Dr. Willem Theo Oosterveld, a senior fellow at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, gave a brief comment to Arab News on the legal status of the use of white phosphorus under IHL. Dr. Oosterveld said the deployment of white phosphorus was not explicitly prohibited by the Geneva Conventions. However, he said, under humanitarian law “the use of means and methods of warfare which are of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering is prohibited.”
