Civilian casualty

Under the law of war, it refers to civilians who perish or suffer wounds as a result of wartime acts.

During periods of armed conflict, there are structures, actors, and processes at a number of levels that affect the likelihood of violence against civilians.

In the case of people dying from indirect effects (category 3), much careful work is needed to distinguish between 'expected' and 'excess' levels of mortality.

Some may be fleeing one-sided violence from a repressive state apparatus, natural calamity, or general social breakdown.

Although the Fourth Geneva Convention attempted to erect some legal defenses for civilians in international armed conflicts, the bulk of the Fourth Convention devoted to explicating civilian rights in the hands of the enemy, and no explicit attention is paid to the problems of bombardment and the hazardous effects in the combat-zone.

[8] Under international humanitarian law applicable to international armed conflict, enemy civilians and stateless persons or neutral nationals outside the territory of a belligerent state are protected persons under Article 4 of the Fourth Geneva Convention[9] and the 1907 Fifth and 13th Hague Conventions regarding the duties of neutrals on land and naval warfare.

[9] The Rome Statute defines "intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population" in both international and non-international conflicts as illegal, but it only came into effect on 1 July 2002 and has not been ratified by every country.

[12] Many modern nations' views on the ethics of civilian casualties align with the Just War theory, which advocates a system of proportionality.

Some researchers[weasel words] have included refugees and internally displaced persons in their definition of "civilian casualty".

The body of a young boy on the street in Tampere after the 1918 Finnish Civil War .
Casualties of a mass panic during a June 1941 Japanese bombing of Chongqing . [ 2 ] More than 5,000 civilians died during the first two days of air raids in 1939.