Syrian airstrikes legality ‘problematic’?

The use of the evolving doctrine of ‘humanitarian intervention’ to legally justify airstrikes against Syria is ‘problematic’ but ‘persuasive’, human rights lawyer Geoffrey Bindman QC has said.

Writing in this week’s NLJ, Bindman explores the legality of last week’s airstrikes by the US, Britain and France on Syria following reports of chemical warfare at Douma.

While the strikes were neither authorised by the UN Security Council nor launched in self-defence, the government’s defence of the legality of its actions ‘cannot be lightly dismissed’, he says.

The government’s justification relies on the repeated use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government against its own people. ‘Persuasively it claims that without forcible action of the kind taken the likelihood of the Syrian regime using chemical weapons again would be increased,’ he says.

‘This would lead to further suffering and loss of civilian life. The proportionality of the attacks is justified by their being targeted only on sites associated specifically with the development and storage of chemical weapons.’