On Wednesday October 7th I attended the Rose Cafe featuring Professor Jens David Ohlin on “What should you know about international law?”  This was a really interesting talk.  We began the discussion with a talk about the current situation the US is facing with the accidental bombing of a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan.  This is a really messy situation because hospitals are considered safe zones in a war, and technically it’s a war crime to bomb such places.  The group that ran the hospital, Doctors Without Borders, is calling for the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission to be activated in order to declare this incident a war crime.  President Obama has apologized for the mistake, but it is still unclear whether or not the military was aware that the building was a hospital before approving the attack.

Professor Ohlin gave us a pretty in depth analysis on the implications that this could have for the US.  I found it surprising that there are certain technicalities that must be addressed when considering what acts of violence can be declared a war crime.  I found the definition of collateral damage to be interesting, since it is pretty vague to declare how many people it takes for a catastrophic event to be collateral damage or not.

Unfortunately I couldn’t stay for the event in it’s entirety (I have a class that starts at 7:30pm), but I’m glad that I was able to stay for at least half of the discussion.