القاعدة ذات الصلة
Colombia
Practice Relating to Rule 8. Definition of Military Objectives
Colombia’s Military Manual (1999) states:
Objects that are normally of a civilian nature can, according to the military situation, become military objectives (for example, a house, a bridge tactically used by defenders, and therefore a target for the attackers). … Military objectives are those “objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offer a definite military advantage”.
Colombia, Derechos Humanos & Derecho Internacional Humanitario – Manual de Instrucción de la Guía de Conducta para el Soldado e Infante de Marina, Ministerio de Defensa Nacional, Oficina de Derechos Humanos, Fuerzas Militares de Colombia, Santafé de Bogotá, 1999, pp. 16 and 17.
The Report on the Practice of Colombia notes that the government and the Defensoría del Pueblo (Ombudsman’s Office) have adopted the definition of military objectives laid down in Article 52 of the 1977 Additional Protocol I in order to draw a distinction between military objectives and civilian objects.
Report on the Practice of Colombia, 1998, Chapter 1.3, referring to Defensoría del Pueblo, Cuarto informe anual del defensor del pueblo al congreso de Colombia, Santafé de Bogotá, September 1997, pp. 64–65.
According to Colombia’s Instructors’ Manual (1999), combatants are military objectives.
Colombia, Derechos Humanos & Derecho Internacional Humanitario – Manual de Instrucción de la Guía de Conducta para el Soldado e Infante de Marina, Ministerio de Defensa Nacional, Oficina de Derechos Humanos, Fuerzas Militares de Colombia, Santafé de Bogotá, 1999, p. 15.
Colombia’s Instructors’ Manual (1999) states that “a military objective remains a military objective even if civilians are inside it. Civilians within or in the immediate vicinity of a military objective share the risk to which the objective is exposed.”
Colombia, Derechos Humanos & Derecho Internacional Humanitario – Manual de Instrucción de la Guía de Conducta para el Soldado e Infante de Marina, Ministerio de Defensa Nacional, Oficina de Derechos Humanos, Fuerzas Militares de Colombia, Santafé de Bogotá, 1999, p. 18.
