Structural Humanitarian Harm
The humanitarian harm from explosive weapons in populated areas is not random; it follows a predictable pattern that can be foreseen and prevented. Explosive weapons with wide area effects spread blast and fragmentation beyond a single point of impact, and in cities those effects intersect by default with civilians and the infrastructure they rely on to survive.
Urban life depends on interdependent systems:
Electricity powers hospitals, water treatment, and communications
Transport networks sustain food supply and emergency response
Water and sanitation services prevent disease and support daily life
A major report on “Urban Services During Protracted Armed Conflict” by the ICRC describes how repeated damage in these systems produces a vicious cycle in which essential services deteriorate and can approach collapse.
When explosive weapons damage or destroy any part of this web, the effects reverberate across the wider system, creating prolonged disruption that outlasts any single attack. UN reports on the protection of civilians and disarmament work have repeatedly documented this pattern across electricity, water, health care, and other critical services in urban warfare.
International humanitarian law regulates individual attacks through the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precautions, but these rules work case by case. Urban collapse, by contrast, emerges cumulatively through repeated strikes, infrastructure degradation, and the gradual failure of services, which recent UN reporting has warned continues even when parties claim formal compliance with the law.
How the harm spreads in practice
Civilian harm from explosive weapons in populated areas reaches far beyond those killed and injured by the blast. The destruction of essential civilian infrastructure sets off cascading effects across interconnected sectors that sustain civilian life.
The 51-day Israeli military operation in Gaza in 2014 illustrates how this works across eight sectors. The patterns documented then have since been intensified beyond comparison. In Gaza after October 2023, every sector named below has been damaged at a scale and pace that the 2014 evidence base cannot capture. The 2014 numbers are no longer the extreme; they are the baseline. What has happened since is the maximised version of the same pattern, used as a method of committing genocide.
Healthcare. Damage to hospitals, ambulances, and medical supply chains, the killing or injuring of health workers, and disruption of the power supply needed to run life-saving equipment. In Gaza in 2014, UN reports described medical services as "nearing collapse."
Housing and displacement. The destruction of housing leaves people homeless and drives mass displacement, with consequences for security, sanitation, privacy, and family life. In Gaza in 2014, the destruction of housing units rendered 108,000 people homeless. About 28% of the population was internally displaced.
Food. Destruction of food production facilities, killing of farm animals, damage to transport hubs used for food importation, and contamination of cultivable land by Explosive Remnants of War. These disruptions reduce food availability and drive up prices, with many people made more vulnerable to malnutrition, disease, and famine. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, almost the entire population of Gaza became dependent on food aid following the use of explosive weapons in 2014.
Education. Damage to or destruction of education facilities, the killing or injuring of educators and students, and the displacement of children disrupts schooling from primary level through to university and produces effects that compound over years.
Water and sanitation. Damaged or destroyed water supply, treatment, and sanitation systems can deprive entire populations of safe water, increase the risk of infectious disease, and raise the cost of living for those who can still access water at all.
Electricity. Damage to electricity infrastructure compounds harm across every other sector, since healthcare, water treatment, food storage, and communications all depend on power. Electricity is the system whose failure spreads fastest.
Transport. Destruction of bridges and roads cuts populations off from exit routes, impedes the delivery of vital provisions, and obstructs humanitarian access to those who need it most.
Sustainable development. Beyond the immediate humanitarian effects, the use of explosive weapons in populated areas is a major obstacle to long-term recovery. UN Secretary-General António Guterres and the former President of the International Committee of the Red Cross Peter Maurer have noted that "the massive destruction caused by armed conflicts in cities can set development indexes back by years and even decades." Reconstruction also stretches government and donor budgets, absorbing scarce resources that would otherwise support development.
What this means for the framework that was supposed to prevent it is taken up under the limits of good faith on Public Conscience. When explosive weapons in populated areas are deployed not despite their predictable civilian harm but because of it, the gap between what international law promises and what civilians on the ground actually experience becomes the question.
A political declaration on explosive weapons in populated areas, adopted in 2022and now endorsed by 91 states, explicitly recognises these reverberating effects and commits armed forces to review policies and practices to restrict or refrain from the use of explosive weapons in populated areas.
Preventing urban collapse requires deliberate policy choices that address the interaction between explosive force and populated environments, not only narrow assessments of individual targets.
Next step: Explore why challenging the normalisation of bombing cities is essential.