Civilian Protection in Urban Warfare: Is the Proportionality Rule Fit for Purpose?

Author(s): Maryam Azhari and Dr. Kulsoom Ruma

Abstract:

Urban warfare has become the dominant theatre of contemporary armed conflict. From Mosul and Raqqa to Aleppo and Gaza, the most severe concentrations of civilian harm in recent decades have occurred not in open fields but in densely populated cities. Yet international humanitarian law continues to regulate this reality through the proportionality rule codified in Article 51(5)(b) of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions—a framework designed against the assumptions of conventional, open-field, interstate warfare. This article argues that the proportionality rule, as presently formulated and applied, is structurally inadequate for the conditions of 21st-century urban warfare, and that this inadequacy cannot be resolved through improved compliance alone but requires both interpretive reform and institutional innovation. The argument proceeds in four stages. First, the article identifies the orthodox operation of the proportionality rule and exposes the three foundational assumptions embedded within its architecture: that civilian harm is identifiable in advance, that military advantage is concretely calculable, and that a competent reviewing authority exists. Second, it characterises urban warfare as a distinct operational environment that systematically negates each of these assumptions. Third, it delivers a structural critique of the rule’s four principal failures in urban conditions: the undefined and expansively interpreted military advantage term; the failure to capture reverberating and long-term harm; the collapse of the dual-use infrastructure test; and the total absence of independent accountability. Finally, the article proposes a program of interpretive and institutional reform aimed at making the rule fit for the battlespace in which it is most urgently needed.

keywords:
Urban warfare, International Humanitarian Law, Proportionality rule, civilian harm, Geneva Convention

Pages: 123-129     |    27 View     |    1 Download