In 2023, "the number of civilian deaths in armed conflicts increased by 72%" compared with the previous year. This declaration of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, in June 2024, shows that non-combatants are increasingly affected by conflicts, even if their plight does not always make the headlines. In his speech to the 56e session of the UN Human Rights Council, the senior international civil servant spoke of the situations in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo...
It was in the mid-19th century that the plight of civilian victims of war gradually began to be taken into account. The action initiated by Henry Dunant, the Swiss founder of the Red Cross, after the battle of Solferino in 1859 led to the famous Geneva Conventions, which laid the foundations of international humanitarian law and hence of the protection of civilians. Four conventions from 1949 and three additional protocols (the most recent in 2005) are currently in force.
At the same time, the Nuremberg trials after the Second World War led to a major breakthrough: individuals, and not just legal entities such as States, could be held responsible for violence. But it would take more than forty years for the concept of the victim to be recognised.
HIGHER STANDARDS OF PROTECTION IN EUROPE THAN ELSEWHERE
"This word appeared explicitly in the mid-1980s," says Élise Bernard, a lecturer in peacekeeping law at Sciences-Po Aix, who has a doctorate in public law, a post-doctorate in conflict and post-conflict management, and is a graduate of the 28e graduating from the École de Guerre. "Today, recent legislation recognises the status of victim, but recognising this status, obtaining it and finally obtaining reparation as a victim are three different things.
In short, "state responsibilities are thousands of years old, while individual responsibilities are very recent, and reparations even more recent", she says. "The extent to which fundamental rights are taken into account varies greatly from one part of the world to another. It's a very slow shift, and one that today mainly concerns the European continent. In Europe, minimum standards of protection are much higher than elsewhere.
Civilian victims of conflicts can sue in several jurisdictions, with varying procedures: only the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) allows individual prosecutions against States parties to the Convention of the same name. At the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, victims can provide evidence to encourage the prosecutor to proceed.
On 11 February 2025, the ECHR recognised that Russian citizens were victims of breaches of the peace and were entitled to reparations following their country's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022: Russia only withdrew from the European Convention on Human Rights in September 2022.
But it was an ICC decision on 17 March 2023 that caused the most controversy: the issue of an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Since that day, the 124 States parties to the Rome Statute of the ICC are supposed to arrest the Russian leader immediately if he turns up on their territory.
IN 2023, AN ARREST WARRANT FOR PUTIN
"Since 2014, Kiev has accused Moscow of abducting and deporting around 20,000 children (19,546 to be exact)," says Élise Bernard. "These numerous cases, backed up by sufficient evidence, led the ICC prosecutor to convince international judges to issue an arrest warrant for Putin and Russia's Children's Commissioner. The Court considers that the abduction of such a large number of children may constitute a war crime.
The case of "wartime rape", however, can encompass different realities. The term itself is controversial: "I don't use this expression, but 'wartime rape'", says historian Fabrice Virgili, director of research at the CNRS and head of the "Gender and Europe" theme at the joint research unit "Sorbonne - European Identities, International Relations and Civilisations" (SIRICE).
"In all the world's armies, rape has been banned since the creation of the standing armies in the 17th century, with the Swedish army under King Gustavus Adolphus", he points out. Today, rape in wartime can take four forms, according to the historian:
- opportunistic" rape, when soldiers or officers escape the control of their superiors, without their act being part of a wider environment; in general, this type of rape is prosecuted by the military establishment and the perpetrators punished;
- rape committed during operations, with either an encouraging or tolerant attitude on the part of the hierarchy, with the aim of "terrorising the enemy", as in the case of the Wehrmarcht in French villages in the spring of 1944, or the Russian army in Ukraine more recently;
- systematic, organised rape, with the intention that women should carry their pregnancy to term in order to give birth to a child "tainted" by the victor, as in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s;
- rape in situations of captivity, or torture used as an "interrogation protocol", as in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, by the American army in the 2000s.
After the Second World War, the charge of rape was dropped by the Nuremberg tribunals. However, it was retained by local courts. In Japan, General Iwane Matsui was sentenced to death and executed as the person responsible for the Nanking massacre (1937), in particular because a large number of rapes had been committed under his authority.
RAPE CAN BE A CRIME OF GENOCIDE OR AGAINST HUMANITY
In 1998, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) found Jean Paul Akayesu guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity, including rape, committed in the commune where he was mayor in 1994. For the first time, "rape during wartime is legally qualified as constituting the crime of genocide", explains Fabrice Virgili.
In 2001, a ruling by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) confirmed that rape and sexual slavery constitute crimes against humanity, when three Bosnian Serbs were convicted of inflicting these abuses on Muslim women.
"The problem with rape, more than with other war crimes, is being able to prove that a particular soldier or officer committed rape or turned a blind eye," says Fabrice Virgili, adding:
"In many societies, including our own, the shame sometimes falls more on the victim than on the perpetrator, which makes it difficult for the victim to lodge a complaint and therefore to initiate proceedings. There is always a suspicion that guilt is shared. There is a real need for preventive work in all the world's armies, both on the place of women in armies and on how to behave towards women in civilian populations".
Photo caption: Syrian war refugees crossing a border.
