Foreseeable Harm to Innocents (FHI)

A Doctrinal Framework for the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict

The Core Principle

If you can see them, and you can spare them, you must spare them.

The Problem

Modern warfare has been transformed by intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) technologies that make civilian presence visible in ways earlier generations of lawmakers could not have imagined. Drones, satellites, pattern-of-life analysis, and real-time data fusion mean that military commanders often know - with statistical precision - exactly who is in a building before they strike it. They can see families on screens. They can count children in courtyards. They can predict how many civilians will die.

Yet the legal rules governing armed conflict were designed for a different era - one where commanders genuinely could not know who was below when bombs fell. Those rules focus on intention: as long as a commander did not intend to kill civilians, and the civilian deaths were not "excessive" compared to the military advantage gained, the strike is lawful. The civilians who die are labelled "collateral damage" - regrettable but legally permissible.

The result is a widening gap between what the law promises and what it delivers. In conflicts from Gaza to Ukraine, Yemen to Somalia, civilians are killed in circumstances where their presence was known, their deaths were predicted, and alternatives existed that could have spared them. The law calls these deaths "unintended" and "not excessive." But they were neither unforeseeable nor unavoidable.

The Solution

The Principle of Foreseeable Harm to Innocents (FHI) closes this gap. It does not abolish existing rules or create new law. It articulates what international humanitarian law already requires when properly interpreted for an age of unprecedented surveillance and precision.

FHI introduces a simple but transformative reordering of the legal analysis through an avoidability gate:

1. Can you see them? If civilians are identifiable and their presence is foreseeable, the attack is presumptively prohibited.

2. Can you spare them? Before asking whether civilian deaths are "proportionate," you must first ask whether they are avoidable. Can you strike at a different time, use a different weapon, approach from a different angle, or achieve the objective another way?

3. Only if harm is genuinely unavoidable does the traditional proportionality question arise.

This shifts legal inquiry from the reconstruction of subjective intention—what did the commander hope would happen? - to the verification of objective alternatives: what could the commander have done?

Capacity-Indexed Obligations

FHI's obligations scale with capability. Forces with greater ISR, precision, and analytical capacity bear correspondingly thicker duties to prevent civilian harm. What was infeasible in 1977 may be routine in 2025. A force with advanced surveillance capabilities cannot justify harm on the basis of standards applicable to one operating with minimal situational awareness.

This is not new doctrine - it is the logic already embedded in Article 57 of Additional Protocol I, of the Geneva Convention 1947, which requires "constant care" of, and "all feasible precautions" to protect, civilians. The drafters deliberately built a rule that grows with capability. FHI simply insists that we apply it.

What FHI Is Not

It is not pacifism. FHI does not prohibit military operations. It prohibits avoidable civilian deaths. Legitimate military objectives remain lawful.

It is not new law. FHI articulates what existing humanitarian law already requires when properly interpreted for modern capabilities. It clarifies; it does not invent.

It is not impossible. Modern militaries already have the technology to identify civilians and choose alternatives. FHI requires them to use capabilities they already possess.

It does not eliminate proportionality. Proportionality still applies - but only after avoidability has been exhausted.

It does not criminalise mistakes. Genuine errors, made in good faith with reasonable verification, do not attract liability. FHI targets recklessness and wilful blindness, not the fog of war.

Intellectual Foundations

FHI synthesises insights from three bodies of scholarship:

• Jens David Ohlin's rigorous defence of the intent/foresight distinction, which demonstrates why foreseeable harm cannot coherently be resolved by reconstructing intent—and therefore invites inquiry elsewhere in the doctrinal structure

• Neta Crawford's empirical analysis of systemic collateral damage, which exposes the accountability gap that intent-focused frameworks produce

• Henry Shue's insistence that legal obligation must be indexed to operational capacity - that what the law may demand depends on what actors can in fact do

FHI integrates these insights into a single doctrinal mechanism: the avoidability gate.

Scholarly Endorsement

The framework has received sustained engagement from leading scholars in international ethics and humanitarian law:

Professor Henry Shue (Oxford) identified its central advance as the insistence that avoidability must be assessed prior to proportionality balancing, noting that prevailing approaches "plunge right into proportionality weighing," whereas FHI's "most valuable point is that the avoidability requirement comes first." He concluded: "Your way is radically better."

Professor Matthew Evangelista (Cornell) wrote that "a number of us - Henry Shue and others and I - have studied Neil's proposal and find it promising," characterising it as "a kind of intermediate mechanism (an 'avoidability gate') between the systemic-level enabling of atrocity... and the rules of engagement." He described the treatment of human shields as "as good as it can be, given the inherent conundrum."

The Document Suite

The FHI framework comprises a comprehensive set of documents designed for different audiences and purposes:

• The Girl at the Wall - a comparison of what happens in the movie Eye in the Sky, and how it might have turned out differently, if FHI had been in force

• Declaration on Foreseeable Harm to Innocents -The core 19-article legal instrument

• Explanatory Report - Article-by-article commentary and interpretation

• Concept Paper -Strategic overview for policymakers and advocates

• Policy Brief - Concise summary for government and NGO decision-makers

• Model Implementation Guidelines -Practical guidance for military doctrine and ROE

• Academic Article - scholarly treatment submitted to the Journal of Conflict and Security Law

• FHI in a Nutshell -Two-page accessible summary

• Media Pack - Key quotes and talking points for press engagement

Why This Matters Now

Recent national security strategies - including the 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy - signal expanded operational latitude, anticipatory action, and greater tolerance for incidental civilian risk. These developments make FHI more urgent, not less.

The Principle of Foreseeable Harm to Innocents responds to a simple moral intuition:

If we can foresee harm, and we can prevent it, we must prevent it.

This is not a radical proposition. It is what the law of armed conflict has always promised. FHI simply holds modern militaries to that promise.

About the Author

Neil Cameron studied international humanitarian law under Professor Colonel Gerald Draper at Sussex University and was called to the Bar in 1978. After more than thirty years in legal technology, he returned to scholarly work on civilian protection. He will present the FHI framework at Cornell University's Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies in March 2026.

Contact: ncameron@msn.com

The Declaration on Foreseeable Harm to Innocents and its supporting documents are available for download. States, NGOs, scholars, and institutions are invited to endorse and promote FHI as a vital step toward more humane conduct of hostilities.