The rules of war aren’t protecting civilians. Can they be enforced? : NPR

KYIV, Ukraine — The Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv is still scarred from a direct hit by a deadly Russian missile this summer. Flowers and stuffed animals are piled at the front gate. Repair work is ongoing at several damaged buildings. This is one of the most notorious Russian attacks on civilians — but just one of many.

“We’ve documented more than 78,000 episodes of war crimes,” said Olexandra Matviichuk, who leads the Center for Civil Liberties. The Ukrainian group won the Nobel Peace Prize two years ago for its work in compiling Russian abuses.

Those 78,000 cases have all been gathered since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Matviichuk has been meeting with victims since Russia first invaded in 2014.

“I’ve personally interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people who were beaten, raped. Their fingers were cut, their nails were torn away. Their nails were drilled. They were electrically shocked,” she said at the group’s office, a modest, Soviet-era apartment building in the center of Kyiv, just a couple miles from the children’s hospital.

“This is probably the most documented war in human history because we have now digital instruments, which provides human rights groups an opportunity to collect evidence and to identify perpetrators,” she said.

Yet the big challenge, she added, is turning this mountain of evidence into a workable international system that holds those perpetrators accountable.

Palestinian children gather to receive food at a school in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Feb. 19, 2024, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and Hamas. Aid for Palestinians has been in short supply throughout the war in Gaza.

MOHAMMED ABED/AFP via Getty Images

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MOHAMMED ABED/AFP via Getty Images

The foundation of the rules of war

The Geneva Conventions, which established the fundamental laws of war in the wake of World War II, marked their 75th anniversary in August.

“The Geneva Conventions created this basic idea that civilians really should be insulated from the worst harms of war,” said Oona Hathaway, a professor at Yale Law School who often writes on the rules of war.

She says several current conflicts — Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Hamas, the Sudan civil war — are eroding decades of work to prevent, or at least limit, abuses.

“You can’t help but look around the world and not worry that these basic innovations and accomplishments of the post-war era are being undermined,” she said. “We’re seeing civilians being not just killed in war, but they’re being targeted in war.”

For instance, the International Committee of the Red Cross has long been able to visit prisoners of war to check on their treatment.

Yet the Red Cross has been greatly limited in its ability to gather information on thousands of Ukrainians, soldiers and civilians, who’ve been taken by Russia.

Also, Hamas has not allowed the Red Cross to visit the roughly 100 Israeli civilians and soldiers that the group is holding hostage in Gaza, many believed to be in underground tunnels.

Israeli military operations in Gaza have killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, a majority of them women and children, according to Palestinian health officials in Gaza.

“The Israeli military’s disregard for civilian protections has deteriorated dramatically in the last 20 years,” said Sari Bashi, the head of global research for Human Rights Watch. “They are authorizing just massive bombings, with very heavy bombs, in urban areas where you know you will kill hundreds of children.”

Bashi, who’s been documenting this conflict for two decades, is based in the West Bank and is sharply critical of the ways Israel and Hamas are conducting the war.

“Hamas-led groups were able to kill more than 800 Israeli civilians on October 7th because it was planned at the top and executed downward,” she said. “That’s why Human Rights Watch has called those attacks a crime against humanity.”

Hamas, designated a terrorist group by Israel and the West, says its attacks are in pursuit of Palestinian rights.

Israel says it’s not targeting civilians, but faces Hamas fighters using Palestinian civilians as human shields.

Oona Hathaway says these scenarios — where a state military is fighting a non-state group — often complicate humanitarian efforts.

“What we’re seeing is a real change in the nature of warfare,” she said. “These non-state actor groups have tried to take advantage of the rules by sometimes using them to shield themselves from violence, and placing themselves in or near schools or hospitals.”

A state army, like Israel, has been attacking these sites that traditionally are protected — though there can be rare exceptions.

“If it’s being used by militants, it can become a military objective,” she added.

With both sides using the rules to justify their actions, civilians are caught in the middle and humanitarian organizations are often unable to operate in this environment.

“These organizations are suddenly being caught between both sides. On the one hand, being used as a shield by one side, and then being seen as suspicious and potentially harboring combatants on the other side,” she said.

Ukrainians take shelter at the Teatralna metro station during a Russian air attack in Kyiv on Aug. 26, 2024. Russians frequently strike civilian targets in their regular air raids on Ukrainian cities.

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ROMAN PILIPEY/AFP via Getty Images

Persistant attacks on civilians in Ukraine

The Russia-Ukraine war is a state vs. state war — a kind of conflict rarely seen these days.

Russia consistently strikes Ukrainian civilian targets, and has also seized tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians, including many children.

“We know the names, we know the history, and all the background of almost 20,000 Ukrainian kids,” said Khrystyna Shkudor, with the the Ukrainian group Where Are Our People?, which tracks the missing Ukrainian children.

Russia claims it’s “protecting” children who’ve lost parents in the war. But Ukraine says Russia has kidnapped the children and is systematically erasing their identities and raising them as Russians.

Shkudor cites the case of one boy, Ilya, age 11. The Russians took him two years ago after his mother was killed in Russia’s bombardment of the city of Mariupol.

But later, Ilya’s uncle happened to see the boy on Russian television. The Ukrainians were then able to locate him and secure his return.

Shkudor said that when Ilya was in Russia, the Russians told him, “Ukraine doesn’t need him and he will have a happy new life being a Russian citizen. The Russians don’t need Ukrainians. They need brainwashed Russian citizens. And they are trying to steal their Ukrainian roots.”

Ukraine says fewer than 1,000 of the nearly 20,000 children have returned home.

A view of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, in 2022. The court last year issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for alleged war crimes, accusing him of personal responsibility for the abductions of children from Ukraine. Prosecutors have also been seeking arrest warrants for leaders in the Israel-Hamas war.

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Peter Dejong/AP/AP

A court attempts to prosecute the leaders

International Criminal Court at The Hague has issued an arrest warrant for Russian leader Vladimir Putin, citing the deportation of Ukrainian children.

At the same court, prosecutors are seeking arrest warrants for alleged war crimes by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The prossecutors were also seeking the arrest of three Hamas leaders, including Yahya Sinwar, who’ve since been killed by Israel.

These surviving leaders may never be arrested. But Sari Bashi says even the threat of arrest can isolate them internationally.

“Putin was unable to attend meetings in South Africa as well as Brazil because he was afraid he was going to be arrested,” she said. “This would be huge in taking away some of the normalisation of people who are committing war crimes.”

However, Putin recently hosted an international economic conference in Russia, which included more than 30 countries, including the leaders of more than 20 nations.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has prosecuted a few low-level Russia soldiers.

Olexandra Matviichuk says this is just one of many approaches that should be pursued. Victims, she says, often seek different things.

“For some people, justice means seeing the perpetrators behind bars,” she said. “For others, justice means getting compensation. And for some people, justice means getting the opportunity to know truth, what happened with their loved ones.”

Far too often, she said, justice never arrives in any form.