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Save The Civilians Overview
Imagine . . .
you finish your work for the day and start your commute home. During the drive, you hear an emergency broadcast on the radio that the forces which had been battling for weeks, hundreds of miles away, have made a quick advance into your town to attack suspected enemies there. Your heart races and you break out in a cold sweat. You try to call your spouse and children but there is no answer. You drive on in numbness. As you round the turn onto your street you realize your worst nightmare: Your home, your neighbors� homes, the whole neighborhood is destroyed. Bomb craters stop you from driving any further so you walk past the piles of rubble and burned out cars, stepping over dead bodies in the street. You stop, recognizing the one wall of your home which partially remains. The rest is in ruins. The bodies you see in the smoke and dust are your family.
Thousands of people around the world have similar � and worse � experiences each year. People who just want to go to work, to pursue their careers or their education. People who just want to raise their families. People who just want to live in peace.
Imagine . . .
a world in which civilians are safe.
Such a world can exist. But it cannot exist until people around the world decide that we have had enough destruction of our cities, towns and villages, schools and hospitals, women and children.
Today, public opinion reluctantly accepts what is commonly known as �collateral damage,� the unintended but frequently foreseen killing of, or harm to, civilians. Today, international law states that the killing of civilians is permissible, as long as the military objective is important enough. In other words, we currently accept grave harm to people who just want to live in peace. Tomorrow, we must not continue to do so.
We must have the courage to say that:
All foreseen harm to civilians is immoral and must be made illegal.
General Plan & Next Steps
as of 19 January 2007Save the Civilians is a long-term campaign proposing changes to international humanitarian law (the law of armed conflict) which will offer more complete protection to civilians in or near zones of armed conflict.Our general plan is to facilitate a meeting of experts in international law and the preparation of a report written by these experts that can be the basis for efforts to persuade government representatives around the world to enter into an international treaty bolstering the concept of �civilian immunity.� We will also work to increase public awareness of the nature of civilian suffering and the need for changes in world opinion.
In January 2007 we began contacting international NGO�s and other experts in international humanitarian law / law of war to seek their involvement in changing the law. Click here for an example of correspondence sent to these experts.
