ABSTRACT
The changing nature of modern warfare has proved to be increasingly lethal for the civilian populations of war-affected countries. There has been a steady rise in the proportion of recorded war-related deaths among civilians: from World War I when it was estimated that 5 per cent of casualties were civilian; to World War II when civilians made up 50 per cent of casualties; to Vietnam where civilian casualties exceeded 80 per cent; to a shocking average of around 90 per cent of all war-related casualties today being civilians (Boyden 1994, p.254). Moreover, Nordstrom points out that such alarming statistics are based only on recorded deaths, in reality the number of civilian deaths during war is likely to be significantly higher. She explains:
Such casualties are often lost to formal accounting – partly because they violate the 70,000 treaties existing worldwide, guaranteeing human rights and just war protocols. I have personally witnessed entire towns obliterated during war that were never included in death tolls, women torture-victims dumped at the houses of traditional healers so that they remain invisible to hospital records, and street girls killed or sold into slavery who were never considered casualties of war.
