The encircled civilian population DiePresse.com
Protection zones and escape corridors are provided for in international humanitarian law to separate combatants and the civilian population. When did you stick to it?
Bombed blocks of flats, civilians in mortal fear, surrounded, holed up in subway tunnels: What would Henry Dunant say if he saw the battlefields of our day, in the Yemeni civil war, in the multi-front war in Syria, in the encircled and shelled port city of Mariupol? 163 years ago, in June 1859, the humanist-minded businessman from Geneva watched as almost 40,000 wounded French and Austrian soldiers died miserably on the battlefields in Solferino in northern Italy without adequate medical care. Out of horror at this atrocity, Dunant intended to found the Red Cross and the first Geneva Convention for the Protection of Wounded Soldiers.
However, the international community was only able to decide on the official protection of uninvolved civilians after the two world wars, with the Fourth Geneva Convention on August 12, 1949. It is currently being severely violated, although almost every country in the world has signed it. According to the organization Doctors Without Borders, attacks on hospitals were carried out on an unprecedented scale during the war in Syria. The apocalyptic destruction of Aleppo was an example of civilian suffering being used as a weapon. Objects and facilities essential to the life of the civilian population, such as drinking water facilities and hospitals, are being destroyed in Ukraine.