Slaughter of the innocents

The deliberate killing, torture and rape of civilians has been part of wars since time immemorial. Wars of conquest, of self-defence or national liberation have all inflicted considerable casualties among the non-combatants.

Internal wars on minorities within individual countries have intensified in the 20th century, leading to a phenomenon termed "ethnic cleansing." Genocides against Armenians, Jews, Roma, Tutsi and the Maya in Guatemala are but a few.

During World War II, the British carpet-bombing of German cities and US nuclear attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were deliberate acts of terror against civilians.

Crisis director of corporates Hugo Slim charts dozens of history's most appalling cases of targeting civilians and diagnoses the reasons behind each individual case in Killing Civilians. It makes for a harrowing read.

Crucially, because "many killers of civilians regard civilian identity as just too slippery and ambiguous," international law has been of limited effect with the Geneva Convention, which has been developed over the last 150 years, being particularly emasculated.

Ultimately and without splitting hairs, it is the unwillingness of the all-powerful developed nations to act decisively and in unison through the UN to stop war in the first place that, by implication, facilitates the continuing slaughter.

It is the unavoidability of punishment that would ultimately curtail and eventually stop this crime altogether.

Slim puts all his faith in civilian movements' ability to exert sufficient pressure on politician as the best way forward.

There's nothing wrong with that, providing that we keep in mind the lessons learned as we marched, in our millions throughout the world, in February 2003.

MICHAL BONCZA