The Duty invites you to take the back roads of university life. A proposal that is both scholarly and intimate, to be picked up all summer long like a postcard. Today, we are interested in international humanitarian law in the context of the Israel-Hamas war.
International humanitarian law (IHL) and the Geneva Conventions were established to ensure that basic rules are respected in times of war: the protection of civilians is at the heart of these obligations. However, the first countries that should uphold international standards are those that claim to be states governed by the rule of law.
Access to civilian populations in conflict zones has become the main challenge for humanitarian organizations. However, this access is part of IHL, which States taking part in hostilities must respect. Without this access, civilian populations are extremely vulnerable, leaving belligerents free to unleash their violence on civilians who are not taking any part in the fighting.
Denial of humanitarian access is therefore a serious violation of the law, but is nevertheless particularly widespread in conflict zones. This can take different forms. For example, in the Philippines, the government uses an anti-terrorism law to freeze the bank accounts of humanitarian organisations. Other states impose restrictions on the movement of civilians to obtain assistance, put up bureaucratic and administrative obstacles, or deliberately attack water supply centres.
Countries in the Sahel region such as Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso have become “no-go” regions beyond their capitals. Much of Haiti is controlled by armed groups. Jihadist groups and criminal gangs such as Wagner have taken over vast areas of sub-Saharan Africa, restricting the operations of humanitarian organizations.
In short, the list is long: the United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs estimates that more than 360 million people find themselves in areas without humanitarian access (2023) on all continents.
Deliberate attacks on humanitarian and medical personnel remain the ultimate demonstration of non-compliance with IHL. In 2023, 277 humanitarian workers were killed, a death toll that has more than doubled in the last 5 years.
But it is Gaza that offers the most dramatic example of the restriction of humanitarian aid. In retaliation for the attack by Hamas, Israel has established an almost complete blockade on the Gaza Strip. It is worth recalling that an embargo had already existed since 2007, considerably restricting the passage of humanitarian organizations. This control has also been severely criticized by the United Nations.
The Israeli army is taking the violation of international law even further by deliberately slowing down the arrival of food aid, starving the entire civilian population, more than 2.3 million people. This is what has led the International Criminal Court to conclude that Israel is committing a crime against humanity.
The statistics on crimes against humanitarian organizations are also convincing: 70% of humanitarian workers who have died since the beginning of the year (2024) across the planet come from the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
But it was with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) and the Israeli military’s Lavander software “target screening” tool that another level of fog reached IHL. With this computer program, the approximately 2.3 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip are listed. Lavander gives them an individual score (1 to 100) that determines the probability that they are a militarily active militant. Thus, the decision to destroy a building, target a refugee camp, or even kill civilians is therefore made by AI.
So who gives the order to launch attacks? Who is responsible for the crimes committed? How can we make an independent context analysis that could justify an ethical grid of decisions for possible indictments of war crimes? How can we bring those “responsible” to justice?
Gaza has become a destruction zone generated by AI tools, and the civilians trapped there are numbers likely to be victims of autonomous algorithmic decisions.
In the context of the Gaza conflict, it is Israel that bears the responsibility to respect IHL. The devastation of Gaza and the massive use of AI demonstrate that the Israeli government has no pretensions to respect it.
Of course, Israel is not the only “democratic” country that does not respect IHL or uses AI in its military operations, but its behavior in Gaza far exceeds what has been observed in the last decade by a democratic state: never have so many civilians been deliberately starved before the eyes of humanity, never have so many civilian and medical infrastructures been deliberately destroyed, never have so many civilians been killed with impunity, never have so many humanitarians been deliberately assassinated.
And no algorithm has ever been accused of war crimes.
If the rule of law no longer respects the standards they have established and are supposed to respect, what will remain of the legitimacy of the United Nations, the OECD or NATO? With geopolitics changing in this era of polycrises, the West does not seem to see the risks of losing one of the last democratic bulwarks: the protection of civilians.
What Gaza teaches us is that IHL, one of the foundations that still distinguish democratic states from totalitarian regimes, is increasingly being violated.
The awakening will therefore be difficult for the West.
August 19 will be World Humanitarian Day. This is an opportunity to put humanitarian law back on the agenda. This is a key agenda for Ottawa, which seems to be seeking a noble role on the international stage.