III. Laws and norms in question

Chapter:

1. Introduction: International stability and human security in 2023

Source:

SIPRI Yearbook 2024

Author(s):

Dan Smith

The current international order includes principles intended to govern and limit armed conflict. All states have signed up to them in the UN Charter, in international humanitarian law (IHL), which is primarily but not exclusively embodied in the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in other treaties and declarations, such as those on refugees and against genocide. The legal provisions are detailed but the underlying principles are straightforward: they tell states not to go to war, except in self-defence or defence of another against aggression and, if a state has to do it, to do so with restraint, which includes showing care for the well-being of non-combatants. The strictures against launching a war are largely a product of the modern age. Although it has been a general understanding for centuries that war should only be undertaken for good reason (jus ad bellum), there was no legal or binding moral restriction against a ruler launching a war. This lasted until the victors of World War II retroactively applied a legal principle enunciated during the League of Nations period to punish German and Japanese leaders for the crime of launching a war of aggression.³³ Strictures against particular behaviour during a war (jus in bello), such as avoiding harm to civilians and disproportionate destruction, go back further. The European model of international order is informed by the Christian tradition of the ‘just war’, but there are counterparts to it in Islam and other religious traditions.³⁴ It was in the light of this international legal and moral tradition that Western leaders and opinion makers rightly condemned Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, its massive destruction of civilian areas and the atrocities committed by its troops, of which detailed evidence has emerged.³⁵