OMAHA, Neb. (KMTV) — Thursday, UNO gathered experts to discuss the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A main focus of the panel was the human rights of both Ukrainians and Russians, but specifically Ukrainian civilians.
Experts say Russia is violating the International Humanitarian Law, which is expressed in the Geneva Conventions. Both countries signed and ratified the conventions, meaning they're bound to it.
The Humanitarian Law has two principles, the law of discrimination and the law of proportionality.
"Discrimination requires countries involved in war and their military forces to discriminate between combat forces and civilians and then only attack combat forces," Laura Alexander, an Assistant Professor in UNO's Department of Religious Studies said. "War unfortunately will always lead to civilian casualties. We have seen that already but civilians can not be lawfully targeted during war."
The law of proportionality means a country must determine if the action taken outweighs the evil of that action. Alexander says Russia will not achieve proportionality in this war.
"Russia can’t actually achieve the goal of proportionality in this war because its aims are unjust in the first place," Alexander said. "The motivation to abide by the laws of conduct of war are probably not very high when you’ve already engaged in acts of unjust aggression. Putin will talk about it as protecting Russians or talk bout it in different ways."
Experts say, unfortunately, there aren't many ways to deal with the targeting of civilians. The International Court of Justice is set to hear cases on Russia's actions but many states including Russia have ignored their rulings in the past.
