Paper Example on 68M Displaced by Conflict: Half are Children

Abstract

According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 68 million people have been displaced due to conflicts worldwide due to reasons that range from violation of human rights, violence, conflict, and persecution. People internally displaced due to armed conflict and living in war zones and forced to exist in poor living conditions further add to this number. According to Amnesty International, half of all the refugees in the world are children whereas a third of all the refugees find refuge in the world's poorest nations. Of all the refugees awaiting resettlement, only 7% were resettled by 2018 and this number continues to shrink worldwide as many developed countries either reduce the number of refugees they can legally take or totally lock them out of their borders.

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The United States has, for a long time in history, shaped the trajectory of leadership in situations of armed conflicts around the globe and particularly in the Middle East. According to Mallay (2018), the country has sent thousands of troops throughout the years but this situation is slowly changing as every successive administration opts for a policy of non-interference on issues of international politics and the Middle East. The US has successively cut down on Federal Spending in the efforts to save refugees from the Middle East and this has had a reverberating effect overboard. The inaction of the US is making other countries like Russia to bolster their influence by meddling with the politics of armed conflict in areas like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1. Introduction

The International Humanitarian Law (IHL) refers to the set of rules that aim to inhibit the impact of armed conflicts on humanitarian grounds. The rules protect individuals that are not involved or are no longer involved in hostilities. IHL principles date way back to the seventeenth century and seek to realize a careful balance between each state's military requirements and humanitarian concerns. The growth of the international community has seen increased contributions that strengthen the IHL to its present form as a universal framework of the law. Present-day IHL majorly reflects the agreements of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, to which almost all countries in the world are signatories. It protects victims of armed conflicts, as well as restrict the use of specific military tactics, weapons, and the involvement of certain categories of goods and people.

Since the IHL exists to address an ever-present global concern with changing complexities and dynamics, there have been progressive additions and adjustments to the law. The current version of the IHL is a work in progress. However, a glimpse of key developments in the IHL protocol helps understand why the world must always remain vigilant to protect vulnerable subsets of the community against the effect of war. The Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict of 1954 reinforced the provisions of the First Geneva Convention of 1864. Further improvement culminated into the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. Eight years later, the Conventional Weapons Convention was established. The 1993 convention focused on the use of chemical weapons, while 1997 addressed anti-personnel mines. The 2000 convention addressed the rights of children and their involvement in armed conflict.

The scope of the IHL is limited to armed conflict. Hence, it does not attend to pockets of violence that may occur within a country. However, once armed conflict begins, the law applies equally to all sides. International armed conflicts are defined as those involving at least two states that are bound by the Geneva convention. On its part, non-international armed conflicts are those that pit armed groups together or one or more-armed groups against the military of a state. The IHL protects persons who do not take part in armed conflict, including civilians, non-combat military personnel, and individuals who have ceased to be part of armed conflicts such as sick combatants, wounded soldiers, prisoners of war, and those who are shipwrecked . The law forbids the wounding or killing of an enemy who surrenders and is incapacitated, sick, or wounded persons. It also protects hospitals, ambulances, supplies, and medical personnel.

IHL is a legal framework that applies to situations of occupation and armed conflict. It is a set of protocols designed, for humanitarian purposes, to limit the harm that armed conflict would have on people that are not involved directly in war. As a part of public international law, it regulates relationships between states, and is a set of norms, principles, customary law, and treaties. It regulates the activities that occur during armed conflict. As a jus ad bellum, the IHL's principles are proportionality, right intention, reasonable hope, right authority, and last resort. The foundational intent of the IHL is to help realize a balance between military necessity and humanity. It calls for the consideration of distinction and proportionality. At any point of an armed conflict, parties are required to accurately distinguish the combatants from civilians. Similarly, civilian objects must be distinguished from military objects.

1.2. Background and Problem Statement

Discussions regarding human displacement in times of armed conflict, the plight of displaced persons, and the responsibility of humanitarian aids groups are not complete without their consideration in the context of IHL. The IHL comprises the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the additional protocols, Customary International Law (CIL), and the Martens Clause. The premise of the IHL is to distinguish the lawfulness of the conduct of armed conflict, just in bellum.

The IHL's proportionality principle and the application of force during armed conflict is relevant to the consideration of displacement of people during armed conflict. The scope of this research is limited to the IHL defines conduct within the armed conflict. The IHL defines the conduct of warring parties during international armed conflict, and this research will consider the displacement of people within this context (Khan and Nasrullah 2019). The mandate of the IHL as a limiting regulatory framework during armed conflicts is understood through its three key principles, distinction, precaution, and proportionality.

1.2.1 Eliminating the Risk of Impact of Armed Conflict through IHL Distinction Principle

The IHL requires that, as a first step, all warring parties during an international armed conflict distinguish between civilians and combatants. The parties are equally required to distinguish between civilian objects and military objects. Hence, parties to a conflict are required to distinguish between what constitutes legitimate military objectives from what makes up illegitimate military objectives. The Geneva Convention of 1949 spells out how victims of international armed conflict ought to be treated In general, combatants are only required to direct their attacks against legitimate military objectives and opposing combatants. Protocol, I of the Geneva Convention, defines attacks as acts of aggression meted against an adversary. Such aggression is allowed for defence or offence. However, it must not endanger the lives and wellbeing of civilians. Hence, any object other than a legitimate military object is defined as a civilian object.

As a rule, the principle of distinction requires that combatants desist from indiscriminate attacks that disrupt the peace of the civilians. In this study, indiscriminate attack understood to imply any acts of aggression intended to strike...