Chapter

The use of prohibited weapons and war crimes

Andrea Cannone

War crimes and the conduct of hostilities : challenges to adjudication and investigation

Cheltenham ; Northampton : E. Elgar, 2013

p. 173-193

English

This article examines the relationship between the use of prohibited weapons and war crimes under international criminal law. The author begins by providing an overview of weapons prohibited under customary and international humanitarian law (IHL). She notes that the use of certain non-prohibited weapons is restricted to situations where they will not cause unnecessary suffering and/or superfluous injuries, and also in locations distant from civilians. The International Criminal Court (ICC) considers the use of most prohibited weapons to be war crimes. However, the author argues that an asymmetry exists between the prohibitions arising from customary and conventional IHL on use of weapons and the resulting criminal accountability for war crimes. Individual criminal responsibility has been more frequently asserted for the use of weapons in attacks directly or indiscriminately targeting civilians than for the use of a prohibited weapon per se. To illustrate this, she discusses recent fact-finding and arbitral commissions, including the NATO Bombing Campaign against Yugoslavia, Israeli military operations in Lebanon, the Gaza Conflict, the conflict in Georgia, alleged human rights violations in Libya, and the Eritrea-Ethiopia armed conflict. The author also explores international and national judicial decisions on the employment of weapons, including cases from the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, Iraq, Japan, US, and Israel. [Summary by students at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law (IHRP)]

• War crimes and the conduct of hostilities : challenges to adjudication and investigation / ed. by Fausto Pocar, Marco Pedrazzi, Micaela Frulli