Vatican official calls humanitarian laws essential for civilian safety
(Nov. 16, 2011) To protect innocent civilians from the harmful effects of weapons
of war, "international humanitarian law remains an essential safety measure not to
be weakened," a Vatican official said. Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican's representative
to United Nations agencies in Geneva, Switzerland, focused on the responsibility
to protect civilian populations from harmful weapons in an address on Monday to a
conference reviewing the international Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons
- CCW. "The responsibility of the CCW to protect civilian populations, rests on its
ability to comply with the provisions of international humanitarian law and even in
strengthening them," he said. "The CCW has an important place and role in the international
system that seeks to reduce the impact of indiscriminate weapons on civilian populations,
on the development and implementation of the conditions that allow an exit from war
situations," he said. Archbishop Tomasi specifically expressed concern over the
lack of consensus on protocols addressing on certain types of mines and on cluster
munitions, which are being used in several conflicts. The work of the Vatican and
several nations to formulate the separate Convention on Cluster Munitions in 2008
was an important step toward protecting civilians, since it was no longer acceptable
to see the number of victims increase after a war, and to see land polluted by the
weapons unable to be used after a conflict had ended, he said. The Convention on Certain
Conventional Weapons, adopted in 1981, has both general provisions and five separate
protocols that define restrictions and bans on certain weapons, including mines, incendiary
weapons, explosive remnants from war and blinding laser weapons "that are considered
to cause unnecessary or unjustifiable suffering."