Civilian casualties caused by Russia's missile attacks on Ukrainian cities and Israel's assault on Gaza have raised international condemnation over alleged violations of humanitarian law, raising concerns that legal norms and customary law are being undermined.

And yet, there has been little debate on how the acts in the Ukraine war and Gaza conflict have been undermining humanitarian law, especially from the perspective of security studies.

This is because international law, which humanitarian law falls under, and international politics, which security studies fall under, are highly specialized, making it difficult to rely on the findings of either. As Matthew Evangelista of Cornell University, in New York, and others have long pointed out, the lack of an international legal perspective has been recognized as one of the weaknesses of security studies.