Resumen de Eloigner les populations urbaines des combats et eloigner les combats des populations urbaines
How do parties to a conflict apply the principle of precaution against the effects of attacks? How do they move cities’ inhabitants away from the fighting, and how do they move the fighting away from the cities’ inhabitants? These are the questions Commissaire Lieutenant-Colonel Nathalie Durhin tried to address both from a legal and a practical perspective. To begin with, she explained that the duty contained in Article 58 of Additional Protocol I is not about regulating the behaviour of combatants in wartime, but it rather encompasses all the measures that a party to a conflict must take to protect the civilian population and civilian objects under its control. She analysed the wording of Article 58(b) of Additional Protocol I, providing that each Party to a conflict must, to the extent feasible, avoid locating military objectives within or near densely populated areas. She also underlined that today cities are part of a power game, taking as examples Sarajevo, Grozny or, more recently, Tripoli. In a second part, she examined the question of sieges, the duty to give effective advance warning in certain circumstances, and the evacuation of the civilian population from the vicinity of military objectives. Nathalie Durhin also presented three kinds of areas – i.e. hospital zones and localities, hospital and safety zones and localities, and neutralised zones – that are entitled to protection from attack under International Humanitarian Law, and their potential risks related to concentrations of civilians. In her concluding remarks, she raised three main issues. Although the duty to take all feasible precautions against the effects of attacks is a norm of customary international law, it is not an absolute one. For instance, these precautions must be taken ‘to the maximum extent feasible’, and might be difficult to put in place in practice when the parties to the conflict do not have control over a territory or a population – notably with regard to the concept of ‘no boots on the ground’. Secondly, armed conflicts will continue to be waged in cities. Based on this fact, she emphasised the need to rethink the contemporary doctrine and military strategies to limit and prevent fighting in urban and populated areas.
