The war in Ukraine and the large-scale conflict in the Middle East have again shown that civilians pay the highest price in modern warfare. They are the ones most often killed or wounded, forced from their homes and countries, and left to face the destruction of local economies, social life, cultural heritage, and the environment.
The author argues that the familiar divide between combatants and civilians no longer fully reflects reality. In contemporary conflicts, people without military status often assist armies by supplying goods, volunteering, gathering information, conducting information work, producing for wartime needs, or even collaborating with occupying authorities.
What the law says
Even so, international humanitarian law preserves the basic principle of distinction. The Geneva Conventions and their additional protocols require protection for civilians and prohibit making them targets, except in rare cases of direct participation in hostilities. Attacks on military targets that indirectly harm civilians are allowed only within the limits of proportionality and military necessity.
The article stresses that recognizing the active role of some civilians should not lead to abandoning their special status. In the author’s view, otherwise war would lose its remaining limits and slide toward mass crimes against the population.
Responsibility without loss of protection
At the same time, the author says that civilian involvement in legitimizing and supporting war may deserve moral judgment. This applies, in particular, to public figures, officials, commentators, scholars, and cultural actors. But such judgment, the text emphasizes, does not mean automatic loss of protection from military violence. The article concludes that the principle of distinction should not be discarded, but interpreted in a more complex and precise way that reflects new forms of civilian participation in war.