All Topics  
Civilian casualties

 

 
   Email Print
   Bookmark   Link
 

 

Civilian casualties
 
 
  Topics Civilian casualties Topic Home

Civilian casualties is a military
Military

A military is an organization authorized by its nation to use force, usually including use of weapons, in defending its country by combating actual or Threat of force ....
 term describing civilian
Civilian

A civilian under international humanitarian law is a person who is not a member of his or her country's armed forces. The term is also often used colloquially to refer to people who are not members of a particular profession or occupation, especially by law enforcement agency, which often use rank structures similar to those of military units...
 or non-combatant
Non-combatant

Non-combatant is a military and legal term describing civilians not engaged in combat. It also includes persons, such as combat medic and chaplains and soldiers who are hors de combat....
 persons killed, injured, or imprisoned by military action. The description of civilian casualties includes any form of military action regardless of whether civilians were targeted directly. This differs from the description of collateral damage
Collateral damage

Collateral damage is damage that is unintended or incidental to the intended outcome. The term originated in the U.S. military, but it has since expanded into broader use....
 that only applies to unintentional effects of military action including unintended casualties.

Civilian casualties therefore include victims of atrocities such as the Nanking Massacre committed on a civilian population where hundreds of thousands of men were slaughtered, while girls and women ages ranging from 10 to 70 were systematically raped or killed by Japan
Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
ese soldiers in 1937.






Discussion
Ask a question about 'Civilian casualties'
Start a new discussion about 'Civilian casualties'
Answer questions from other users
Full Discussion Forum



Encyclopedia


Civilian casualties is a military
Military

A military is an organization authorized by its nation to use force, usually including use of weapons, in defending its country by combating actual or Threat of force ....
 term describing civilian
Civilian

A civilian under international humanitarian law is a person who is not a member of his or her country's armed forces. The term is also often used colloquially to refer to people who are not members of a particular profession or occupation, especially by law enforcement agency, which often use rank structures similar to those of military units...
 or non-combatant
Non-combatant

Non-combatant is a military and legal term describing civilians not engaged in combat. It also includes persons, such as combat medic and chaplains and soldiers who are hors de combat....
 persons killed, injured, or imprisoned by military action. The description of civilian casualties includes any form of military action regardless of whether civilians were targeted directly. This differs from the description of collateral damage
Collateral damage

Collateral damage is damage that is unintended or incidental to the intended outcome. The term originated in the U.S. military, but it has since expanded into broader use....
 that only applies to unintentional effects of military action including unintended casualties.

Civilian casualties therefore include victims of atrocities such as the Nanking Massacre committed on a civilian population where hundreds of thousands of men were slaughtered, while girls and women ages ranging from 10 to 70 were systematically raped or killed by Japan
Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
ese soldiers in 1937. Another example is the My Lai Massacre
My Lai Massacre

The My Lai Massacre was the mass murder of 347 to 504 unarmed citizens in South Vietnam, entirely civilians and some of them women and children, conducted by U.S....
  that was committed by U.S.
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
 soldiers during the Vietnam War
Vietnam War

The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina Wars, the Vietnam Conflict, or often in Vietnam the American War occurred in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia from 1959 to April 30, 1975....
 on hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese
Vietnamese people

The Vietnamese people are an ethnic group originating from what is now northern Vietnam and southern People's Republic of China. They are the majority ethnic group of Vietnam, comprising 86% of the population as of the 1999 census, and are officially known as Kinh to distinguish them from other List of ethnic groups in Vietnam....
 civilians. Such military action, which has the sole purpose of inflicting civilian casualties is illegal under modern rules of war, and may be considered a war crime
War crime

War crimes are "violations of the laws or customs of war"; including but not limited to "murder, the ill-treatment or deportation of civilian residents of an occupied territory to slave labor camps", "the murder or ill-treatment of prisoner of war", the killing of hostages, "the wanton destruction of cities, towns and villages, and any devast...
 or crime against humanity
Crime against humanity

Crimes against humanity, as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Explanatory Memorandum, "are particularly odious offences in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings....
.

Other kinds of civilian casualties may involve the targeting of civilian populations for military purposes, such as the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuclear warfares near the end of World War II against the Empire of Japan by the United States at the executive order of President of the United States Harry S....
, which killed over 100,000 civilians. The legality of such action was at the time governed by international law
International law

Public international law concerns the structure and conduct of states and intergovernmental organizations. To a lesser degree, international law also may affect multinational corporations and individuals, an impact increasingly evolving beyond domestic legal interpretation and enforcement....
 found in the Hague Regulations on Land Warfare of 1907
Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907)

The Hague Conventions were international treaty negotiated at the First and Second Peace Conferences at The Hague, Netherlands in 1899 and 1907, respectively, and were, along with the Geneva Conventions, among the first formal statements of the laws of war and war crimes in the nascent body of secular international law....
, which state "the attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended is prohibited". Also relevant, were the Hague Draft Rules of Air Warfare of 1922–1923, which state "air bombardment is legitimate only when is directed against a military objective". The Rome Statute defines "intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population" to be illegal, but only came into effect on July 1, 2002 and has not been ratified by every country.

The ethics of civilian casualties

Many modern nations' views on the ethics
Ethics

Ethics is a word for a philosophy that encompasses proper conduct and good living. It is significantly broader than the common conception of ethics as the analyzing of right and wrong....
 of civilian casualties align with the Just War theory
Just War

Just War theory is a doctrine of military ethics of Roman philosophical and Catholic origin studied by moral theologians, ethicists and international policy makers which holds that a conflict can and ought to meet the criteria of philosophy, religion or politics justice, provided it follows certain Indicative conditional....
, which advocates a system of proportionality. An act of war
Casus belli

Casus belli is a Latin language expression meaning the justification for acts of war. Casus means "incident", "rupture" or indeed "case", while belli means "of war"....
 is deemed proportional in Just War theory if the overall destruction expected from the use of force is outweighed by the projected good to be achieved. This view is a war-adapted version of utilitarianism
Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is the idea that the morality of an action is determined solely by its contribution to overall utility: that is, its contribution to happiness or pleasure as summed among all persons....
, the moral system which advocates that the morally correct action is the one that does the most good.

However, moral philosophers often contest this approach to war. Such theorists advocate absolutism
Moral absolutism

Moral absolutism is the meta-ethical view that certain actions are absolutely right or wrong, devoid of the context of the act. Thus lying, for instance, might be considered to be always immoral, even if done to promote some other good ....
, which holds there are various ethical rules that are, as the name implies, absolute. One such rule is that non-combatants cannot be killed because they are, by definition, not partaking in combat; to attack non-combatants anyway, regardless of the expected outcome, is to deny them agency. Thus, by the absolutist view, only combatants can be attacked. The philosopher Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel

Thomas Nagel is an United States philosopher, currently University Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University, where he has taught since 1980....
 advocates this abolutist rule in his essay War and Massacre..

Finally, the approach of pacifism
Pacifism

Pacifism is the opposition to war or violence as a means of settling disputes or gaining advantage. Pacifism covers a spectrum of views ranging from the belief that international disputes can and should be peacefully resolved; to calls for the abolition of the institutions of the military and war; to opposition to any organization of society...
 is the belief that war of any kind is morally unjust. Pacifists sometimes extend humanitarian concern not just to enemy civilians but also to combatants, especially conscripts.

See also

  • Casualty (person)
    Casualty (person)

    A casualty is a person who is the victim of an accident, injury, or Physical trauma. The word casualties is most often used by the news media to describe deaths and injuries resulting from wars or disasters....
  • Just War Theory
    Just War

    Just War theory is a doctrine of military ethics of Roman philosophical and Catholic origin studied by moral theologians, ethicists and international policy makers which holds that a conflict can and ought to meet the criteria of philosophy, religion or politics justice, provided it follows certain Indicative conditional....
  • Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
    Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

    The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuclear warfares near the end of World War II against the Empire of Japan by the United States at the executive order of President of the United States Harry S....
  • Collateral damage
    Collateral damage

    Collateral damage is damage that is unintended or incidental to the intended outcome. The term originated in the U.S. military, but it has since expanded into broader use....
  • Concentration camps
  • List of concentration and internment camps
    List of concentration and internment camps

    This is a list of Internment and Concentration camps, organized by country. In general, a camp or group of camps is assigned to the country whose government was responsible for the establishment and/or operation of the camp regardless of the camp's location, but this principle can be, or appear to be, departed from in such cases as wher...


Further reading


  • Twentieth Century Atlas - Death Tolls
  • Selected Death Tolls for Wars, Massacres and Atrocities Before the 20th Century .
  • The world's worst massacres . By Greg Brecht. Fall, 1987. Whole Earth Review
    Whole Earth Review

    Whole Earth was a magazine which was founded in January 1985 after the merger of The Whole Earth Software Catalog and Review and the CoEvolution Quarterly....
    .