ASİMETRİK SAVAŞ VE İNSANCIL HUKUK

Abstract

The Realism – idealism debate started as the first great debate in the international relations discipline. This debate, which took place between the two world wars and the period after it, can be analyzed with the aim of preventing and ameliorating wars. Consequently, the issue of war took a centre stage in the international relations discipline. The humanitarian approach to war in the 20th century has led to the strengthening of the idea that catastrophic destruction and post war catastrophes can be removed or at least reduced. Thus, with the past experience, customary laws of international institutions and the changing dynamics, quite a number of studies had been carried out on some of the existing international agreements or treaties and war laws (Humanitarian Law). Despite the fact that humanitarian law was established on the rules necessitating war and the rules to be observed during war, fundamentally is serves the ultimate purpose of strengthening peace. Institutions that have been set up to check control and monitor humanitarian laws have contributed significantly in the modern world. The work of these institutions has resulted to very unlikely tendency of states to solve their problems by means of war. In other words, states see war as a last resort to solving problems. When we come to think of the fact that in the modern world, war is predominantly among very different groups rather than states and the metamorphosis that occurs during every period of history, then adequacy of the present humanitarian law is definitely questionable or better still it can be subjected to cross examination. As a result, the thrust of this work is to question the applicability of humanitarian laws to asymmetric wars and the extent to which it can be applicable.