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Part V Key Rights in Times of Armed Conflict, Ch.15 The Right to Life

William A. Schabas

From: The Oxford Handbook of International Law in Armed Conflict

Edited By: Andrew Clapham, Paola Gaeta, Tom Haeck (Assistant Editor), Alice Priddy (Assistant Editor)

From: Oxford Public International Law (http://opil.ouplaw.com). (c) Oxford University Press, 2023. All Rights Reserved.date: 07 December 2023

Subject(s):
Capital punishment — Weapons, nuclear — Prisoners of war — Ius ad bellum — Humanitarian intervention
It is estimated that the two great wars of the twentieth century were responsible for the deaths of somewhere between 65 and 90 million persons. That is an average of between 17,599 and 24,200 deaths on every single day of the two conflicts. It should be borne in mind that the total population of the world at the time was about 2 billion; it is 3.5 times that number today. A conflict of similar scale today would bring deaths of about 60,000 to 75,000 people each day. If nothing else, these staggering numbers show how much more civilized a place the world has...
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