DSAI Annual Conference: Development in the Interregnum: Past, Present & Future(s)

Panel: Civilian Targeting. 11:00 – 12:30 

‘Humanitarian Exit, Civilian Targeting, and the Right to Health in Fragile Systems’

While all violent conflict has destructive consequences, not all are equal in their human toll, and particularly in the cost to civilians. In recent years, the deliberate targeting of civilians and societal infrastructure, including aid organisations, the media, hospitals, shelters, infrastructure, cultural heritage alongside a shift to cyber attacks, has intensified in recent conflicts. These civilian attacks generate distinct humanitarian and development consequences, and result in direct, indirect, and systemic harms and effects to recovery. They erode the protection enshrined in international humanitarian law and weaken the international humanitarian structures which work to prevent and respond to conflict and safeguard the most vulnerable. As the nature of warfare transforms, the increasing civilian attacks hinder humanitarian, development and policy response, and reshapes the trajectory of recovery, peace and justice.

This panel aims to foster critical and interdisciplinary discussion on the logics of civilian targeting in conflict and crisis. It will bring together reflections on:

· Patterns, functions and strategic logics observable in the targeting of particular civilians, resources and infrastructure;

· variations in how the status of civilian is understood, applied and leveraged across contexts;

· the (changing) role(s) of local, state and international actors in response to civilian targeting; and

· the contested role of agency, resilience, victimisation and survival in the context of civilian targeting.

Through these diverse perspectives, this panel aims to facilitate discussion on how a more nuanced identification and naming of civilian targeting can enable deeper understanding and more effective, legitimate and sustainable prevention and response efforts. This interdisciplinary panel will move past the humanitarian mantra of ‘not a target’, to consider the ways in which civilians, personnel and facilities are already targeted, what the implications to this are, and consider how to better address this phenomenon.

The panel speaks directly to the conference theme’s call to engage with the current conjuncture in international development—reckoning with the erosion of past international institutions that once sought to safeguard civilians, confronting the present disruptions driven by emerging geopolitical actors and strategies, and examining the possibilities for reshaping peace for a more just future in a rapidly shifting landscape of power

Venue: Trinity College Dublin