Postmodern thoughts on 'Legal Humanitarianism'

Though the history of 'legal humanitarianism' from a trans-border perspective is traceable to European times, especially the Enlightenment, and the development thereof is mostly of 'Geneva origin', the jurisprudential facets of this sacred 'canon' underlay the actions that possibly predates written history. Thus, the jurisprudential values of humanitarian law are more anachronistic than the legal documentation thereof. 

Wars are untoward but potential in nature. The need of the international legal humanitarianism may run out only if wars disappear forever, not otherwise; because humanitarian law comes on the scene only when an armed conflict breaks out, not beforehand. Though waging wars is condemned, a war may also be a necessity someplace. Wars are bad enough but injustice on an epic scale is worse. Kautilya in his 'Arthasastra' counseled that it is best to wage a war against an unjust king who has no public support.

A beautiful saying goes there in Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace- “If everyone fought for their own convictions, there would be no war”.

It is true that very few warriors fight for a higher purpose. Nobody can wipe out the possibility of wars but everybody can make sure he is not going to fight by choice but rather, he is only there to go fighting because of necessity. Sun Tzu truly commented that the victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.

Ernest Hemingway, in his 'A Farewell to Arms', showed that fancying love can make a man say his farewell to wars but, in fact, not all people in this world are lovers and also not all lovers are soft enough to yield to the x-factor of their opposite sex.

Maybe the controversies over the legitimacy of wars will never come to any happy conclusion but as long as wars are predictable, sanctioning of the international humanitarian law is a must. It is possible that answers to all questions won't be found in this world. Kant's theory of 'a thing-in-itself' is relevant here. He said that a thing in itself is essentially incomprehensible. 

Professor Jennifer Wicke argued that postmodernism regarding legal focuses is a set of historical conditions or descriptions of our current cultural situation.  Henry Dunant spoke of the modern project of International Humanitarian Law by linking it to moral perceptions and the consequent moral outrage at the consequences of war.  The honest endeavor by Mr. Henry has attained huge success in promoting humanitarianism as a worldwide movement. As 'Neocolonialism' is a good menace of the synthetic postmodern world, there are both hope and danger arising out of the de facto colonialism for state parties, especially the developing ones.

 

A sad but true reality is that the implementation of this specialised branch of law is factually in the hands of the armed combatants and around them, when wars actually break out, there remains no one who can force military personnel to obey the wartime humanitarian rules, if they ignore any. Therefore, strict sanctioning of International Humanitarian Law for the belligerent parties is the biggest challenge of the postmodern legal order. This is why the implementation of these norms should not be left to be 'morally or mutually negotiable'.

Another postmodern threat to the International legal Humanitarianism is that it is much reliant on the treaties which are, no doubt, the outcome of the sincere activism of the ICRC but the remarkable setback is that these treaties are often subject to reservations and denunciation. As 1949 Conventions are universally accepted, there should be a new move to reshuffling the contents of the treaties as per the demands of the present times. Compared to other law fields, Municipal law provides a good basis for acceleration of International Humanitarian Law resulting from universal membership in the Geneva Conventions where Bangladesh too is no exception. 

We wish no wars to happen in this world, not any longer and nor any further, as wars reflect the baser instincts of humans to other humans. Honorable warriors having a feeling of respect cum humanitarianism for themselves and for others are also very unpredictable. We envisage that the armed conflicts, inevitable in any way whatsoever, will be minimised in the current and the next generation worlds, the combatants will live by a 'Code' and will act in accordance with that Code during wartime crises.