Archived: WMA Resolution on The SIrUS Project: “Towards a Determination of which Weapons cause ‘Superfluous Injury or Unnecessary Suffering'”
Adopted by the 50th World Medical Assembly Ottawa, Canada, October 1998
and rescinded and archived by the 59th WMA General Assembly, Seoul, Korea, October 2008
RECOGNISING THAT:
In its Statement on Weapons and their Relation to Life and Health (17.130) the WMA supported efforts which would define “objective criteria which would measure the effects of current and future weapons, and which could be used to stop the development, manufacturing, sale and use of weapons”.
AND THAT:
A panel of experts working with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has proposed such a set of criteria in the report “The SIrUS Project: Towards a definition of which weapons cause ‘superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering'”.
THE WORLD MEDICAL ASSOCIATION:
- congratulates the ICRC and the panel of experts on this work;
- calls on National Medical Associations formally to endorse The SIrUS Project in order to contribute medical knowledge for the practical enforcement of international conventions concerning the limitation of the effects of weapons; and
- insists that from a medical point of view neither “necessary injury” nor “necessary suffering” inflicted by weapons is acceptable.