Question 34237 — foreign policy

Summary

Ms Frédérique Dumas questions the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs about France's refusal to respond to the joint appeal from the President of the ICRC and the Secretary General of the United Nations aimed at avoiding the use of explosive weapons with a wide impact radius in inhabited areas. On September 27, 2020, the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh resumed, putting the population there in serious danger. It ended with the tripartite agreement signed by the two protagonists and Russia on Monday, November 9, 2020. On both sides, towns and residential areas have become the target of bombings, despite the establishment of ceasefires and humanitarian truces supposed to protect civilians. This massive use of explosive weapons with a large impact radius (aerial bombs, rockets, artillery fire, etc.) in populated areas kills and injures indiscriminately. and indiscriminately against women, children and other civilians, while damaging civilian infrastructure that is vital to the survival of the population. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict highlights this tragic and unacceptable situation that has existed for years in other regions of the world. In Yemen for example, a report from the Handicap international association dated May 2020 demonstrates that the long-term effects linked to the use of explosive weapons "are just as deadly as the explosion itself and affect even more people than those in the vicinity of the initial attack, as the destruction of infrastructure has consequences for the country's entire service system." Also, “the damage inflicted on infrastructure and services essential to food, transport, health and water supplies pose a danger to civilian populations and prolong suffering long after the bombing has ceased.” To cite just one example in this country, the destruction in 2015 of Hayden hospital in Sa'dah governorate - which was the only existing hospital within an 80 kilometer radius - deprived 200,000 people of access to vital care. Beyond the explosions, still according to the report of Handicap International, “contamination from unexploded ordnance will affect Yemen’s population for decades.” Also, this conflict and these bombings in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, as in Yemen, Syria, or even Iraq, illustrate a dramatic observation: when explosive weapons with a wide impact radius are used in populated areas, more than 90% of the victims are civilians. Even when directed against a military target, these weapons present a high risk of indiscriminate and disproportionate effects due to their sole use in populated areas. Injuries, mutilations and trauma, but also forced exile of populations, destruction and damage of vital infrastructure such as hospitals or schools, and contamination by explosive remnants of war: these practices destabilize populations and regions in the very long term. These indisputable facts, documented for years by the United Nations and the ICRC, have for several years challenged part of the international community, which has since mobilized to put an end to the use of explosive weapons with a wide impact radius in populated areas. While Mr. Emmanuel Macron was a candidate in the presidential election, he responded to a Handicap international survey on the subject of bombings in urban areas. To the question “will you actively engage France in the ongoing diplomatic process aimed at developing an international political declaration to protect civilians from the use of explosive weapons in populated areas? », Mr. Emmanuel Macron replied that he wanted “firm political commitments to avoid the use of explosive weapons in populated areas”. In October 2019 during the high-level conference organized in Vienna, France expressed for the first time, alongside 83 other States, its support for the principle of an international political declaration on the protection of civilians against the use of explosive weapons with a wide impact radius in populated areas. France's active involvement in the diplomatic process that followed is to be welcomed. However, and despite a desire to improve the framework already existing (chain of command, rule of engagement, targeting process, doctrine, dissemination of IHL to the armed forces), the Government still refuses to respond to the joint call launched by the President of the ICRC and the Secretary General of the United Nations in September 2019 aimed at “avoid using explosive weapons with a wide impact radius in inhabited areas”. France persists in reducing the problem to a question of “use indiscriminate” explosive weapons, while not wishing to “stigmatize” these same weapons. In this context, she asks him if France finally intends to respond to the joint appeal of the President of the ICRC and the Secretary General of the United Nations, taking into account the long-term consequences linked to the use of explosive weapons in populated areas in different theaters of operations, as further evidenced by the recent example of Nagorno-Karabakh, and thus respecting the promise made by Emmanuel Macron that there be “firm political commitments to avoid the use of explosive weapons in populated areas”.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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