Are Exploding Pagers Legal Under International Law?

This newsletter explains why human rights are important, even though especially with regard to Israel human rights activists are so often wrong.

According to news reports several people have been killed and thousands injured as pagers exploded throughout Lebanon. Authorities there claim this was an Israeli attack. What is the status of exploding pagers in international law?

Under the laws of armed combat, this would be called a booby trap. Additional Protocol II of the Geneva Conventions defines a booby trap as, “an apparently harmless portable object which is specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material and to detonate when it is disturbed or approached.” While not prohibited, booby traps are severely restricted. This is because the main purpose of the Geneva Conventions is to limit the destruction caused by war. In order for soldiers not to blow up everything they see, they must be genuinely reassured that some objects they encounter are not potential threats. Booby traps undermine this confidence.

Here is a summary of where the Geneva Conventions say booby traps cannot be placed: By sick, wounded, or dead persons, medical facilities, anything designed primarily to be used for children, food and drink, religious objects, historic monuments and works of art, or upon animals. Pagers and phones do not seem to be on this list, so this attack would not be categorically prohibited.

Superfluous Injury or Unnecessary Suffering

An additional restriction is that booby traps much not be designed to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering. This comes against the background of grotesque booby traps thought up throughout history, such as the punji traps used as recently as by the Viet Cong in the Vietnam War. These were pits covered by leaves and brush, with barbed, feces-covered spikes on the bottom that victims would fall onto where they were impaled by puncture wounds that led to infection. No one should underestimate the human capability to devise sinister methods of causing pain.

It's unclear if exploding pagers should be regarded like this. Evidently some victims were blinded as the device exploded close to their face, and many others suffered burns. A separate protocol forbids weapons designed to cause blindness, as blindness is considered to be by definition unnecessary and excessive suffering. It’s possible that blindness could have been an expected result of detonating these pagers, if the pagers were designed to go off when held close to the face. It’s also possible that’s not the case, and the incidences of blindness are unintentional, similar to how any conventional weapon can cause blindness if shrapnel gets in the eyes. More information on the design of the pagers and the scope of the injuries they caused is needed to decide.

Discriminate Between Military and Civilians

All military attacks must discriminate between military targets and civilians. A problem with booby traps is that since they are left unattended they are often unable to do so.

Booby trapping a shipment of pagers being sent to Lebanon, on the theory that some Hezbollah fighters will also get them, would clearly be a failure to discriminate. This is analogous to dropping bombs at random in the hopes that some land on enemy troops.

However, if there was a way to booby trap a batch of pagers being acquired by Hezbollah specifically for use by its fighters this would then be a targeted attack. Even if some civilians might for whatever unfortunate reason wind up with some, the attack would still be legal. This is on the condition that the number of civilians affected is low enough that the civilian harm is not disproportionate to the military benefit gained by attacking Hezbollah with the exploding pagers. While Lebanese officials have already claimed this attack is a war crime because it harmed civilians, more facts are needed before drawing such a conclusion.

We still don’t know how the pagers were made to explode, how they were targeted or selected, or even for sure that Israel was responsible. This attack raises many questions, with answers yet to come.