ICRC chief: War rules are fraying as conflicts hit a post-WWII high

Spoljaric told France 24's François Picard that the International Committee of the Red Cross is currently classifying the highest number of armed conflicts since the Second World War. Her argument rests on a line drawn back in 1949, when the Geneva Conventions set out that even wartime has limits. War may be a constant in human history, she said, but brutality is not — "barbarity, is not a human condition."

The pattern she describes runs from Gaza to Ukraine, Sudan and Yemen: a looser reading of international humanitarian law in which civilian infrastructure gets hit, whole populations are pushed out, and suffering itself becomes a tool of war. "So humans are instrumentalized in the pursuit of military objectives," she said.

Drones and artificial intelligence have made things worse rather than better, according to Spoljaric. The technologies sold as sharper, more precise warfare have not delivered the promised protection for civilians, she argued, and instead shrink the chances of getting out of harm's way. Autonomous weapons that pick human targets on their own, she added, raise urgent legal and ethical questions.

Diplomacy, meanwhile, has been pushed aside as conflicts spill across borders and humanitarian needs outrun the resources available to meet them. Spoljaric's point is political as much as humanitarian: aid cannot stand in for stopping wars in the first place, and protecting civilians cannot rest on goodwill.

She puts the responsibility on governments and ordinary people alike, urging citizens to "demand that your government prioritise the rules of war." Her closing warning: wars now reach people's doorsteps far faster than they did in years past.