Disarmament in Review
On 13 November, the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) hosted a hybrid side event during the 2024 Annual Meeting of the High Contracting Parties to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) in Geneva. The event focused on a recent UNODA publication titled “The Regulation of Incendiary Weapons under International Humanitarian Law,” made possible through the financial support of the European Union as part of its project in support of the universalization, implementation and strengthening of the CCW.
Co-moderated by Ms. Mariam Bilikhodze, Consultant at UNODA, and Ms. Sophie Guillermin-Golet, Associate Political Affairs Officer at UNODA, the event featured a presentation by Mr. Stuart Casey-Maslen, Honorary Professor of International Law at the University of Pretoria and lead author of the publication.
Mr. Casey-Maslen presented an overview of the study, focusing on Protocol III to the CCW, which outlines prohibitions and restrictions on the use of incendiary weapons. He discussed the common types of incendiary weapons covered under CCW Protocol III, their historical use in warfare, and the severe physical and psychological harm they cause. The presentation also analyzed key provisions of the Protocol and examined their customary nature.
While acknowledging the significant achievements of CCW Protocol III, including its prohibition, in all circumstances, of attacks by air-delivered incendiary weapons against any military objective located within a concentration of civilians, Mr. Stuart Casey-Maslen also underscored its limitations. He highlighted, in particular, an explicit and significant exception within the Protocol, which allows the use of ground-fired incendiary weapons against military objectives under specific conditions.
Furthermore, Mr. Casey-Maslen emphasized the Protocol’s lack of coverage for certain incendiary weapons, such as white phosphorus and thermobaric weapons, which remain outside its scope, and continue to be used in modern conflicts without specific regulation under International Humanitarian Law. He singled out white phosphorus as a particular outstanding humanitarian concern that warrants specific regulation. Although white phosphorus is excluded from the scope of CCW Protocol III because its “primary design” is not to set fire to objects or to cause burn injury to persons, its use has far-reaching and devastating humanitarian consequences.
To address the above-mentioned regulatory gaps, the study author suggested the possibility to either amend the definition of incendiary weapon in CCW Protocol III to explicitly include white phosphorus, or to adopt a new protocol within the CCW framework, which would prohibit all anti-personnel and anti-matériel uses of white phosphorus.
The Q&A session allowed both in-person and online participants to address, inter alia, the practical implementation of the study’s recommendations, and to underscore the need for increased engagement from CCW High Contracting Parties on Protocol III.
