Military operations in Afganistan and international humanitarian law

Christian Schaller

No 7/2010, SWP Comments from Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), German Institute for International and Security Affairs

Abstract: Until recently, German officials denied that the Bundeswehr was at war in Afghanistan, insisting that its role was to stabilize rather than to fight. In November 2009, Federal Minister of Defense Karl-Theodor Freiherr zu Guttenberg first referred to »warlike circumstances« and described the situation as a »non-international armed conflict« taking place in parts of Afghanistan. This position was now specified by Federal Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, who in an official government address to the German Bundestag stated that even the situation in the north of Afghanistan was to be qualified as an armed conflict within the meaning of international humanitarian law. But the search for appropriate terminology is much more than a matter of clear communication. It is above all a question of maximizing legal security for the forces on the ground

Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/256112/1/2010C07.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:swpcom:72010

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SWP Comments from Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), German Institute for International and Security Affairs
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (econstor@zbw-workspace.eu).