Several times modified, the original idiom goes silent enim leges inter arma, which translates into, “in times of war, the law falls silent.” This was meant to explain his murder will go unnoticed, because larger issues kept the world occupied. And ever since, taken in much more gruesome contexts, the maxim is invoked to claim that atrocities are committed in the name of war. As John Kirby, the White House Press Secretary, noted on the 25th of October, “war is messy, war is gory, and civilians are gonna die.”
Since hearing those words, I have tried to sit with those words, and what those words mean for someone like me, whose job rests on the premise of being loud, extremely loud, in time of war. Sixteen centuries later, Hugo Grotius, residing in The Hague, worked against Cicero in De jure belli ac pacis, published for the first time in 1625 and intended as a gift to Louis XIII of France. This was not the first time “law” and “war” found themselves in the same sentence, but it cemented the belief that even one of the great plagues can’t silence those of us who regulate, determinate, and adjudicate.
I could continue to cover three more centuries of words in Latin then in English that would tell you about war, and the regulation of conduct of and in war. I could tell you about the League of Nations and I could tell you about court referrals. One thing I can not tell you is why the law is painfully silent on the day I am writing this, and the 28 days prior. In response to a horrific, mass scale terror attack committed by the terror group Hamas, the state of Israel has decided to continue - and promises, this time, to finish - its genocide of the Gaza Strip. I am mentioning another loaded word, this time not Latin, but Greek: genocide, the destruction of an entire population.
We have language for the unspeakable. We have collated seemingly opposite civilisations to create a common memory cataloguing horror. We have then drawn, designed and implemented the aforementioned laws and regulations that speak of those horrors with the reverence of those who remember, but the arrogance of those who think they can stop this from happening, by sheer will, not even commitment. I learned from the books, tediously. I nearly crushed under the weight of self-discipline, but the belief carried me.
I didn’t find law silent in time of war. I stood with a stained jacket on the Whiterock Road in Belfast. I tiptoed along abandoned railway lines in Kosovo, mere years later. I found those, blue helmets and blue jackets and blue pants and blue armbands, full of rage, full of despair. They weren’t silent. They were loud, but it wasn’t enough: genocide was louder. After Rwanda, East Timor, Myanmar, China, and the atrocities in Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, and Libya, who is louder? Are we just building more and more bombs to drown the screams?
We are taught accountability at a very young age. We know actions have consequences. And yet millions are dying in Gaza due to a near absolute absence of consequences. Millions are already dead in the Democratic Republic of Congo, sacrificed at the altar of neocolonial policies that seem to escape the accountability that true universality requires. In 2017, Prof. Anthea Roberts wrote the critical yet controversial Is International Law International? - wondering if the Global North continues to exert judicial dominance over the South. But as we are witnessing yet another genocide, waged in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and on everyone’s social media account, we are now told to once again relegate human rights and humanitarian imperatives to secondary or tertiary concerns, as there is some eradicating, annihilating, and cleansing to do.
We are not silent, and we have never been. What we need is the political courage to support accountability, regardless of who the perpetrator is. What we need is to restore what was at the heart of regulating war in the first place: to limit the constant letting of civilian blood that has never fertilised any ground or bred any trees, of freedom or prosperity. What we need is the courage to end it, and the screaming will cease.
Since hearing those words, I have tried to sit with those words, and what those words mean for someone like me, whose job rests on the premise of being loud, extremely loud, in time of war. Sixteen centuries later, Hugo Grotius, residing in The Hague, worked against Cicero in De jure belli ac pacis, published for the first time in 1625 and intended as a gift to Louis XIII of France. This was not the first time “law” and “war” found themselves in the same sentence, but it cemented the belief that even one of the great plagues can’t silence those of us who regulate, determinate, and adjudicate.
I could continue to cover three more centuries of words in Latin then in English that would tell you about war, and the regulation of conduct of and in war. I could tell you about the League of Nations and I could tell you about court referrals. One thing I can not tell you is why the law is painfully silent on the day I am writing this, and the 28 days prior. In response to a horrific, mass scale terror attack committed by the terror group Hamas, the state of Israel has decided to continue - and promises, this time, to finish - its genocide of the Gaza Strip. I am mentioning another loaded word, this time not Latin, but Greek: genocide, the destruction of an entire population.
We have language for the unspeakable. We have collated seemingly opposite civilisations to create a common memory cataloguing horror. We have then drawn, designed and implemented the aforementioned laws and regulations that speak of those horrors with the reverence of those who remember, but the arrogance of those who think they can stop this from happening, by sheer will, not even commitment. I learned from the books, tediously. I nearly crushed under the weight of self-discipline, but the belief carried me.
I didn’t find law silent in time of war. I stood with a stained jacket on the Whiterock Road in Belfast. I tiptoed along abandoned railway lines in Kosovo, mere years later. I found those, blue helmets and blue jackets and blue pants and blue armbands, full of rage, full of despair. They weren’t silent. They were loud, but it wasn’t enough: genocide was louder. After Rwanda, East Timor, Myanmar, China, and the atrocities in Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, and Libya, who is louder? Are we just building more and more bombs to drown the screams?
We are taught accountability at a very young age. We know actions have consequences. And yet millions are dying in Gaza due to a near absolute absence of consequences. Millions are already dead in the Democratic Republic of Congo, sacrificed at the altar of neocolonial policies that seem to escape the accountability that true universality requires. In 2017, Prof. Anthea Roberts wrote the critical yet controversial Is International Law International? - wondering if the Global North continues to exert judicial dominance over the South. But as we are witnessing yet another genocide, waged in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and on everyone’s social media account, we are now told to once again relegate human rights and humanitarian imperatives to secondary or tertiary concerns, as there is some eradicating, annihilating, and cleansing to do.
We are not silent, and we have never been. What we need is the political courage to support accountability, regardless of who the perpetrator is. What we need is to restore what was at the heart of regulating war in the first place: to limit the constant letting of civilian blood that has never fertilised any ground or bred any trees, of freedom or prosperity. What we need is the courage to end it, and the screaming will cease.
➽ Sarah Kay is a human rights lawyer.
"And yet millions are dying in Gaza due to a near absolute absence of consequences."
ReplyDeleteAbsolute lies.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/gaza-population
I think you know as well as anyone Steve, it's a typo.
DeleteThen it's an absolute enormous one that could lead to serious consequences should anyone believe it.
Delete