The cost to human life in the war today is haunting, and the figures can’t be overlooked. In 2023 alone, more than 33,000 civilians lost their lives in armed violence, a 72 percent increase from the previous year. These figures are more than a collection of figures—they are the voices of families broken, communities destroyed, and lives lost. Behind each reported figure, there are lives, individuals, and a history of the human cost of war.
The effects of war reach far beyond death. Hundreds of millions of humans have been displaced, and war-induced famine has become a crisis in most nations. Humanitarian aid workers, doctors, and reporters are all dying or being injured at record numbers, with dozens dead or wounded as they try to bring aid or tell the truth.
Dozens of UN staff were killed at different points across the country within a few months, showing the high risks involved with providing vital services in war zones. In a system dedicated to safeguarding civilians worldwide, norms are violated or implemented selectively.
The Geneva Conventions and humanitarian codes codify norms on paper, but enforce them incompletely, and their implementation remains weak. Willfully, the civilians are targeted, humanitarian relief is disrupted, and starvation as a weapon is employed, putting lives at risk for families. When rules become discretionary, the proportionality between the military goals and human lives is reversed, and the common people suffer.
International humanitarian law was created to protect civilians, but the character of warfare now poses tests never before encountered. Warfare in urban areas, sophisticated explosives, and computer attacks challenge the old principles to their limits.
Most experts believe that the problem is not as much what is enshrined as it is who is going to apply it. Without consequences, even the strongest of intentions are nothing more than words. Appreciation from both sides demands action once more.
Experts have cautioned that some conflicts risk mass atrocities, remembering that civilian protection is not solely the responsibility of the warring parties. Some governments have taken the lead in protecting civilians as a top priority of planning in war-fighting policy, in addition to enhanced accountability and improved training for peacekeepers.
Others emphasized the need to look beyond the numbers to see the human beings behind them and not to forget the agony each figure encompasses. Accountability lies at the center of civilian protection.
There can be no impunity otherwise, and the violence will just recycle. International courts are the last resort, but vulnerable to political pressure and challenge to their independence. Victims are owed justice, not for a moral compulsion, but in the form of an insurance policy against future crime, activists claim. Questions of whether civilians’ lives are equal in value continue to haunt responses across the globe, laying bare differential humanitarian norm-application.
But hope can be justified. International commitments and statements, supported by dozens of states, seek to prohibit the use of explosive weapons in populated areas and defend schools and other civilian infrastructure. Improved data collection, national law, and humanitarian access are making progress. Experts warthat n humanitarian and human rights law needs to be everywhere, from towns to rural conflict and war cyberspaces.
Reality is bleak: safeguarding civilians has never been harder, but capitulation is not an option. The difficulties are titanic, but so is the common duty of the global community to save lives, enforce law, and strive for a future in which civilians can live even in war.
