Half a century after the CIA's Secret War in Laos—the largest bombing campaign in history—explosive remnants of war continue to be part of people's everyday lives. In Bomb Children Leah Zani offers a perceptive analysis of the long-term, often subtle, and unintended effects of massive air warfare. Zani traces the sociocultural impact of cluster submunitions—known in Laos as “bomb children”—through stories of explosives clearance technicians and others living and working in these old air strike zones. Zani presents her ethnography alongside poetry written in the field, crafting a startlingly beautiful analysis of state terror, authoritarian revival, rapid development, and ecological contamination. In so doing, she proposes that postwar zones are their own cultural and area studies, offering new ways to understand the parallel relationship between ongoing war violence and postwar revival.

Donovan Webster''s study into the after effec ts of modern warfare shows how battlefields are transformed and carry terrible legacies of enduring terror and memories. He shows how the more effective the weaponry the worse the legacy for the survivors. '

This book centres on the war that raged between Eritrea and Ethiopia from 1998 to 2000, a war that caused great loss of life and tremendous devastation. It analyses the war in great detail from an international legal perspective: the nature and the state of the boundary conflict preceding the actual armed conflict, the military actions themselves, the role of the UN peace-keeping mission, the responsibility for the multitude of explosive remnants of the war left behind. Ample attention is paid to the decisions of the Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission and the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission. This study is not limited to the war and the period immediately following it, it also examines its more extended aftermath prolonging the analysis as far as the more recent improvement in the relations between Eritrea and Ethiopia, away from a situation of ‘no war, no peace’ that prevailed after the armed conflict ended. The analysis of the war and its aftermath is not only in terms of international legal issues, it has been placed in a wider than strictly legal perspective. The book is a valuable work for academics and practitioners in international law, human rights and humanitarian law in particular, for political scientists, diplomats, civil servants, historians, and all those others seriously interested in the Horn of Africa. Andrea de Guttry is Full Professor of Public International Law at the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Pisa, Italy. Harry H.G. Post is Adjunct Professor in the Faculté Libre de Droit of the Université Catholique de Lille in Lille, France. Gabriella Venturini is Professor Emerita in the Dipartimento di Studi internazionali, giuridici e storico-politici of the Università degli Studi di Milano in Milan, Italy.

"While public interest in landmines is recent, their use and that of their non-explosive predecessors has a history which spans 2,500 years. Mike Croll explains the development, employment and reactions to these weapons from the concealed spikes of antiquity to the electronically-fused systems of today." "The History of Landmines takes the reader from ancient Rome to the colonial wars and from the American Civil War to the Gulf War explaining why increasing numbers of these devices have been used and how they have become more sophisticated. The genesis of the present humanitarian crisis is fully described along with the problems of clearing landmines today."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Bringing together the law of armed conflict governing the use of weapons into a single volume, the fully updated Second Edition of Weapons and the Law of Armed Conflict interprets these rules and discusses the factors influencing future developments in weapons law. After relating the historical evolution of weapons law, the book discusses the important customary principles that are the foundation of the subject, and provides a condensed account of the law that exists on the use of weapons. The treaties and customary rules applying to particular categories of weapon are thereafter listed and explained article by article and rule by rule in a series of chapters. Having stated the law as it is, the book then explores the way in which this dynamic field of international law develops in the light of various influences. The legal review of weapons is discussed, both from the perspective of how such reviews should be undertaken and how such a system should be established. Having stated the law as it is, the book then investigates the way in which this dynamic field of international law develops in the light of various influences. In the final chapter, the prospects for future rule change are considered. This Second Edition includes a discussion of new treaty law on expanding bullets, the arms trade, and norms in relation to biological and chemical weapons. It also analyses the International Manuals on air and missile warfare law and on cyber warfare law, the challenges posed by 'lethal autonomous weapon systems', and developments in the field of information and telecommunications otherwise known as cyber activities.

Thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed or injured during the three weeks of fighting from the first air strikes on March 20 to April 9, 2003, when Baghdad fell to U.S.-led coalition forces. Human rights investigated the conduct of the war during a five-week mission in Iraq. This report documents Iraqi violations of international humanitarian law, including use of human shields, abuse of the red cross and red crescent emblems, use of antipersonnel landmines, location of military objects in protected places, and failure to take adequate precautions to protect civilians from the dangers resulting from military operations.