When War Comes to the High Street: Can International Law Survive Urban Battlefields?
Cities have become the new front lines. The laws of war weren't written for apartment blocks and underground car parks, but they're all we've got.
Here's an uncomfortable truth: war has moved to the cities, and the rulebook is struggling to keep up. From Aleppo to Mariupol, from Gaza to Mosul, modern conflicts aren't being fought in empty deserts or fields anymore. They're happening where people live, work, and send their kids to school. And the law designed to protect civilians is being tested like never before.
The numbers are brutal. When explosive weapons are used in populated areas, around 90% of casualties are civilians, according to UN Secretary-General António Guterres. That's not a typo. Nine out of ten people killed or injured are ordinary residents who just had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the catastrophically wrong time.
Currently, 50 million people worldwide are living in urban war zones. That's roughly the entire population of South Korea trapped in cities where the line between military target and civilian neighbourhood has become impossibly blurred.
The Three Rules Everyone's Supposed to Follow (In Theory)
International humanitarian law (IHL) has three core principles that sound simple enough: distinction, proportionality, and precaution. You must distinguish between soldiers and civilians. Any civilian harm must not be excessive compared to the military advantage gained. And you must take all feasible steps to minimise civilian casualties.
Easy on paper. Absolute nightmare in practice.
The problem is that cities compress everything. Military targets aren't conveniently located in isolated bunkers anymore. They're in apartment buildings, beneath hospitals, inside schools. Armed groups often operate from within civilian areas, whether by necessity or strategy. Separating civilian life from military activity becomes not just difficult but, in many cases, practically impossible.
So here's the question keeping legal scholars up at night: is the law broken, or is warfare just so fundamentally different now that no law could possibly work?
"Just Evacuate Everyone" (If Only It Were That Simple)
Yoram Dinstein, the late Emeritus Professor at Tel Aviv University and one of the world's leading authorities on the laws of war, had a characteristically blunt view. At a 2017 conference in Moscow, he stated that the only sure way to protect civilians in urban warfare is evacuation: "If you can take out a civilian, take him out."
Which sounds reasonable until you remember that cities under siege are often surrounded. Where exactly are millions of people supposed to go? And who decides when evacuation is "feasible"? These aren't hypothetical questions. They're life-and-death calculations happening in real time.
The ICRC has been clear that whilst the humanitarian consequences of urban warfare are devastating, they're not inevitable. The organisation insists that parties to conflict must rigorously apply existing IHL, and that urban density increases legal responsibility rather than diminishing it. In other words: the law still applies, you just need to try harder.
The Bomb Problem
Let's talk about explosive weapons, because they're the primary culprit in urban carnage. Artillery, rockets, mortars, missiles, air-dropped bombs—many were designed for open battlefields, not city centres. When you fire them into dense neighbourhoods, their wide impact areas make discrimination between military and civilian targets virtually impossible.
According to Action on Armed Violence, civilians suffered over 90% of casualties in nearly every year of the past decade when explosive weapons were used in populated areas. This isn't collateral damage. This is the pattern.
And the damage doesn't stop when the bomb goes off. The ICRC notes that attacking an arms depot might damage a nearby electrical transformer, cutting power to hospitals and sanitation systems, creating perfect conditions for disease outbreaks. In cities, everything's interconnected. One strike can cascade through vital services, affecting thousands.
So Is the Law Actually Broken?
Critics argue that IHL is living in the past. The rules assume a spatial separation between combatants and civilians that simply doesn't exist in modern urban warfare. When a proportionality assessment requires weighing military advantage against civilian harm, but both are impossibly entangled, what's the point?
And then there's the enforcement problem. Investigating alleged violations in bombed-out cities is notoriously difficult. Damage assessments are contested. Intent is nearly impossible to establish. Evidence gets buried under rubble—literally. These obstacles create legal ambiguity that lets bad actors off the hook whilst undermining public trust in the entire system.
Defenders of IHL push back hard. International courts have consistently ruled that the principles of distinction and proportionality apply regardless of environment. The fact that urban warfare is difficult doesn't mean the law is obsolete—it means compliance requires more effort, better intelligence, stricter targeting procedures, and genuine commitment.
Peter Maurer, former President of the ICRC, told the UN Security Council in 2022 that "we must do more," calling for all parties to comply with civilian protection measures and for states to adopt restrictions on exports of explosive weapons with conditions prohibiting their use in populated areas.
The Complicating Factor: When One Side Doesn't Play by the Rules
Here's where it gets messy. When non-state armed groups embed themselves within civilian populations, they're violating IHL. But here's the legally coherent yet operationally maddening bit: their violations don't absolve the other side of its obligations.
The law insists on independent compliance. Even if your enemy is using human shields, you're still bound by the same rules. Which is morally defensible but militarily brutal.
Some military representatives have been remarkably candid about this tension. At the same 2017 Moscow conference, representatives of Russia's Military University noted that complying with IHL during urban battles "may contradict the tasks assigned to the military by their leadership, and also lead to additional losses among personnel."
Translation: following the law might get our soldiers killed.
It's an honest admission of the impossible choices urban warfare creates, even if it's not a legally acceptable justification.
What Actually Needs to Happen
Some scholars have called for new legal instruments specifically for urban warfare. Others warn that creating special rules risks normalising higher civilian casualties—essentially saying "well, cities are just bloodier, what did you expect?"
The better approach, most experts argue, is improved implementation. That means:
Clearer operational guidance for military forces
Enhanced training specifically for urban environments
Better intelligence practices to distinguish targets
Stronger post-conflict investigations
Actually holding people accountable when violations occur
In 2022, after three years of negotiations, 83 states endorsed a Political Declaration on the humanitarian consequences of explosive weapons in populated areas. It's a start, though critics note it's political rather than legally binding.
The Stakes
Ultimately, this isn't just a technical legal debate. It's about whether international humanitarian law has any teeth left. If the law is perceived as unrealistic or routinely ignored, its normative power crumbles. If it's applied selectively—enforced against some parties but not others—public confidence collapses entirely.
As the ICRC observed, the humanitarian consequences of urban warfare persist for years, if not decades, after fighting ends. Cities can be set back by generations. Yemen's human development indicators, after just four years of conflict, dropped to where they were 20 years earlier.
The challenge isn't whether IHL offers perfect solutions to urban conflict—it doesn't. The challenge is whether the international community has the will to apply it with seriousness, precision, and genuine commitment in the environments where it's needed most.
Cities have become battlefields. The law wasn't designed for this, but it's all we have. The question now is whether we'll bother using it properly, or just watch the 90% figure climb higher whilst wringing our hands about how complicated modern warfare has become.
Fifty million people are waiting for an answer. And the rubble keeps piling up.