Incendiary Weapons

Incendiary Weapons Through a Humanitarian Disarmament Lens

December 2, 2020

On August 26, 2013, 18-year-old Muhammed Assi stood in the courtyard of a Syrian school talking with five classmates. Suddenly, an incendiary bomb landed in the middle of the group of students, immediately killing all but Muhammed. “The intensity of the explosion threw me a distance of about three to four meters from where the missile struck,” Muhammed said. “We…

Incendiary Weapons: Human Cost Demands Stronger Law

November 9, 2020

Clinic, HRW Argue Legal Loopholes Must Close to Prevent Further Civilian Suffering (Geneva) – The horrific burns and life-long suffering caused by incendiary weapons demand that governments urgently revise existing treaty standards, Human Rights Watch and Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic said in a report jointly published today. The 45-page report, “‘They Burn Through Everything’: The Human Cost of Incendiary Weapons…

“Fighting for Disarmament”: Bonnie Docherty’s work featured in Harvard Gazette

January 7, 2016

This Q & A by reporter Liz Mineo ran in the Harvard Gazette on January 3, 2015 After researching the devastating humanitarian effects of the deadly cluster munitions used in Afghanistan in 2002, Bonnie Docherty joined a worldwide campaign to eliminate them. Six years after she started her probe, cluster bombs were banned. Her investigation on the use of cluster…

Clinic Report: Incendiary Weapons Threaten Civilians in Ukraine, Syria

November 11, 2014

PRESS RELEASE Ukraine, Syria: Incendiary Weapons Threaten Civilians Stronger International Law Needed for Weapons That Burn (Geneva, November 11, 2014) – Evidence of the use of incendiary weapons in Ukraine and Syria highlights the need for stricter law to govern these weapons, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today with Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic. The…

A Month of Disarmament Milestones: From Cluster Munitions to Killer Robots

December 3, 2013

Five years ago this week, 94 countries gathered in Oslo to sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions. The historic ceremony, held in the hall where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded, was a moment of celebration and inspiration. The groundbreaking treaty banned a class of weapons that cause serious harm to civilians. It also showed that humanitarian disarmament, which prioritizes…

“White Phosphorous: The New Napalm?”

On the 40th anniversary of one of the most iconic images to come out of the Vietnam War, Bonnie and Steve Goose of Human Rights Watch have co-authored an important piece in Salon about the lingering threat posed by incendiary weapons. Here are the first few paragraphs: “Too hot! Too hot!” wailed 9-year-old Kim Phuc as sticky napalm burned through…

Strengthening the Humanitarian Protections of Incendiary Weapons Treaty

August 23, 2011

In the latest step of our push for stronger international law on incendiary weapons, the International Human Rights Clinic and Human Rights Watch (HRW) released recommendations yesterday for amending an existing protocol on the weapons. The new paper calls on states parties to the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) to close several loopholes in CCW’s Protocol III. The paper recommends…

Pressure Mounts for Stronger Incendiary Weapons Treaty

The International Human Rights Clinic and Human Rights Watch (HRW) lobbied at a UN disarmament conference in Geneva last week for stronger international law on incendiary weapons. The Clinic has previously presented the legal arguments for more robust protections; this time, we focused on the suffering these weapons cause to civilians. Behind the scenes, diplomats at the meeting of the…

Decades after Dresden, We Must Do More to Protect Civilians from Incendiary Weapons

February 25, 2011

This month marks the 66th anniversary of the World War II firebombing of Dresden, Germany—an event that demonstrated to the world the devastating power of incendiary weapons. From February 13 to 15, 1945, British and U.S. forces dropped hundreds of tons of incendiary and high explosive bombs on the mostly undefended cultural center of Dresden, where thousands of people had…