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11 - From ‘savages’ to ‘unlawful combatants’: a postcolonial look at international humanitarian law's ‘other’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 July 2009

Frédéric Mégret
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor McGill University
Anne Orford
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne
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Summary

Je crois que le droit de la guerre nous autorise à ravager le pays et que nous devons le faire soit en détruisant les moissons à l'époque de la récolte, soit dans tous les temps en faisant de ces incursions rapides qu'on nomme razzias et qui ont pour objectifs de s'emparer des hommes ou des troupeaux … J'ai souvent entendu en France des hommes que je respecte mais que je n'approuve pas trouver mauvais qu'on brûlât les moissons, qu'on vidât les silos et enfin qu'on s'emparât des hommes sans armes, des femmes et des enfants. Ce sont là, suivant moi, des nécessités fâcheuses, mais auxquelles tout peuple qui se voudra faire la guerre aux Arabes sera obligé de se soumettre.

If the goal of the laws of war is to protect all individuals in armed conflict, can one ever be on the ‘wrong’ side of the laws of war? The answer to that question from many international humanitarian lawyers is an emphatic ‘no’. The laws of war protect all; one is always protected under some guise or other. One can never, properly speaking, be considered ‘outside’ the laws of war. International humanitarian law (as the laws of war are interchangeably known) would strongly deny that it had an ‘other’, or that there is anyone that could not be brought within its protective, hyper-inclusive mantle – and one might well be tempted to take it at its word.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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