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Remarks by Brian L. Cox

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2023

Brian L. Cox
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Extract

Establishing the circumstances pursuant to which parties to an armed conflict are required to provide reparations or other compensation for harm inflicted in the course of hostilities is an enduring and seemingly intractable challenge in the field of public international law. With the recent full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the ensuing harm to civilian persons and property being inflicted daily on an almost unimaginable scale as a result of the ongoing fighting, the issue of recompense for damage inflicted in the course of armed conflict has become infused with a renewed sense of urgency. My contribution to the Remedies and Reparations for Individuals Under International Law panel explores the topic that I refer to as “belligerent liability”—that is, reparations or other compensation required to be distributed by states for harm to civilian persons or property caused during armed conflict—from both a conceptual and applied approach.

Type
New Voices in International Law: Remedies and Reparations for Individuals Under International Law
Information
Proceedings of the ASIL Annual Meeting , Volume 116 , 2022 , pp. 213 - 217
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The American Society of International Law

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References

1 Jens David Ohlin & Larry May, Necessity in International Law 3 (2016).

2 Advisory Serv. Int'l Humanitarian L., Int'l Comm. Red Cross, What Is International Humanitarian Law? 1 (2004), at https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/assets/files/other/what_is_ihl.pdf (emphasis in original).

3 Off. Gen. Couns., Department of Defense Law of War Manual, para. 2.2.2.1 (3d ed. 2016).

4 Id., para. 18.16.3 (emphasis added).

5 Id., para. 5.3.1 (footnote omitted).

6 See, e.g., Emanuela-Chiara Gillard, Reparation for Violations of International Humanitarian Law, 85 Int'l Rev. Red Cross 529, 549 (2003) (asserting that requiring reparations only when an attack is found to violate international law means “that a civilian whose house was targeted would be compensated, but that his neighbour, whose dwelling was destroyed as the result of permissible collateral damage, would not,” which, according to the author, “is hardly a satisfactory outcome from the point of view of the victims, who are equally in need”).

7 Yaël Ronen, Avoid or Compensate? Liability for Incidental Injury to Civilians Inflicted During Armed Conflict, 42 Vand. J. Transnat'l L. 181, 223–24 (2009).

8 Geoff Corn & Sean Watts, Ukraine Symposium – Effects-Based Enforcement of Targeting Law, Articles of War (June 2, 2022), at https://lieber.westpoint.edu/effects-based-enforcement-targeting-law (emphasis added).

9 Armed Activities on the Territory of the Congo (Dem. Rep. Congo v. Uganda), Reparations Judgment, para. 145 (Feb. 9, 2022), at https://www.icj-cij.org/public/files/case-related/116/116-20220209-JUD-01-00-EN.pdf.

10 Armed Activities on the Territory of the Congo (Dem. Rep. Congo v. Uganda), Judgment, 2005 ICJ Rep. 16, para. 165 (Dec. 19).