The international legal order is indeed on the decline, and the West that has indemnified the system for long is divided. Nonetheless, it is also true that some part of international law transcends the extant realm of international law and pre-dates it; this part is called the International Humanitarian Law (IHL), better known by its earlier name ‘the law of war’.
The IHL unfolds a very unique area of law that deals with jus in bello (law in war) that sounds oxymoronic. The IHL is deeply rooted in customary international law and is buttressed by major religions of the world that find its principles of civilian protection, protection of women and children, necessity, distinction and proportionality as universal and as shared values. Worldwide, professional militaries get trained in this branch of law through the good offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which has an international mandate to disseminate it.
Professional militaries imbue the principles of IHL in their training and operations. As of today, the customary international law of the IHL has largely been codified through treaty law, resulting in Hague Conventions and the Geneva Conventions and their protocols.
Most specifically, the violations of the IHL are called war crimes and crimes against humanity. The list of violations was expanded through the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC Statute) in 1998 and included the offences of aggression and genocide. The complementing part of the IHL is the jus ad bellum (law of war), which is largely political and administered within the parameters of the UN Charter and by the UNO.
India used the Pahalgam incident as a casus belli (cause of war) to initiate an International Armed Conflict (IAC) against Pakistan. The categorisation of the IAC has attracted the application of the IHL to the acts of India; hence, its illegal, unlawful and unilateral acts can be declared as international wrongs and war crimes.
India is not a party to the ICC and cannot be prosecuted for these crimes; however, the purpose of the adumbration is to bring on record the war crimes committed by India and to state that criminal liability of the leadership of India is not abated or mitigated for want of a prosecution mechanism.
The major war crimes committed by India are: First, India used water as a means and method of warfare. It unilaterally, illegally and without reason or rhyme, opted out of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) by putting it in ‘abeyance’, a phrase alien to the treaty and to the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT).
Besides disregarding the World Bank backed IWT, India violated Article 54 of the Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions (AP-I) that prohibited ‘starvation of civilians as a method of warfare’.
This prohibition was not merely declaratory, but was criminalised as a war crime (Article 8(2) (b) (xxv) of the ICC Statute). It may be noted that criminal liability is personal in nature and the officers/persons involved in committing the war crime of starving the civilian population will be personally responsible for the war crimes committed.
Second, India violated Article 2 of the UN Charter, which obliged it to respect the principle of sovereign equality and to refrain from using force or the threat of force against the territorial integrity of Pakistan. Article 2(3) of the UN Charter specifically required India to settle the dispute through peaceful means. On May 7, 2025, it attacked nine worship places and killed 26 innocent civilians, including women and children, violating the UN Charter and using force in such ‘character, gravity and scale…’ that it amounted to ‘aggression’ in terms of the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3314 (XXIX).
India’s ‘bombardment’ was a violation of Articles 48, 49, 50 and 51 of the Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions, 1977 (AP-I). The violation of attacking civilians has been criminalised by the ICC Statute in its Article 8 as a war crime. Most of the ‘locations’/places attacked are mosques/worship places. This clearly violates Article 53 of the AP-I that prohibits attacking places of worship. The act of attacking religious buildings has been listed as a war crime under the ICC Statute. Therefore, India can and should be held accountable for committing this egregious war crime.
Third, the law of war clearly prohibits armed attacks against works and installations containing dangerous forces like dams/water reservoirs in Article 56 of the AP-I. India’s attack on the Neelum-Jhelum Hydropower Project was a clear violation of this important provision that specifically prohibited attacking critical infrastructure that could endanger civilian populations.
Fourth, as many as 29 drones were downed in one day in various urban areas in Pakistan — and 77 in two days. The unmanned drones striking at civilian populations, including at a cricket stadium in Rawalpindi, exposed the illegality in the use of drones by India as these were not directed at military targets and apparently did not use the principle of distinction.
No precautionary steps as anticipated in articles 36 and 57 of the AP-I were taken. Article 36 of the AP-I required that the party to the AP-I (India signed and ratified the IHL instruments), when using new weapons (like a drone in this case), should have made sure that no protection under the IHL laws was violated.
Finally, India has been offering all sorts of lousy justifications for its failure to meet the universally accepted principles of the IHL during its military actions on May 7. On the killing of women and children, India tried to hide behind the imaginary ‘collateral damage’ without showing what was the ‘direct or real damage’ that it intended to hit.
Using its right to self-defence as provided under Article 51 of the UN Charter, Pakistan responded to the military targets in India in line with the principles of the IHL. Pakistan reserves the right to ask for reparations for the damages caused by India in its latest aggression against Pakistan.
It may, however, be noted that the impunity with which India is violating international law is not unprecedented as it is a copycat of Israel and the United States in many respects; however, it must be remembered that illegality breeds illegality and the rulebook of impunity can certainly be copied by all when push comes to shove.
The writer is a serving police officer, working as DIG Technical Procurement for the Punjab Police, Lahore.
Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed in this piece are the writer’s own and don’t necessarily reflect Geo.tv’s editorial policy
Originally published in The News
