Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T05:29:05.179Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Revisiting the Battle of Solferino: The Worsening Plight of Civilian Casualties in War and Conflict

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2019

Frederick M. Burkle Jr.
Frederick M. Burkle Jr.*
Affiliation:
Professor (Ret.); Senior Fellow & Scientist, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, Harvard University and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Senior International Public Policy Scholar, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC; Elected member, Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC; Captain, MC, USNR (Ret.)
*
Correspondence and reprint requests to Frederick M. Burkle, Jr, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, 14 Story Street, 2nd Floor, Cambridge, MA 02138 (e-mail: [email protected]).
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The toll of civilian deaths in current wars and conflicts has been building for decades. Civilian populations, particularly since WWII, have suffered most of the consequences of armed violence and today represent the most at-risk population. This is attributed to the rise of religious and ethnic hatreds, the collapse of State structures, the battle for control of natural resources, the vast availability of weapons, the proliferation of acts of terrorism, and the spread of so-called asymmetric conflicts. Protections provided to innocent civilians under International Humanitarian Law and the Geneva Conventions have been ignored. This commentary captures the experience of the immediate care and transportation provided to military casualties of the Battle of Solferino in 1859 with civilian casualties recently documented in a Stanford-led study during the “golden hour” after injury in 13 conflicts from 1990 to 2017. Despite many advances in triage and management of war injuries over the intervening decades, the common thread of these 2 scenarios is that transport times and early resuscitation capacity and capabilities, first recognized in the 19th century wars and now accepted as global norms and markers for survival from trauma, are as unavailable today to civilians caught up in war and conflict as they were to soldiers in the 19th century.

Keywords

civilian casualtiestraumawar and conflictinternational humanitarian lawGeneva Convention
Type
Commentary
Information
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness , Volume 13 , Issue 5-6 , December 2019 , pp. 837 - 841
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc. 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Forrester, JD, August, A, Cai, LZ, et al. The golden hour after injury among civilians caught in conflict zones. Disaster Med Public Health Prep. 2019. doi:10.1017/dmp.2019.42CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunant, H. A memory of Solferino. International Committee of the Red Cross. Geneva, Switzerland: ICRC. https://www.google.com/search?q=Dunant+Memory+of+solforino+&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1. Accessed July 16, 2019.Google Scholar
ICRC. Solferino and the International Committee of the Red Cross: background, facts and figures. https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/resources/documents/feature/2010/solferino-feature-240609.htm. Published June 2010. Accessed July 2019.Google Scholar
Napoleonic Wars Casualties. https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/Napoleonic_Wars_casualties.html.Google Scholar
War History Online. The meat grinder of war: why the Napoleonic wars cost so many lives. https://www.warhistoryonline.com/napoleon/napoleonic-wars-cost.html. Accessed July 16, 2019.Google Scholar
White, M. Statistics of wars, oppressions and atrocities of the nineteenth century (the 1800s). The Historical Atlas of the 20th Century, 2011. http://necrometrics.com/. Accessed July 16, 2019.Google Scholar
SWISSINFO.ch. ICRC stresses burden on civilians in war. Jun 23, 2009 14:12. https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/icrc-stresses-burden-on-civilians-in-war/225368. Accessed July 16, 2019.Google Scholar
UNICEF Information. Impact of armed conflict on children. https://www.unicef.org/graca/patterns.htm. Accessed July 16, 2019.Google Scholar
ICRC. Protection of the civilian population 29-10-2010 Overview. https://cwww.icrc.org/eng/what-we-do/protecting-civilians/overview-protection-civilian-population.htm. Accessed July 16, 2019.Google Scholar
World Health Organization. WHO report on global surveillance of epidemic-prone infectious disease. WHO/CDC/CSR/ISR/2000.1. Chapter 3: Plague. Figure 3.3 Plague in selected countries 1954-1997. https://www.who.int/csr/resources/publications/surveillance/plague.pdf. Accessed July 16, 2019.Google Scholar
Spector RH. Vietnam War 1954-1975. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/event/Vietnam-War. Accessed July 16, 2019.Google Scholar
Costs of War. Civilians killed and wounded. Updated March 2015. Brown University, Providence, RI: Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians. Accessed July 16, 2019.Google Scholar
Hard National Security Choices. Civilian casualties & collateral damage. LAWFARE. Saturday November 10, 2018. https://www.lawfareblog.com/civilian-casualties-collateral-damage. Accessed July 16, 2019.Google Scholar
Crawford, NC. Are we safer? Measuring the costs of America’s unending wars. COGNOSCENTI. June 23, 2016. http://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2016/06/23/costs-of-war-on-terror-neta-c-crawford. Accessed July 16, 2019.Google Scholar
Hendricks, P, Raley, K. Protection of civilians in conflict must be a priority. InterAction Communications CIVIC. Newsroom: Fri 09/21/2018-8:30 am. https://www.interaction.org/newsroom/blog/international-day-peace.Google Scholar
ICRC. Expert meeting: explosive weapons in populated areas. https://www.icrc.org/en/publication/4244-explosive-weapons-populated-areas-expert-meeting. Accessed July 16, 2019.Google Scholar
Robinson, I, Nohle, E. War in cities: the ‘reverberating effects’ of explosive weapons. Humanitarian Law & Policy, ICRC. https://medium.com/law-and-policy/war-in-cities-the-reverberating-effects-of-explosive-weapons-5b46cea83ce8. Accessed July 16, 2019.Google Scholar
Human Rights Watch. Civilian harm from explosive weapons: agreement needed to curb use in towns, cities. June 19, 2015-4:33PMEDT. https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/06/19/civilian-harm-explosive-weapons. Accessed July 16, 2019.Google Scholar
Rodriguez-Llanes, JM, Guha-Sapir, D, Schlüter, BS, et al. Epidemiological findings of major chemical attacks in the Syrian war are consistent with civilian targeting: a short report. Confl Health. 2018;12:16.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
MarketScreener. Recorded alleged chemical agent use by Syrian government. Conflict Monitor. IHS Markit. 3/21/2018-04:30 AM EDT. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180321005074/en/Syrian-Government-Ups-Chemical-Weapons-Civilians-2018.Google Scholar
Robinson, I, Nohle, E. Proportionality and precautions in attack: the reverberating effects of using explosive weapons in populated areas. Int Rev Red Cross. 2016;98(1):107–145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burkle, FM Jr, Greenough, PG. Impact of public health emergencies on modern disaster taxonomy, planning, and response. Disaster Med Public Health Prep. 2008;2(3):192–199.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burkle, F Jr, Garfield, R. Civilian mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Lancet. 2013;381(9870):877–879.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kirby, A. Climate refugees may reach many millions by 2050. Climate News Network. March 20, 2018. https://climatenewsnetwork.net/climate-refugees-may-reach-many-millions-by-2050/. Accessed May 12, 2018.Google Scholar
Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. Human rights in the war-affected areas following the conflict in Georgia. Warsaw November 27, 2008. https://www.osce.org/odihr/35578. Accessed July 16, 2019.Google Scholar
Mahanty, DR, Hussein, RA, Moorehead, A. The Department of Defense’s Report on Civilian Casualties: a step forward in transparency? June 13, 2018. https://www.justsecurity.org/57718/department-defenses-report-civilian-casualties-step-transparency/. Accessed July 16, 2019.Google Scholar
The Guardian Opinion (Syria). The Guardian view on civilian deaths in war: be honest and investigate. Editorial. Sunday May 6, 2018-14.13 EDT. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/06/the-guardian-view-on-civilian-deaths-in-war-be-honest-and-investigate. Accessed July 16, 2019.Google Scholar
Burkle, FM, Kushner, AL, Giannou, C, et al. Health care providers in war and armed conflict: operational and educational challenges in international humanitarian law and the Geneva conventions, Part I. Historical perspective. Disaster Med Public Health Prep. 2019;13:109–115.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rule 14. Proportionality in attack. Customary IHL. ICRC. https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v1_cha_chapter4_rule14. Accessed October 13, 2017.Google Scholar
D’Ascanio, M. The armed conflict in Syria: “Death from the skies, deliberate and indiscriminate air strikes on civilians “How does law protect in war? https://casebook.icrc.org/case-study/armed-conflict-syria. Accessed October 13, 2017.Google Scholar
Berg-Petersen, I. Why do we spare civilians in war? ScienceNordic. October 13, 2014. http://sciencenordic.com/why-do-we-spare-civilians-war. Accessed July 16, 2019.Google Scholar