The Arabic Spring and the Law of Armed Conflict: Is the law applicable and can it be enforced?

Tuesday November 1, 2011, by Eerke Steller

Have you ever seen or met the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)? I actually have in Geneva at their headquarters while on a study trip.
Have you ever encountered the law of armed conflict, also known as international humanitarian law (IHL)? In theory I have learned about IHL, during my masters degree. Luckily I have never encountered the law of armed conflict in real life. I do not live in a war zone and I have never visited a war zone, unless you want to consider Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories as such.

These were two questions posed by the Netherlands Red Cross department. The introduction provided by them introduced us to the basics of IHL and the history of the ICRC, as well as their current activities.

There is a word game the Dutch play to kill time and train their brain and memory. It’s called: “When I go on vacation, I take with me…”. Every person has to repeat the objects that were named before, and add an object of its own. Maj. David Nauta, Senior Legal Advisor at the Royal Netherlands Air Force, played a comparable game, but in real life. It’s called” “When I go to war, I take with me…”. He explained how the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) executed United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions 1970 and 1973. A few essentials things included:
• Front row seats – which the Dutch did not have since they were stationed on Sardinia. This caused the inconvenient situation where Dutch aircrafts had to refuel on a ship in the Mediterranean since the jets can fly 1500 km on a tank, and Sardinia is about 1800 km away from Libya.
• Permission to bomb – which the Dutch did not have because of political opposition. The jets could thus only execute reconnaissance and take pictures.
• Maps marked with targets – lethal and non-lethal –, which actually did not include Muammar Gaddafi, because it was wiser to let the Libyan rebels kill him instead of NATO.

The NATO mission ended with the death of Gaddafi. The lecture ended with Mr. Rogier Bartels, researcher at the Military Law Section of the Netherlands Defense Academy. He expanded on the various ways IHL could be enforced in the Libya conflict and the apparent difficulties by enforcing IHL – before, during and after the conflict.

Afterwards questions were raised about the choice of the UNSC and NATO to attack Libya, but not Syria. The speakers of the evening had a quick answer: ‘”Oil”. Another issue that came up was the voting behaviour of France in the UNSC, where they voted for the resolutions, and NATO where they voted against NATO leading the Libya-mission and taking over Odyssey Dawn, the mission started by the United Kingdom, the United States of America and France. Here the answer was a bit less visible: apparently the rebels went to London to talk and not to France. This hurt the French ego in such a way that they did a 180 and decided to vote against the mission in NATO.

The only question remaining is: “What ever happened to the chopper left behind in March 2011 at Sirte by the Dutch after a failed rescue attempt?”