1 Mustafa Haji Abdinur, ‘A day in the life of a Mogadishu ambulance driver’, in France 24, 23 August 2010.

2 Prevention of Violence: A Public Health Priority, Resolution WHA49.25 adopted by the Forty-ninth World Health Assembly, Geneva, 20–25 May 1996.

3 Buhmann, Cæcilie, ‘The direct and indirect costs of explosive violence’, in British Medical Journal, Vol. 339, 2009, p. 761CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

4 Report of the Secretary-General on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict, UN Doc. S/2009/277, 29 May 2009, para. 36.

5 Report of the Secretary-General on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict, UN Doc. S/2010/579, 11 November 2011, para. 49.

6 Zukas, Jonas A. and Walters, William P. (eds), Explosive Effects and Applications, Springer, New York, 1998, p. 9Google Scholar; Moyes, Richard, Explosive Violence: The Problem of Explosive Weapons, Landmine Action, London, 2009, p. 4Google Scholar. In addition to primary fragments from the shattered casing, the blast wave creates secondary fragmentation by accelerating objects near the explosion, such as parts of structures and shards of window glass.

7 William Boothby describes weapons falling into his category of ‘missiles, bombs and artillery’ as those that ‘typically employ a warhead with an explosive fill such that a combination of blast and fragmentation will provide the damaging effect of the weapon’. Boothby, William, Weapons and the Law of Armed Conflict, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009, p. 225CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Report of Conference of Government Experts on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons, Lucerne, 24 September–18 October 1974 (Lucerne Report), ICRC, Geneva, 1975, p. 44.

8 See for example, 1980 Protocol II to the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), Art. 4(2); 1996 CCW Amended Protocol II, Art. 7(3); 1980 CCW Protocol III, Arts. 1(2) and 2(2); and 1977 Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions (AP I), Art. 51(5)(a). Note also the references by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) to ‘populated areas’ in explosive-weapons-related cases, such as in ECtHR, Case of Isayeva v. Russia, Merits and Just Satisfaction, Judgment, 24 February 2005, and ECtHR, Case of Esmukhambetov and Others v. Russia, Application No. 23445/03, Merits and Just Satisfaction, Judgment, 29 March 2011.

9 Slim, Hugo, Killing Civilians: Method, Madness and Morality in War, Hurst & Company, London, 2007, p. 183Google Scholar.

10 The ‘use of heavy weapons’, including the shelling of towns, has been used as an indicator for the existence of an armed conflict in the legal sense. See for example, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), The Prosecutor v. Ljube Boškoski & Johan Tarčulovski, Case No. IT-04-82-T, Judgment (Trial Chamber II), 10 July 2008, para. 177.

11 IHL is defined broadly here to encompass the rules and principles of ‘Geneva law’ and ‘Hague law’.

12 AP I, Art. 51(1). Note that the ECtHR also referred to ‘civilians’ when it discussed the risk posed by the detonation of a bomb in ECtHR, Case of McCann and Others v. the United Kingdom, Application No. 18984/91, Merits and Just Satisfaction, Judgment, 27 September 1995.

13 Becerra, Oscar, ‘Drugs of choice: Mexico faces security dilemma’, in Jane's Intelligence Review, Vol. 23, No. 1, January 2011, pp. 8–10Google Scholar. See also the documentary film produced by Seth Chase and Brice Blondel, directed by Seth Chase, ‘Bang for your Buck’, ShootingPoverty.org, 2010, which describes explosive hand grenade attacks in Burundi, available at: http://vimeo.com/16198602 (last visited 2 May 2011).

14 The use of explosive force by states that may result in the deprivation of life probably goes beyond what is ‘absolutely necessary’ for the achievement of legitimate law enforcement purposes. In a recent judgment, for example, the ECtHR considered that ‘the indiscriminate bombing of a village inhabited by civilians – women and children being among their number – was manifestly disproportionate to the achievement of the purpose under Article 2, para. 2 (a)’ of the European Convention on Human Rights. See Esmukhambetov and Others v. Russia, above note 8, para. 150.

15 The Explosive Violence Monitoring Project of the British humanitarian organization Action against Armed Violence (AOAV) publishes bi-weekly reports on explosive violence, available at: http://www.landmineaction.org/issues/page.asp?PLID=1017&pageID=1068 (last visited 2 May 2011).

16 R. Moyes, above note 6, p. 29.

17 See for instance Coupland, Robin and Samnegaard, Hans, ‘Effect of type and transfer of conventional weapons on civilian injuries: retrospective analysis of prospective data from Red Cross hospitals’, in British Medical Journal, Vol. 319, 1999, pp. 410–412Google Scholar. For more information about the particular wounding patterns caused by such weapons, see International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Wound Ballistics: An Introduction for Health, Legal, Forensic, Military and Law Enforcement Professionals, ICRC, Geneva, 2008Google Scholar; and Stewart, C., ‘Blast injuries: preparing for the inevitable’, in Emergency Medicine Practice, Vol. 8, No. 4, April 2006, pp. 1–28Google Scholar.

18 The World Bank, World Development Report 2011: Conflict, Security, and Development, World Bank, 2011, p. 61Google ScholarPubMed.

19 Hsiao-Rei Hicks, Madelyn, et al. , ‘Violent deaths of Iraqi civilians, 2003–2008: analysis by perpetrator, weapon, time, and location’, in PLoS Medicine, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2011Google ScholarPubMed, available at: http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000415 (last visited 2 May 2011). See also R. Moyes, above note 6, p. 26.

20 Report of the Secretary-General, 2009, above note 4, para. 36.

21 C.J. Chivers, ‘Qaddafi troops fire cluster bombs into civilian areas’, in New York Times, 15 April 2011, available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/16/world/africa/16libya.html (last visited 2 May 2011): ‘The toll of the Grad rocket strikes also framed the ways in which civilians are being forced to take risks to survive. Misurata has few open markets, almost no electricity and limited supplies of food. To eat, many residents must stand in bread lines. When one of the rockets that landed in Qasr Ahmed exploded beside such a line, it killed several people waiting for food. “I jumped onto the ground when the explosions started”, said Ali Hmouda, 36, an employee of the port. “My friend did not. His head came off.”’

22 Cann, Esther and Harrison, Katherine, 100 Incidents of Humanitarian Harm: Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas, 2009–2010, Action on Armed Violence, London, March 2011, p. 50Google Scholar.

23 World Bank, above note 18, p. 61.

24 Borrie, John, Explosive Remnants of War: A Global Survey, Landmine Action, London, 2003Google Scholar.

25 ICRC, ‘Somalia: war wounded in Mogadishu referral hospitals reach new peak’, 27 January 2011, available at: http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/news-footage/somalia-tvnews-2011-01-27.htm (last visited 2 May 2011). See also Médecins sans frontières, ‘Somalia: MSF treats 66 women and children injured by indiscriminate shelling’, Press Release, 3 February 2010, available at: http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/press/release.cfm?id=4251&cat=press-release (last visited 3 May 2011).

26 According to UNAMA, suicide attacks and IEDs deployed by anti-government forces caused the largest proportion (55%) of conflict-related civilian casualties in Afghanistan in 2010, followed by air attacks by pro-government forces (16%). UNAMA Human Rights Unit, Afghanistan Annual Report 2010: Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict, March 2011, p. i. UNAMA said that the 2,777 civilian deaths in 2010 represented a 15% increase over 2009, when it had noted that such ‘attacks frequently resulted in civilian fatalities and the destruction of civilian property and infrastructure’. UNAMA Human Rights Unit, Afghanistan Annual Report on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict 2009, 2010. Note that UNAMA's data do not include deaths and injury from some explosive weapons (such as mortars and ground-launched artillery), and do not recognize explosive weapons as a specific data category.

27 Crowther, Greg, Counting the Cost: The Economic Impact of Cluster Munition Contamination in Lebanon, Landmine Action, London, 2008Google Scholar.

28 UN Development Programme, One Year After Report: Gaza Early Recovery and Reconstruction Needs Assessment, New York, 2010Google Scholar, available at: http://www.undp.ps/en/newsroom/publications/pdf/other/gazaoneyear.pdf (last visited 2 May 2011).

29 Médecins sans frontières, ‘MSF treating hundreds of wounded arriving from Sri Lankan war zone’, 21 April 2009, available at: http://www.msf.org/msf/articles/2009/04/msf-treating-hundreds-of-wounded-arriving-from-sri-lankan-war-zone.cfm (last visited 2 May 2011); Report of the Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka, 31 March 2011, available at: www.un.org/News/dh/infocus/Sri_Lanka/POE_Report_Full.pdf (last visited 2 May 2011).

30 M. H.-R. Hicks et al., above note 19, p. 11.

31 See Münkler, Herfried, ‘The Wars of the 21st Century’, in International Review of the Red Cross, Vol. 85, No. 849, March 2003, pp. 7–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 See Smith, Rupert, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World, Allen Lane, London, 2006Google Scholar.

33 John-Hopkins, Michael, ‘Regulating the conduct of urban warfare: lessons from contemporary asymmetric armed conflicts’, in International Review of the Red Cross, Vol. 92, No. 878, June 2010, p. 471CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 Vautravers, Alexandre, ‘Military operations in urban areas’, in International Review of the Red Cross, Vol. 92, No. 878, June 2010, p. 450CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Adam Higginbotham, ‘U.S. military learns to fight deadliest weapons’, in Wired Magazine, 28 July 2010, available at: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/07/ff_roadside_bombs (last visited 13 May 2011): ‘With one of the most intensive and ingenious programs of homegrown bombmaking R&D in history, Northern Ireland's Provisional IRA worked its way through every available bandwidth from model airplane controllers to cell phones.’

36 Wilson, Clay, Improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Iraq and Afghanistan: effects and countermeasures, CRS Report for Congress, Congressional Research Service, Washington DC, 21 November 2007Google Scholar, available at: http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA475029 (last visited 12 May 2011).

37 Twelfth Annual Conference of the High Contracting Parties to Amended Protocol II to the Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects, Improvised explosive devices (IEDs), Report submitted by the Coordinator, UN Doc. CCW/AP.II/CONF.12/3, November 2010, available at: http://www.unog.ch/80256EDD006B8954/(http:Assets)/9D351066DC9A78B4C12577E00064355C/$file/Report+APII+Coordinator+on+IED+(Draft).pdf (last visited 22 February 2012).

38 Adrian King, Improvised explosive devices (IEDs): a growing threat to humanitarian demining operations?, paper delivered at The Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining Technology Workshop, 6–8 September 2010, PowerPoint presentation available at: http://www.gichd.org/fileadmin/pdf/technology/Technology-Workshop-2010/R-7Sept2010-ThreatToHumanitarianOps-TechWS.pdf (last visited 12 May 2011).

39 Landmine Action, Explosive violence: Israel and Gaza, Policy Brief, 30 January 2009, p. 1, available at: http://www.landmineaction.org/resources/Explosive%20violence%20-%20Israel%20and%20Gaza.pdf (last visited 2 May 2011).

40 Boer, Roos, Schuurman, Bsart and Struyk, Miriam, Protecting Civilians from Explosive Violence: 1. Defining the Humanitarian Problem, Pax Christi Netherlands, Utrecht, 2011, p. 20Google Scholar.

41 It is increasingly recognized that human rights law applies alongside IHL during armed conflict, but what the interplay of these legal regimes means in terms of substantive rights and obligations remains subject to considerable debate.

42 1899 Hague Regulations, Art. 25.

43 1899 Hague Declaration to Prohibit, for the Term of Five Years, the Launching of Projectiles and Explosives from Balloons, and Other Methods of Similar Nature.

44 Jochnick, Chris af and Normand, Roger, ‘The legitimation of violence: a critical history of the laws of war’, in Harvard International Law Journal, Vol. 35, No. 1, 1994, p. 73Google Scholar.

45 1907 Hague Regulations, Art. 25.

46 1907 Hague Convention concerning Bombardment by Naval Forces in Time of War, Chapter I. Conditions include the requirements that the bombardment be preceded by a formal summons to comply with the naval forces’ request and that destruction of military objectives by other means is impossible.

47 1922 Hague Rules concerning the Control of Wireless Telegraphy in Time of War and Air Warfare, Art. 24(4).

48 Protection of Civilian Populations against Bombing from the Air in Case of War, League of Nations Assembly Resolution, 30 September 1938.

49 See, for example, Tanaka, Yuki and Young, Marilyn B. (eds), Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth-century History, The New Press, New York, 2009Google Scholar. For a consideration of the wartime moral debate about bombing see Glover, Jonathan, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century, Pimlico, London, 2001, pp. 69–88Google Scholar.

50 See, for example, Prokosch, Eric, The Technology of Killing: A Military and Political History of Antipersonnel Weapons, Zed Books, London, 1995Google Scholar, which links the refinement of these weapons to conflicts in Korea and, from the 1960s, South-east Asia. For a description of the effects of cluster bomb and artillery attacks on densely populated areas in Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s, see, for example, Danaher, Kevin, ‘Israel's use of cluster bombs in Lebanon’, in Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 11, No. 4, 1982, pp. 52–54Google Scholar.

51 Lucerne Report, above note 7, pp. 44 and 49. Recently, the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research at Harvard University argued that ‘Blast weapons must be distinguished from fragmentation weapons’ in its Commentary on the HPCR Manual on International Law Applicable to Air and Missile Warfare, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, March 2010, pp. 75 and 77.

52 AP I, Art. 51(4–5).

53 Blast effects of weapons were dealt with primarily in connection with fuel–air explosives, which led to some restrictions on incendiary weapons on targets ‘within a concentration of civilians’ under 1980 CCW Protocol III. CCW Protocol I, also adopted in 1980, prohibits the use of weapons the primary effect of which is to injure by fragments not detectable by X-rays. These instruments leave unaddressed the humanitarian impacts of blast and fragmentation of most commonly used explosive weapons.

54 2003 CCW Protocol V, preamble.

55 CCW, Final Document of the Fourth Review Conference, Geneva, 14–25 November 2011 (Part II): Final Declaration (Advance Version), Decision 1. See also François Rivasseau, ‘The past and future of the CCW’, in Arms Control Today, March 2011, available at: http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2011_03/LookingBack (last visited 3 May 2011).

56 This is also demonstrated, for example, in International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), ‘Tactical directive’, Kabul, 6 July 2009, available at: http://www.nato.int/isaf/docu/official_texts/Tactical_Directive_090706.pdf (last visited 3 May 2011), which restricts use of ‘air-to-ground munitions and indirect fires against residential compounds’. See also ‘For the record: Maj. Gen. Mugisha, Nathandiscusses civilian casualties’, in AMISOM Bulletin, Vol. 17, p. 2Google Scholar : ‘rules of engagement clearly state that public places like schools, hospitals or markets are never to be targeted’ and ‘public places, including Bakara market, are no fire zones’.

57 AP I, Art. 35(1).

58 The provisions of AP I largely reflect customary law in this respect and will provide the basis for the following discussion.

59 C. af Jochnick and R. Normand, above note 44, p. 50. These authors argue further that ‘the laws of war have facilitated rather than restrained wartime violence. Through law, violence has been legitimated’. Furthermore ‘By endorsing military necessity without substantive limitations, the laws of war ask only that belligerents act in accord with military self-interest. Belligerents who meet this hollow requirement receive in return a powerful rhetorical tool to protect their controversial conduct from humanitarian challenges’ (p. 58).

60 AP I, Art. 51(1).

61 ‘Aerial bombardment of civilian centres is almost inevitable in modern warfare. If the law is meant to temper these attacks, it has proved pliant.’ Smith, Thomas W., ‘The new law of war: legitimizing hi-tech and infrastructural violence’, in International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 46, No. 3, 2002, p. 359CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 Pursuant to AP I, Arts. 51(4) and (5)(b), attacks ‘which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated’ are to be considered indiscriminate and are prohibited.

63 A number of scholars contest the interpretation given by Sandoz, Yves, Swinarski, Christophe and Zimmermann, Bruno, Commentary on the Additional Protocols of 8 June 1977 to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, ICRC, Geneva, 1987Google Scholar, para. 1980, p. 626, who claim that: ‘The Protocol does not provide any justification for attacks which cause extensive civilian losses and damages. Incidental losses and damages should never be extensive’. See, for example, Schmitt, Michael N., ‘Precision attack and international humanitarian law’, in International Review of the Red Cross, Vol. 87, No. 859, 2005, p. 457Google Scholar: ‘The standard is “excessive” (a comparative concept), not “extensive” (an absolute concept)’.

64 ‘The main problem with the principle of proportionality is not whether or not it exists but what it means and how it is to be applied.’ ICTY, Final Report to the Prosecutor by the Committee Established to Review the NATO Bombing Campaign Against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, 2000Google Scholar, para. 48. See also Rogers, A. P. V., ‘Zero-casualty warfare’, in International Review of the Red Cross, No. 837, 2000Google Scholar, available at: http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/misc/57jqcu.htm (last visited 3 May 2011).

65 ‘The determination of what constitutes “excessive” collateral damage is unclear to the point of inapplicability. … The principle of proportionality thus far remains a rhetorical tool, with little substantive content.’ Shamash, Hamutal E., ‘How much is too much? An examination of the principle of jus in bello proportionality’, in Israel Defense Forces Law Review, Vol. 2, 2006, pp. 2–3Google Scholar.

66 ‘As we have seen, arguments from necessity allow warring parties to justify an enormous amount of civilian suffering.’ Hugo Slim, above note 9, p. 174. See also T. W. Smith, above note 61, pp. 360–361.

67 From the perspective of civilian protection, it is particularly worrying that there is no consensus about what civilian harm ‘may be expected’, what effects are to be considered ‘foreseeable’, and what standard of care applies when using explosive weapons in populated areas. It is doubtful that ‘an imprecise rule of reason’ confers adequate protection. See M. N. Schmitt, above note 63, p. 463.

68 T. W. Smith, above note 61, p. 370, notes in relation to the 1991 Gulf War that, while estimates of the ratio of bomb tonnage to civilian deaths in air attacks show remarkable reductions in immediate collateral damage, if one takes into account the long-term effects, ‘aerial bombing looks anything but humane’; and (p. 365) ‘Although the Coalition hewed more or less to humanitarian law, the destruction was enormous.’

69 See, for example, McCormack, Timothy and Mtharu, Paramdeep, Expected Civilian Damage & The Proportionality Equation: International Humanitarian Law & Explosive Remnants of War, Asia Pacific Centre for Military Law, University of Melbourne Law School, 2006, pp. 12–13Google Scholar. See also 1996 CCW Amended Protocol II, Art. 3(10)(a), which requires that the ‘long-term effect of mines upon the local civilian population’ be taken into account when taking precautions.

70 In the context of international criminal law, the ICTY raised this issue in terms of ‘cumulative effects’. See ICTY, above note 64, para. 52: ‘“However, in case of repeated attacks, all or most of them falling within the grey area between indisputable legality and unlawfulness, it might be warranted to conclude that the cumulative effect of such acts entails that they may not be in keeping with international law. Indeed, this pattern of military conduct may turn out to jeopardize excessively the lives and assets of civilians, contrary to the demands of humanity.” (ICTY, Prosecutor v. Kupreškić, Case No. IT-95-16-T, 14 January 2000, para. 526). This formulation in Kupreškić can be regarded as a progressive statement of the applicable law with regard to the obligation to protect civilians. Its practical import, however, is somewhat ambiguous and its application far from clear.’ Other rules of international law may be relevant in this regard, but it does not appear that, in practice, they have proven effective means to prevent and reduce civilian harm from explosive violence.

71 With the possible exception of civilians directly participating in hostilities. See Théo Boutruche, ‘L'interdiction des maux superflus: contribution à l’étude des principes et règles relatifs aux moyens et méthodes de guerre en droit international humanitaire’, PhD thesis No. 559, Université de Genève, Geneva, 2008, pp. 74–101.

72 The rule on distinction, as reflected in AP I, Art. 48, requires that: ‘In order to ensure respect for and protection of the civilian population and civilian objects, the Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives.’

73 AP I, Art. 51(4–5).

74 This may have something to do with the important role of air power, which from its beginnings has been tied up with the use of explosive weapons. Air-launched attacks raise particular issues for civilian protection because of the potentially great (and increasing) distance between the place where targeting decisions are made, the launch point, and the target.

75 AP I, Arts. 51(4)(a) and (b).

76 H. Slim, above note 9, p. 53.

77 Françoise J. Hampson, ‘Means and methods of warfare in the conflict in the Gulf’, in P. J. Rowe (ed.), The Gulf War 1990–91 in International and English Law, Routledge, London, New York, 1993, pp. 90 and 104.

78 M. N. Schmitt, above note 63, p. 453.

79 Human Rights Watch (HRW), ‘Letter to EU foreign ministers to address violations between Israel and Hamas’, 16 March 2009, available at: http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/03/16/letter-eu-foreign-ministers-address-violations-between-israel-and-hamas (last visited 3 May 2011). On other occasions HRW has referred to the ‘expected lethal radius’ and ‘expected casualty radius’ of a M107 shell, and the ‘concentrated blast radius’ of a missile, used in or near a populated area. See HRW, Indiscriminate fire: Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel and Israeli artillery shelling in the Gaza Strip, 2007, p. 51Google Scholar, and HRW, Precisely wrong: Gaza civilians killed by Israeli drone-launched missiles, 2009, p. 3Google Scholar, both available at: http://www.hrw.org/publications/reports?topic=667&region=228 (last visited 22 February 2012).

80 Human Rights in Palestine and Other Occupied Arab Territories, Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, Human Rights Council, UN Doc. A/HRC/12/48, 15 September 2009, paras. 697–699. There is some ambiguity about whether concerns about ‘area effect’ refer to the blast and fragmentation zones of the explosion of a single munition, to the area potentially affected by explosive force (such as the footprint of a cluster munition), or to the ‘circular error probable’ of a weapon (a question of accuracy). See for example the ‘Explanatory Memorandum’ annexed to Report of Conference of Government Experts on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons, Lugano, 28 January–26 February 1976, ICRC, Geneva, 1976, p. 204. See also, B'tselem, ‘Stop mortar fire at populated areas in Gaza Strip’, 23 March 2011, available at: http://www.btselem.org/english/gaza_strip/20110323_forbidden_mortar_fire_on_gaza.asp (last visited 3 May 2011).

81 See for example, HRW and Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic, ‘Use of explosive weapons in populated areas’, 4 November 2011, available at: http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/11/04/use-explosive-weapons-populated-areas (last visited 20 December 2011).

82 H.E. Shamash, above note 65, p. 33. See also Gregory S. McNeal, ‘The U.S. practice of collateral damage estimation and mitigation’, 9 November 2011, available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1819583 (last visited 20 December 2011). This recent study paper provides an empirically grounded descriptive account of how the US military implements its IHL obligation to mitigate and prevent harm to civilians. It is a welcome contribution to scholarly literature in that it aims to provide commentators with essential information for analysing US military practices hitherto ‘shrouded in secrecy and largely inaccessible’.

83 See for example, Rogers, Christopher, Civilians in Armed Conflict: Civilian Harm and Conflict in Northwest Pakistan, Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC), Washington, 2010Google Scholar.

84 ‘From the point of view of justice’, the argument that an individual right to reparation would defy the capacity of states to ensure adequate reparation to victims ‘is flawed, because its consequence is that the more widespread and massive the violation, the less right to reparation for the victims’. Droege, Cordula, ‘The interplay between international humanitarian law and international human rights law in situations of armed conflict’, in Israel Law Review, Vol. 40, No. 2, 2007, p. 354CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

85 Reisman, Michael W., ‘The lessons of Qana’, in Yale Journal of International Law, Vol. 22, 1997, pp. 397–398Google Scholar. See also Benvenisti, Eyal, ‘Human dignity in combat: the duty to spare enemy civilians’, in Israel Law Review, Vol. 39, No. 2, pp. 97–99Google Scholar.

86 H. Slim, above note 9, pp. 259 and 260: ‘Arguing on the basis of the law alone leads to a syllogistic position that allows for no discussion and no real reasoning.’ Citing humanitarian laws in an absolute fashion suggests ‘that there is no argument to be had on the subject and no reasoning to be made’.

87 Maresca, Louis, ‘A new protocol on explosive remnants of war: the history and negotiation of Protocol V to the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons’, in International Review of the Red Cross, Vol. 86, No. 856, 2004, pp. 815–835CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

88 Borrie, John, Unacceptable Harm: A History of How the Treaty to Ban Cluster Munitions was Won, UNIDIR, Geneva, 2009Google Scholar.

89 Rappert, Brian and Moyes, Richard, ‘The prohibition of cluster munitions: setting international precedents for defining inhumanity’, in Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 16, No. 2, 2009, pp. 237–256CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

90 R. Moyes, above note 6.

91 In addition to immediate death and injury, researchers also came to examine the developmental impacts of armed violence, including explosive violence, on communities. In recent years, the 2006 Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development has formed one framework for integrating evidence and policy, with the related 2010 Oslo Commitments emphasizing measurability as an important component of achieving armed violence reductions in differing contexts. See Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development, 7 June 2006, available at: www.genevadeclaration.org (last visited 3 May 2011); Oslo Commitments on Armed Violence: Achieving the Millennium Development Goals, 12 May 2010, available at: http://www.osloconferencearmedviolence.no (last visited 3 May 2011).

92 Taback, Nathan and Coupland, Robin M., ‘Towards collation and modelling of the global cost of armed violence on civilians’, in Medicine, Conflict and Survival, Vol. 21, No. 1, 2005, p. 25CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

93 See Kelly M. Greenhill, ‘Counting the cost: the politics of numbers in armed conflict’, in Peter Andreas and Kelly M. Greenhill (eds), Sex, Drugs and Body Counts: The Politics of Numbers in Global Crime and Conflict, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 2010, pp. 127–158.

94 See, for instance, Hsiao-Rei Hicks, Madelyn et al. , ‘The weapons that kill civilians: deaths of children and noncombatants in Iraq, 2003–2008’, in New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 360, No. 16, 16 April 2009, pp. 1585–1588CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

95 For a description of the methodology for this study, see R. Moyes, above note 6, pp. 70–71.

96 Ibid., pp. 10–12. As noted above, this monopoly is increasingly challenged by non-state actors.

97 R. Smith, above note 32, p. xiii.

98 2003 CCW Protocol V.

99 R. Moyes, above note 6, p. 10.

100 See, for instance, Deputy Secretary-General, at Meeting on Cluster Munitions Treaty, Seeks Action on Comparable Issues: Anti-Vehicle Mines, Explosives in Populated Areas, UN Department for Public Information, UN Doc. DSG/ SM/531 DC/3266, 9 November 2010. Explosive weapons issues have been raised during 2010 and 2011 in the UN inter-agency process on mine action, in the context of work on UN staff safety and security from IEDs, and in April 2011 in the Global Protection Cluster.

101 All documents produced by the DEW project are available at: http://explosiveweapons.info/ and http://www.unidir.org/. The DEW project, together with others, also disseminates news about explosive weapons incidents causing civilian harm via the twitter feed http://twitter.com/explosiviolence (all last visited 3 May 2011).

102 UN Security Council, sixty-fifth year, 6354th Meeting, Wednesday, 7 July 2010, 10 a.m., New York, UN Doc. S/PV.6354, p. 6.

103 UN OCHA, ‘United Nations humanitarian chief highlights humanitarian consequences of continued fighting in Libya’, New York, 17 March 2011, available at: http://reliefweb.int/node/392448/pdf (last visited 3 May 2011). In May 2011, with reference to fighting in the Libyan town of Misrata, the UN's Emergency Relief Coordinator stated that ‘Explosive weapons have an immediate and indiscriminate impact, killing and injuring those caught in the blast radius, including civilians and the damage to buildings and infrastructure hampers longer term reconstruction and development. I reiterate my call on parties to conflict to refrain from the use of these weapons in densely populated areas.’ ‘United Nations Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos: Briefing to the Security Council on Protection of Civilians, New York, 10 May 2011’, available at: http://reliefweb.int/node/400939 (last visited 13 May 2011).

104 UN OCHA, ‘United Nations Humanitarian Chief alarmed at Cote D'Ivoire violence’, New York, 18 March 2011, available at: http://reliefweb.int/node/392465/pdf (last visited 3 May 2011).

105 On 14 September 2010, OCHA, together with the Permanent Mission of Austria to the United Nations in New York, co-hosted a panel discussion on the humanitarian impacts of explosive weapons, and on 15 September 2010, OCHA co-organized a symposium on explosive weapons together with the DEW project. More information on the latter event is available at: http://explosiveweapons.info/events0/explosive-weapons-use-in-populated-areas-a-pressing-humanitarian-concern/ (last visited 3 May 2011).

106 Report of the Secretary-General, 2011, above note 5, paras. 50–51.

107 R. Coupland and H. Samnegaard, above note 17. For more information about the particular wounding patterns caused by such weapons, see ICRC, Wound Ballistics: An Introduction for Health, Legal, Forensic, Military and Law Enforcement Professionals, ICRC, Geneva, 2008.

108 ICRC, Health Care in Danger: a Sixteen-country Study, 2011, available at: http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/report/hcid-report-2011-08-10.htm (last visited 20 December 2011).

109 See the statement by Yves Daccord, director-general of the ICRC, in UN Security Council, sixty-fifth year, 6427th Meeting, Monday, 22 November 2010, 10 a.m., New York, UN Doc. S/PV.6427, p. 10.

110 ‘Sixty years of the Geneva Conventions and the decades ahead’, statement by Jakob Kellenberger, President of the ICRC, 9 November 2009, available at: http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/statement/geneva-convention-statement-091109.htm (last visited 3 May 2011). See also ‘Geneva Conventions still going strong at 60’, interview with Knut Dörmann, head of the ICRC's legal division, 7 August 2009, available at: www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/geneva-convention-interview-120809 (last visited 3 May 2011).

111 Pierre Ruetschi, ‘Jakob Kellenberger “Combien de morts faudra-t-il encore à Gaza!”’, in 24 heures, 2 February 2009, available at: http://www.24heures.ch/actu/monde/jakob-kellenberger-combien-morts-faudra-gaza-2009-02-01 (last visited 4 May 2011).

112 International humanitarian law and the challenges of contemporary armed conflicts, report prepared by ICRC, Geneva, October 2011, for 31st International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, Geneva, 28 November–1 December 2011, Doc. 31IC/11/5.1.2, pp. 40–42.

113 UN Security Council, sixty-fourth year, 6151st Meeting, Friday 26 June 2009, 10 a.m., New York, UN Doc. S/PV.6151, 26 June 2009 and UN Doc. S/PV.6151 (Resumption 1). Several government representatives deplored the humanitarian impacts of improvised explosive devices detonated in high-density civilian areas, the use of cluster munitions or air bombardments, and the impact of landmines and explosive remnants of war, but only one state, Syria, used the term ‘explosive weapons’.

114 See the statements of Australia, Austria, Costa Rica (on behalf of the Human Security Network), Mexico, Norway, Slovenia, Switzerland, and the European Union, UN Doc. S/PV.6427 and UN Doc. S/PV.6427 (Resumption 1), above note 109.

115 Ibid., p. 31.

116 Ibid., pp. 23–24.

117 See UN Docs. S/PV.6531 and S/PV.6531 (Resumption 1) of 10 May 2011, and UN Docs. S/PV.6650 and S/PV.6650 (Resumption 1) of 9 November 2011.

118 Smith, Kerry, Devastating Impact: Explosive Weapons and Children, Save the Children UK, London, 2011Google Scholar, available at: http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/resources/online-library/devastating-impact-explosive-weapons-and-children (last visited 24 February 2011); R. Boer et al., above note 40.

119 E. Cann and K. Harrison, above note 22.

120 Information on INEW's call, membership, and publications is available at: http://www.inew.org/ (last visited 20 December 2011).

121 AOAV has already produced research of this kind. See ibid., and R. Moyes, above note 6.

122 See, for example, HRW, ‘Somalia: stop war crimes in Mogadishu: United Nations should establish international commission of inquiry’, 14 February 2011, available at: http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/02/14/somalia-stop-war-crimes-mogadishu (last visited 4 May 2011). See also HRW and Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic, above note 81.

123 AOAV has transparently outlined the assumptions about data and meaning of the terms it uses, including in its bi-weekly reports on explosive violence; see above note 15.

124 N. Taback and R. Coupland, above note 92, pp. 19–27.

125 R. Moyes, above note 6.

126 Bohannon, John, ‘Counting the Dead in Afghanistan’, in Science, Vol. 331, No. 6022, 11 March 2011, pp. 1256–1260CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

127 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Request under Freedom of Information Act, 13 January 2010, available at: http://www.aclu.org/national-security/predator-drone-foia-request (last visited 4 May 2011).

128 Rappert, Brian and Moyes, Richard, ‘Enhancing the protection of civilians from armed conflict: precautionary lessons’, in Medicine, Conflict and Survival, Vol. 26, No. 1, January–March 2010, p. 42CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

129 UNIDIR's ‘Norms on Explosive Weapons’ (NEW) project is carrying out research in this area.

130 The situation in Côte d'Ivoire, UN Security Council resolution S/RES/1975 of 30 March 2011, operative para. 6. See also African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, In the Matter of African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights v. Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Order for Provisional Measures, 25 March 2011, para. 2.