Framing the problem of explosive violence and the correspondent solution

In August 2009, Landmine Action issued the report Explosive Violence: The Problem of Explosive Weapons. This document provides a very complete frame about explosive violence and the correspondent solution that has to follow, given certain contextual features and evidence collected, especially from ongoing conflicts. Although this frame has not automatically been appropriated by relevant global institutions, neither has it been translated into international law yet and further research has to be undertaken (UNIDIR, 2010), Landmine Action’s framing provides a coherent body of concepts and recommendations that are going to determine to a high degree any future position and action on this issue. Here, it is important to say that UNIDIR has already embarked on a framing task, explicitly acknowledging Landmine Action’s inputs as a baseline for carrying it out.

Three main points compose Landmine Action’s frame on explosive violence:

1.            Explosive violence causes harm over civilians in three ways: 1) immediate deaths and injuries derived from the use of explosive weapons, which affect a blast area rather than a point of detonation, and exert pressure over health facilities; 2) immediate damage of social and economic infrastructure, which causes “direct humanitarian problems and necessitate high levels of reconstruction expenditure”, and 3) contamination of affected areas with unexploded ordnance, which results in risk of further future harm and damage, in turn generating fear and a consequent refraining from use of existing resources (Landmine Action, 2010).

Under these considerations, not only the value of life is at stake, but also the developmental consequences of using explosive weapons, which clearly affect civilians.

2.            According to the available empirical evidence, there is a high risk for the use of explosive violence to be indiscriminate (Landmine Action, 2010).

3.            There are neither ethical nor rational grounds for accepting the use of explosive violence in populated areas. On one hand, “Under an increasingly coherent international legal framework of binding agreements affirming the universality of fundamental entitlements and rights of each person”, double standards held by states are not legitimate: it is not coherent that whereas states refrain from using explosive violence for domestic policing, they do use it for military operations or armed conflict.

On other hand, “States are particularly vulnerable to the use of explosive weapons by non-state actors”, although states’ monopoly over it is claimed. However, “the unacceptability of non-state use of explosive weapons is diminished by the failure of states to enact appropriate categorical controls on the use of these weapons in populated areas, or to attend to the relationships of diminished local accountability that such use articulates.”

That is to say, it is not only ethically questionable for states to keep these double standards. States might benefit “from the progressive stigmatization of the use of explosive weapons in certain contexts, and have much to lose from their continued proliferation and expanded acceptability” (Landmine Action, 2010).

If we now look at the solution, Landmine Action proposes to build upon a common language among states, international institutions and civil society, and to regard explosive violence as a category of its own, insofar as it entails consistent particular patterns of harm and damage over civilians. The solution to this issue is the stigmatization and prohibition of the use of explosive weapons on populated areas, and the rise of standards for judging the acceptability of the use of explosive violence. Landmine Action poses the need for transparency and accountability. States would have to justify the use of explosive violence, regardless of the relationship with the specific group people over which explosive violence is used. For this to be possible, states need to provide data and to keep accountable in more global terms. Likewise, they have to commit themselves with ensuring the rights of victims.