Doctoral Dissertation Research: Distinguishing Between Legitimate and Illegitimate Targets

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One of the most tragic results of current conflicts is the deliberate targeting of civilians. Not only is this practice violative of the civilian immunity norm, one of the pillars of international humanitarian law, it also contradicts popular opinion about appropriate behavior during armed conflict. Despite the reaction to such acts, this practice continues. Scholars and policymakers have made inquiries into the reasons for the deliberate targeting of civilians during armed conflict. Many suggest such violations occur for utilitarian reasons or ignorance of international legal obligations. However, many of these studies suffer from a common flaw: they assume a consensus exists on the composition of legitimate and illegitimate targets. This study takes this assumption as its starting point: does a consensus on the distinction principle contained within the civilian immunity norm exist? Utilizing a variety of qualitative methods (including conducting interviews with former belligerents and humanitarian practitioners and case studies), this study compares established theoretical frameworks, such as norm noncompliance and norm diffusion, against an emerging theoretical framework, norm contestation, to determine which has the strongest explanatory effect regarding deliberate civilian targeting.