Below I explain what is the CCW Amended Protocol II, and why people are wondering whether exploding pagers and exploding cell phones violate Protocol II, and hey, just what CCW stands for. The full title of this law is the Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects, which is certainly a mouthful; you can see why people refer to it as just the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons or even just the CCW.
Originally passed in 1980, the CCW contains within it a series of protocols, Protocol II being the “The Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices” (see where this is going?) Protocol II was amended in 1996, hence there is a lot of talk these days about “Amended Protocol II”.
According to the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA), one of the key provisions of Protocol II is that it “Prohibits the use of booby-traps and other devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects, such as children’s toys, specifically designed to contain explosive material.”
Prohibits the use of booby-traps and other devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects.
“Apparently harmless portable object”. You might think that is the very definition of a pager or mobile phone. And from a lay perspective you would, of course, be right. But when is a pager not a pager? When it becomes classified as a weapon (that is gone into in the deep dives to which I link at the end of this article).
The Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons is a treaty, and as such has some force, but not so much force as, say, international criminal law. While there is some debate about this, as far as I see it there is not much that the U.N. can do about parties to the CCW who violate any of the protocols other than to a) censure them, and, if it’s egregious enough, boot them. Oh, plus other countries who are party to the treaty no longer have to respect the treaty with respect to the violating country. There are 127 “high contracting parties” to the CCW, and in particular to Protocol II including, relevantly for the time of this writing, Israel. (“High contracting party” simply means that an authorized representative of the state/country has signed and ratified the treaty on that country’s behalf.)
Now, far greater legal minds than I, minds with expertise in this area, have opined about whether the booby-trapped pagers and how they were used and detonated violate Protocol II and other various international laws and laws of war. So I am going to defer to them and link to them for in-depth analysis. My intention here has been to explain what is Protocol II, as that term is being bandied about a lot in the news and on social media. For in-depth analyses of the issues and questions raised I recommend these following two sources.
Exploding Pagers and the Law by Air Commodore William H. Boothby at West Point
You don’t get much more expert in the law of war than a professor at West Point. Air Commodore William H. Boothby. Commodore Boothby has written an incredibly in-depth piece on whether the exploding pagers violate various international laws.
Law of War Questions Raised by Exploding Pagers in Lebanon by Brian Finucane at Just Security
Brian Finucane is currently a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group, focusing on policies to decrease the United States’ reliance on military tools in foreign affairs, including through legislative reforms of war powers.
Previously he was with the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State, advising the government on legal and policy issues relating to, among other things, counterterrorism and the use of military force.
