The Conclusions reflect on the law outlined in Chapters 1−10. They recall that IHL is essentially an attempt to balance two fundamentally contradictory drivers – the need to wage war effectively, and the need to protect people and property from the excessive effects of warfare. It concludes that IHL largely succeeds in this endeavour, and that without IHL life for those caught up in armed conflict would be immeasurably worse. It notes, however, that while the fundamental principles of IHL are enduring, States can and should do more to develop new or more comprehensive laws where there is a need, such as the under-developed law of non-international armed conflict and the lack of regulation of certain weapons.

Chapter 2 outlines the contemporary legal framework of IHL, examining the treaty and customary laws that govern conduct in armed conflict, and exploring the fundamental principles of the law. The distinction between the jus in bello and the jus ad bellum is explained, as well as some of the different terms used in IHL (Hague Law, Geneva Law, war vs armed conflict, etc). The main sources of IHL are explained – treaties and customary international humanitarian law. The chapter then explains the main principles governing IHL – distinction, discrimination, military necessity, proportionality, prohibition on unnecessary suffering, neutrality and humanity.

Accounts of the historical origins of international humanitarian law (IHL) routinely assume that the emergence of humanity as a constraint on the waging of war, coinciding as it did with a general rise of humanitarianism in the nineteenth century, reflected a growing commitment to a universally shared notion of human dignity. That assumption is fallacious. Those who have been mythologised as champions of humanity as constraint, including Henri Dunant and Francis Lieber, were products of their era. IHL’s ‘original sin’ was to only extend constraints of humanity to so-called civilised nations in their wars inter se. These same constraints were not intended to apply to indigenous and other colonised populations – those assumed to be ‘uncivilised’ – often referred to as such with the pejoratives ‘savages’ and/or ‘barbarians’. The exclusion of emergent constraints on the grounds of racism and colonialism is evident in the language of the early IHL treaties. It has taken many decades for the international community to overcome the exclusions of the legal protection of emergent IHL and some would argue that the tendency for exclusion is still evident in the dehumanising of the other in the Global War on Terror.

According to a well-established rule of the law of armed conflict, warring parties are prohibited from employing weapons, means, and methods of warfare of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering. Agreement about the foundational nature of this rule can, however, easily conceal the disagreement as to its precise meaning and efficacy. This paper considers the origins of the rule in question, and how key aspects of the rule are interpreted. It then examines one of the more contentious issues about the rule, namely whether it is only concerned with the inherent properties of particular weapons or whether it also deals with the use of weapons generally.

This chapter examines the different aspects of enslaved Africans’ humanity that writers of neo-slave narratives felt was limiting, dehumanizing, or incomplete. To do this, this chapter also investigates the changing trends in the study of the sociology and history of enslaved Africans, speeches by Ossie Davis, and the writings of Octavia Butler, Angela Davis, and Toni Morrison – all of which contributed to ideas about black humanity. This chapter turns the kaleidoscope of neo-slave narrative by looking at a narrower, yet significant, angle of political life, form, and style of being Black and human, in the context of trends in mass consumption that gave shape to the landscape of this fiction about slavery.

Social work stands for the values of humanity. Such a statement would go unchallenged by social workers throughout the world. Yet in this chapter we consider the values of humanity in some detail, recognising that they are both complex and contested, and that humanity is not to be idealised but can be brutally destructive. In pursuing this discussion, we show how a deeper and wider exploration of humanity can be an important source of inspiration for creative social work and can enhance social work’s advocacy of the values of humanity in the contemporary context, where much that seemed to be settled has become unsettled and where people often feel less like rational decision-making beings optimising their wellbeing and more isolated, bewildered and uncertain in a world of paradox and confusion.

This chapter examines the attempts of Enlightenment philosophers David Hume and Adam Smith to reconcile war with their theories of progress. Both made impartiality a touchstone of enlightened judgement, and so found that the national partiality aroused by war was deeply problematic. Humes optimistic view of progress was undermined by his pessimistic account of the passions released in war, and by the evidence of the destructive waste entailed in contemporary war-making. His desire to moderate contemporary bellicosity led him, in his History of England, to emphasise medieval magnanimity in victory, in a way that was at odds with his progressive agenda. Adam Smith encountered a comparable problem. His attempts in his Theory of Moral Sentiments to provide improving models of public responses to war were at odds with his later conviction that the public was dangerously insulated from the destructive realities of war.

The Voyage to Brobdingnag reduces Gulliver from the magnanimous and principled behemoth of the Voyage to Lilliput to a risible and contemptible little beast. The first section considers how Gulliver is diminished to an inconsequential creature, objectified and commodified by the giants who handle him as a freak show exhibit or a pet. The second section contends that Gulliver does recuperate his human identity, albeit in a precarious manner, by differentiating himself from animals he encounters in Brobdingnag. However, he is confronted with the disgusting physicality of humans, making his restitution of human identity highly ambivalent. The third section examines how the satire is broadened from human nature to political institutions in Gulliver’s dialogue with the king and account of Brobdingnagian society. The destabilisation of species boundaries and pessimism about human corruption in this voyage are key to the overall vision of Gulliver’s Travels.

This chapter formulates guidance for applying the IHL proportionality rule by looking at its objectivity; the standard of the reasonable commander and the interpretation of the term ’excessive’.

This chapter contains an analysis of the practical application of the IHL proportionality rule by looking at a number of examples of factual situations.

This chapter contains an overview of the development of the IHL rule on proportionality in treaty law and a discussion of its existence as a customary IHL rule.

In addition to the IHL proportionality rule, IHL contains a number of other rules that fulfil a similar role as a standard of moderation and with a broader scope, including effects on enemy forces.

This chapter provides insight into the practical and legal context in which the proportionality rule must be applied: the targeting process; indiscriminate attacks and precautionary measures.

The aim of this chapter is to assess the different factors which comprise the IHL proportionality rule.