Collateral Damage During Armed Conflict: Inevitable or a Rule of the Game?
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Date
2011
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Abstract
This article discusses the concept of collateral damage. Under international
humanitarian law, collateral damage is generally understood to mean the unintentional
or incidental damage affecting facilities, equipment, or personnel, occurring as a result
of military actions directed against targeted opposing military forces or facilities. The
basic ethical value of principles of international humanitarian law is utilitarianism or
ethical value of consequence. Utilitarianism defines the morally right action as that
action that maximizes some non-moral good such as pleasure or happiness and
minimizes some non-moral evil such as pain or misery, in situations of armed conflict,
the destruction of the opposing forces or their property. Since armed conflicts cannot be
stopped by law, the dilemma of legal scholars, politicians and the military remains how
to minimize collateral damage once armed conflicts break out. A general conclusion
drawn from the discussion is that collateral damage is an inevitable aspect of armed
conflicts.
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Keywords
Humanitarian law, Military forces