Report: International Humanitarian Law at 'Critical Breaking Point'
The Spin
Pro-establishment narrative
The findings of this report make it clear that international humanitarian law stands on a knife-edge, with widespread violations reported in every conflict examined. If allowed to continue, these abuses will ensure that the wars of the future will be ever more depraved and blood-soaked — necessitating urgent policy action to constrain these war crimes and restore the proper rules of engagement.
Establishment-critical narrative
What this report fails to recognize is that the international rules-based order upon which international humanitarian law rests no longer exists, if it ever really did in the first place, following decades of lax enforcement. The new reality is that of the old, that the powerful and the armed will do whatever they feel that they must or want, and that those powerless to stop it will suffer as a result.