Who, or What, is the Human of International Humanitarian Law

• This chapter considers who the human of international humanitarian law (IHL) is or can be. Traditionally IHL treats the human as its point of departure as well as its ultimate telos. The human is identified and categorized as either civilian or combatant, placing the various ways in which one can pass as human in focus of the targeting process. Moreover, the lawfulness of the targeting process has been made dependent on a ‘human in the loop’ who can be held accountable for warfare acts. In this chapter I show how IHL invites a gender bias and fails to take into account how military targets are identified through emerging technologies in practice, including artificial intelligence (AI), in contemporary intelligent warfare. Finding that the law fails to take into account how military targets are identified and killed through processes that are only to a limited degree controlled by human actors, the call I make for an international posthumanitarian legal ordering of the laws of war is an urgent one.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Juridik (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Law (hsv//eng)

Keyword

IHL

international humanitarian law

drone warfare

Artificial Intelligence

posthumanism

Rosi Braidotti

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kap (subject category)