On Sunday, the fighting in Syria reached its capital of Damascus, with reports of street fighting in two neighborhoods and smoke from an explosion seen climbing over the skyline. The blood-stained uprising has occurred for more 16 months and has captured more than 10,000 lives. The International Committee of the Red Cross is now calling the uprising a civil war, which could have significant consequences for the future of the conflict. The Red Cross has three main criteria it uses to determine whether a country is in civil war. The Red Cross looks at the length of time the conflict is occurring, the intensity of fighting, and the level of organization of rebel forces. In Syria’s case, they determined the fighting has overflowed beyond the original hotspots if Idlib, Hama, and Homs and is therefore a nationwide civil war.
Declaring the Syrian uprising as a civil war means that both sides are now held to international humanitarian laws, known as the rules of war as dictated by the Geneva Convention. Under these rules of war, anyone who commits attacks on civilians can be charged with war crimes. The rules also protect prisoners of war, forbid torture, and say the wounded must receive treatment.
