Thread by @PeterGleick

🧵A thread on how attacking civilian water and energy infrastructure is a war crime.
International laws of war (yes, that's a thing) are quite explicit: attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure are war crimes.
The Rome Statute of the...

International Criminal Court (ICC), adopted in 1998, says:
“[i]ntentionally directing attacks against civilian objects, that is, objects which are not military objectives” is a war crime (Article 8(2)(b)(ii)).
Similarly ...
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Article 56 of Protocol I of the 1977 Geneva Convention & Article 15 of Protocol II prohibit attacks on infrastructure “containing dangerous forces” including explicitly “dams” and “dykes” if such attacks “may cause the release of dangerous forces and...
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consequent severe losses among the civilian
population.”
Article 54 of Protocol I also says “It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population” including “drinking water installations & supplies...
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and irrigation works.”
Enforcement of these laws is weak, but the international community should step up. In what may be one of the only examples, but also a model, the International Criminal Court indicted the former president of ...
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the Sudan, Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir for crimes against humanity, waging war, and genocide, including specifically the contamination of “the wells and water pumps of the towns and villages primarily inhabited by members of the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa groups”
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Here’s a paper of mine on this subject for those interested in more detail on #water, #conflict, international law, and environmental war crimes:
uploads.strikinglycdn.com/files/43535a5a…
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