it.
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November 22, 2024
Introduction
Since ancient times, the use of certain weapons in war and specific wartime conduct was prohibited. In Ancient Greece and Rome, for example, poison and poisoned weapons were forbidden on the grounds of honorable conduct. During the Middle Ages, the English chivalric code helped establish standards of honorable conduct in battle, prohibiting certain weapons considered dishonorable; in particular, the crossbow faced early scrutiny. Its ease of use meant that ordinary citizens could wield a weapon capable of piercing knights’ armor, shifting military power away from traditional, noble forces and toward ordinary individuals capable of arming themselves (Watts, 2015). The destruction caused by World War I and II led to international treaties and bans on chemical and, later, nuclear weapons, introducing new frameworks to prevent further devastation. Today, the rapid globalization of technology has enabled advanced developments in fields like chemistry, microbiology, and nuclear physics, presenting new ethical and legal challenges for weaponry in warfare. Without a balance between technological advances and moral considerations, the use of banned weapons risks disproportionately harming civilians and destabilizing communities. Following the introduction of international laws against banned weapons and war conduct regulations, this brief examines their continued use and impact on civilians in the 20th and 21st centuries.
International Laws Against Using Weapons that Inflict Excessive Danger to Civilians
The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 were the first significant attempts to codify international laws of war and work toward international disarmament, laying down a foundation for rules that belligerents must follow during hostilities. In 1925, in response to the widespread use of chemical weapons during World War I, the Geneva Gas Protocol—formally known as the Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare—was drafted and signed by major powers, including the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, China, France, Germany, and Italy. This protocol banned the usage and production of chemical and biological weapons and agents in warfare. These rulings were later supplemented by the Geneva Conventions of 1949, Additional Protocols of 1977, and the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW, adopted in 1980 and entered into force in 1983), which required clear distinctions between civilians and combatants to be made at all times and prohibited the use of weapons that inflict excessive injury or suffering on combatants. Although none of the treaties governing weapon usage have been signed by all world governments, all countries are expected to honor the principles of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), created in 1863 and 1864 when the first Geneva Convention was adopted, and the fourth Geneva Conventions, which in 1993, the UN Security Council adopted it as Customary International Law (CIL). Article 8, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, adopted in 1998, states the use of weapons causing “unnecessary suffering” to be a war crime.
Examples of banned weapons include soft-point bullets, cluster munitions, and landmines. The Hague Convention of 1899 prohibits the use of soft-point bullets, also known as lead bullets. These bullets expand once they penetrate flesh, causing a wound diameter greater than the bullet diameter. With the passing of Assembly Bill 711 in October 2013, California also prohibits its use in hunting wildlife. Cluster munitions refer to munitions designed to disperse, such as airdropped cluster bombs and ground-launched rockets. They are used to indiscriminately attack targets within a given range (Rappert & Moyes, 2009). Landmines come in two types, anti-personnel and anti-vehicle. Both methods of attack have been condemned for the degree of immediate danger they pose to civilians, as well as the risk of unexploded munitions and mines harming civilians even after conflicts have ended. While the Anti-Personnel Landmines Convention (1999) bans anti-personnel landmines, such as Claymore mines used in the Vietnam War, the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM, 2010) prohibits the usage, development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, and transfer of cluster munitions. Among other banned weapons, nuclear weapons—which have drastically changed global war and security since their conception, development, and use in WWII—inflict the most catastrophic damage to humans and the environment. Despite the consequences, nuclear-armed states frame nuclear disarmament as a matter of national security against “foreign threats,” including nuclear threats. The issue of nuclear non-proliferation and de-escalation came to the forefront post-WWII and during the Cold War period. In January 2021, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TNPW) was officially implemented, including a comprehensive set of prohibitions on the development, testing, production, acquisition, possession, and threat of using nuclear weapons.
Use of Banned Weapons in the 20th Century
Coming off the heels of WWI and WWII, a massive use of banned weapons characterized the Korean War and the Vietnam War in the 20th century. The first known and documented use of banned weapons in war took place during the Korean War (1950–1953). The U.S. Army obtained data on human medical experimentation from Japan’s Unit 731, a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army active during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and WWII. Having granted Unit 731 personnel immunity from war crime prosecution in exchange for their bacterial weaponry research, the U.S. developed its biological warfare (BW) program (Powell, 2017). In 1948, the U.S. released Nobusuke Kishi (1896–1987) after three years of imprisonment, citing a lack of evidence to prosecute him as a Class A war criminal despite his role as a high-ranking official in Imperial Japan and co-signatory of the 1941 declaration of war against the U.S. Often known as “America’s favorite war criminal,” Kishi served as Japan’s prime minister from 1957 to 1960. Notably, he was also the maternal grandfather of Shinzo Abe (1954–2022), Japan’s longest-serving prime minister. The Korean War marked the U.S.’s first major military involvement in the Cold War era and was also the first conflict in which the U.S. allegedly tested its BA program. Between 1950 and 1952, the U.S. was found to have deployed aircraft to release deadly pathogens and infected vectors—such as fleas and flies—over targeted sites in North Korea and northeastern China. Documented airplane incursions correlated with “anomalous insect appearances, outbreaks of illness, and pathology reports” (Powell, 2019); dropped canisters full of plague- and smallpox-infested insects were intended to force a movement of the battle lines and break a long-standing stalemate in the area. The CIA ran the BW operation, making a paper trail nearly impossible. However, interrogated U.S. pilots described the mechanisms of these BW attacks and recanted their statements upon returning to the U.S. (Powell, 2017). After over 700 rounds of meetings began in 1951, the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed in 1953 at Panmunjom within the Korean Demilitarized Zone, effectively ceasing hostilities on the Korean Peninsula. However, because a formal peace treaty was never signed, this agreement left the Korean War technically ongoing, making it America’s longest war.
The most prominent banned weapons the U.S. used during the Vietnam War (1955–75) were chemical agents like Agent Orange, a chemical herbicide, Claymore mines, and napalm, an incendiary (Claar and Kovačević, 2022). Agent Orange was intended to serve as a means of destroying food crops and foliage, providing enemy cover. Despite concerns regarding civilian safety, administration officials insisted that the gas was nonlethal and that its effects were temporary in an attempt to separate it from “the poison gases [sic] against which international conventions and humanitarian feelings are directed.” Scientists later discovered evidence linking Agent Orange to birth defects. However, but by the time proper longitudinal studies could be conducted and the full extent of its adverse effects on health were discovered, the war was already over. Birth defects and adverse health effects caused by Agent Orange continue to be seen in Vietnamese people more than 30 years after the end of the war (Yamashita & Trinh, 2022). For indiscriminately hitting combatants and civilians, Claymore mines were banned by the Anti-Personnel Landmines Convention (1999). Napalm, a sticky incendiary, was intended to destroy dense areas of jungle and fortifications where Viet Cong forces took cover. In practice, it caused indiscriminate and massive damage, including several high-profile incidents that led to civilian casualties; the infamous war photograph “The Terror of War” by Nick Ut depicted a nine-year-old South Vietnamese girl running naked down a road away from napalm strikes on her village, her clothes burnt off and her face contorted in fear and pain. The horror of this photograph helped shift public perception of the war and ultimately contributed to its end (Miller, 2004). While the public outcry over the use of napalm ultimately led the U.S. to limit its usage, it is still not labeled as a chemical weapon or entirely outlawed.
Use of Banned Weapons in the 21st Century
The 21st century has been a tumultuous period with heightened tensions and aggression between states with already tenuous relationships. In 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, a violation of the UN Charter (Arai, 2023). In doing so, Russia violated multiple international humanitarian laws, including deliberate attacks and bombardments on health facilities, children’s hospitals, and critical infrastructure that increased civilian casualties (Nasution and Raudia, 2022). The 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) defines the cluster munitions deployed more than 24 times by Russia over population centers in Ukraine as banned weapons. After ratification by 30 states, CCM became a binding law in 2010. However, Russia, Ukraine, and the U.S. were not among the original 30 countries and still have not joined the cluster munitions treaty. Russia’s cluster munitions caused severe casualties and fatalities; Ukraine followed suit and used cluster munitions supplied by the U.S. in a bid to push through Russia’s fortifications (Hudson & Khurshudyan, 2023). In addition to using banned cluster munitions, the UN indicates that both Russian and Ukrainian troops have abused and brutalized prisoners of war (2022). Worse yet, the war poses a serious threat of nuclear weapon use; Russia has leveraged nuclear threats against both Ukraine and NATO in the face of setbacks or losses (Hampton, 2024).
Another recent and devastating war began with Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The Hamas attack resulted in 1,200 Israeli casualties and 243 Israeli hostages taken (Byman, 2024). Israel responded with a wide-scale ground and air war against Hamas in Gaza and has been suspected of using banned weapons. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, thermal weapons, also referred to as “vacuum bombs,” may have been used by Israel, with allegations suggesting their application in civilian areas. These bombs are typically deployed for demolishing caves and tunnel networks. However, when used against humans, these bombs are known to produce such intense heat that victims’ bodies evaporate. Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has documented instances where bombing victims appear to have suffered extreme thermal effects, with reports of bodies showing signs consistent with evaporation or melting, raising concerns about indiscriminate impacts on civilian populations. The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, the Geneva Conventions of 1949, and international humanitarian law all forbid the use of thermal bombs against civilians in populated civilian areas.
The Israeli army’s indiscriminate bombing and destruction of residential areas in Gaza has resulted in devastating casualties. As of Oct. 28, 2024, Gaza’s Ministry of Health reported more than 43,000 Palestinian fatalities, with thousands more presumed trapped under rubble. On Nov. 8, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that nearly 70 percent of these deaths were women and children, thus describing the human loss as “a systematic violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law, including distinction and proportionality.” The report also indicated that approximately 80 percent of the fatalities occurred in residential or similar housing structures, with 44 percent of the deceased being children and 26 percent women. The devastation to civilian infrastructure—including hospitals, refugee camps, and schools—has caused massive casualties, internal displacement, starvation, and disease (Nijim, 2023). This is on top of a blockade that has been in place since 2021, throttling the flow of vital supplies and essential aid needed for civilians, and Israel barring outside aid and medical workers from entering Gaza (FAJR Scientific, 2024). The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has also been targeted by Israel, with 160 UNRWA employees killed, facilities targeted and destroyed, and aid convoys barred from entry (Hamdan, 2024).
On Nov. 21, Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on the grounds of allegedly committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during the war between Israel and Hamas. The Chamber said their war crimes include starvation, while their crimes against humanity include murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts. The warrant was the first of its kind to accuse a sitting leader of a major Western ally of war crimes and crimes against humanity by a global court of justice. The impact of these warrants will, in part, depend on whether the ICC’s 124 member states decide to enforce them. While several European countries have said they respect the court’s decisions, the U.S., along with Israel, Russia, China, and India—is not one of the ICC’s 124 member states—rejected the decision.
The aggression suffered at the hands of war aggressors, especially Russia and Israel must end immediately, and the countries supporting them must be held accountable. Western powers like the U.S. and UK imposing sanctions on Russia while also offering Israel substantial military aid (Maulana, 2024) undermines international law. If the world condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’ attack on Israel, so must Israel’s atrocities in the Gaza Strip and elsewhere be condemned. The international community has witnessed a discrepancy between the responses to each of these conflicts and their resulting humanitarian crises. World leaders must no longer delay responding to the international community seeking peace and human rights with accountability.
Conclusion
The use of banned weapons and war conducts that international laws prohibit pose a severe threat to all, especially civilians, whose lives are equally valuable irrespective of their gender, race, religion, or political beliefs. Indiscriminate usage of these weapons has caused significant casualties, mass displacement of civilians, destruction of critical infrastructure, destabilization of communities and nations, and abject human suffering affecting people and their communities. The consequences leave a trans-generational mark on those who have nothing to do with the warfare. In Vietnam, more than 800,000 tons of unexploded munitions still cause casualties and injuries decades after the war (Nguyen & Van, 2022). Conflicts escalate conflicts. Two days after U.S. President Joe Biden allowed Ukraine to use U.S.-made Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missiles to strike deep into Russia, on Nov. 19 (European time), Russian President Vladimir Putin lowered the threshold for a nuclear strike in response to a broader range of conventional attacks, such as U.S.-made ATACMS missiles. Ukraine struck Russia with ATACMS on Nov. 19 and UK-made Storm Shadow missiles and U.S.-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) on Nov. 21. In response, Russia fired an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) at Ukraine on Nov. 21. An ICBM is capable of delivering a nuclear attack. Abiding by international laws that ban the use of certain weapons and war conducts is not an option, but a globally shared responsibility to ensure people can live in peace, reach their fullest potential, and pass it on to the next generation. The human race that created destruction holds the power to stop it.
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