Ebook: Derecho de guerra y alteridad

Defining the rights of alterity or otherness is a fundamental pursuit for the culture of tolerance
and the protection of human rights. The International Red Cross has made the proposition that
laws of war have always existed in practice and delimited these rights, and as such can be considered
an absolute minimal conceptual framework for their defense. Analyzing an historical example from
Mesoamerica the author contrasts this legal framework with actual practice through several examples.
The study of those norms that specify causes that legitimize armed conflict is distinguished from
those rules that control combatant behavior during the fighting, and are both compared with the corresponding
European legal tradition. The discussion makes the proposition that in all the studied cases
the laws of war can be considered, as Danilo Zolo has written, a “victor’s justice”. The protection of
the rights of alterity was not and is not the purpose of these rules, and therefore they should not be employed
for this purpose, which would be better served by strengthening international instruments
make them more effective and efficient means.