Protection of the Environment in Armed Conflicts From the Perspective of the International Law Commission and the International Committee of the Red Cross

The environment is the silent victim of war, which, its destruction, brings a flood of catastrophes to human beings and human societies. Developments in science have made this issue even more apparent, and hence the question of protection of the environment in relation to Armed Conflicts has repeatedly been at the forefront of the concerns of environmentalists as well as International Humanitarian Law scholars. In this respect, in 2019 the UN International Law Commission, with the approach of codifying and progressively developing International Law, published the first reading of its draft principles on protection of the environment in relation to Armed Conflicts. Moreover, in 2020 the International Committee of the Red Cross has updated its 1994 guidelines to take a fresh look at the rules of International Law, and in particular Humanitarian Law in this area. The present article, has focused on the outcomes of these two important projects with a comparative approach and seeks to answer the question of the extent to which new researches conducted by the ILC and the ICRC have been able to achieve their goals of creating a more effective legal protection system for the environment in times of Armed Conflicts. The findings of the article show that the innovations contained in the above-mentioned documents can normatively provide more protection for environment in Armed Conflicts.