Maintaining the Protection of Non-Combatants

This article brings moral analysis to bear on the distinctive problem of maintaining the protection of non-combatants in contemporary warfare. While all warfare imposes burdens on non-combatants, moral tradition and the law of armed conflicts distinguish combatants from non-combatants and seek to protect the latter from direct, intended attacks. Much contemporary warfare rejects the two premises on which these efforts are based: that it is right and necessary to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants in a society at war, and that it is necessary to distinguish direct, intended harm to non-combatants from `collateral' harm that non-combatants may suffer from properly directed and intended military actions. Indeed, as exemplified by numerous contemporary conflicts (e.g. Rwanda, former Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland) inflamed by ethnic, religious, or ideological rivalries, recent warfare often reveals a pattern in which the armed forces of one or both sides directly and intentionally attack non-combatants as a preferred means of making war. The article addresses this problem in five steps, which define the article's five major sections: first, an analysis of the problem of warfare on non-combatants in moral terms drawn from the just war tradition; second, an examination of the historical development of non-combatant protection and the reasons for it in this tradition; third, a summary look at the protection of non-combatants in positive international law, from the law of armed conflicts through the ideas of crimes against humanity and genocide; fourth, an examination of the problem of warfare on non-combatants in two contemporary conflicts, those in Rwanda-Zaire and the former Yugoslavia; and fifth, a concluding section of moral argument for the importance of maintaining the protection of non-combatants in armed conflicts.