Water, Rights, and the Price of War

Water, Rights, and the Price of War

By Paolo Falconio

In southern Iran, amid the rubble left by the latest U.S. bombings, only one wall remains standing. On that wall, a phrase can still be read: “Water is the heartbeat of life; let us not slow it down.” Around it, however, little remains of the storage reservoirs that supplied drinking water to more than twenty thousand people. The target was struck by a laser-guided bomb. Two desalination plants were also hit.

The incident raises questions that go beyond the military dimension. In a region where temperatures exceed 38°C in the shade and can reach far higher levels during the summer, water is not merely a public service: it is an essential condition for survival. Destroying it is not a neutral case of collateral damage. It is a choice with direct and measurable consequences for civilian populations who have no say in the decisions that determine their fate.

International humanitarian law grants special protection to infrastructure indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, particularly water facilities. A structure may lose that protection if it is used for military purposes—a legitimate and necessary provision. However, in the absence of public evidence demonstrating that the targeted facilities were being used for military activities, a legal question remains that is far from marginal. The principles of humanity that began to take shape in the eighteenth century and were later reflected in the first international conventions were not philosophical ornaments; they were an attempt to place limits on the violence of war while protecting civilian populations. Ignoring them selectively is not a tactical concession. It is a structural erosion of the very order that the West has built and from which it still derives much of its legitimacy.

That same week brought another case, geographically distant but legally related. In the United States, controversy erupted over the transfer to the Central African Republic of a group of immigrants from several countries, including Iranian citizens. According to their attorneys, some of those involved already enjoyed specific protections against deportation because of the concrete risk of persecution, torture, or death in their countries of origin. The choice of destination further intensified the controversy: the Central African Republic is one of the most fragile states in the world, marked by chronic violence, political instability, and severe deficiencies in healthcare. The case reopens a question that international refugee law had already addressed through the principle of non-refoulement: it is not enough simply to refrain from returning a person to their country of origin. There is also an obligation not to transfer them to a place where their safety cannot be guaranteed.

It is here that the deepest contradiction emerges. Humanitarian values are a cornerstone of Western ethics and the foundation upon which the West’s credibility as a normative actor rests. Those who value the Atlantic alliance should be the first to demand consistency—not out of idealism, but out of strategic clarity. A West that condemns attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure while simultaneously destroying civilian water facilities elsewhere loses its argument. The policy of double standards is not a pragmatic shortcut; it is a flawed assessment of one’s own strength.

Meanwhile, the economic cost continues to grow. The European Central Bank has announced an increase in interest rates, citing inflationary pressures stemming from international instability. Yet this is inflation driven by supply-side factors, not by excessive consumption. The paradox is well known: in order to combat it, policymakers suppress an already weak demand, effectively shifting the cost of war onto families and businesses in countries that played no role in the strategic decisions that produced it.

The image of the lone wall surviving in the Iranian desert reminds us that contemporary conflicts strike essential infrastructure, test established legal principles, and affect the lives of millions of people far from the front lines. The price of war is measured in the water that no longer flows, in rights that become negotiable, and in the widening gap between proclaimed values and concrete actions.

Yet the most terrible truth is that this is the true face of war. In an age in which war is too often discussed with excessive lightness, the truth can help us understand that the pursuit of peace is never futile, because war ultimately spares no one.

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