International environmental law and naval war

Recent international conflicts have raised fundamental questions about the relationship between international law and armed conflict. The notion that the rules of general international environmental law continue to apply during armed conflict is now well accepted, but the principles that are usually cited remain at a very high level of abstraction. In this paper, the author, a legal adviser in the Office of the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, The Hague, examines the extent to which international law has developed more detailed rules to protect the environment in international armed conflict. After a discussion of the main legal issues, the author focuses on the marine environment, examining the relationship between naval warfare, on one hand, and multilateral environmental treaties on marine safety and the prevention of marine pollution, on the other. She argues that the majority of these treaties do not apply during armed conflict, either because war damage is expressly excluded or because the treaties do not apply to warships. As for the treaties that are in principle applicable during armed conflict, her analysis shows that, under international law, belligerent and neutral states have the legal right to suspend those treaties, wholly or in part. The author concludes that very few of the treaties considered take the new law of armed conflict into account and that there remains a need for more detailed rules on environmental standards for military operations. The paper concludes with an extensive bibliography of journal articles, books, manuals, monographs, symposia and conference reports, selected special reports, and selected official documents and publications.