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Adopted by the 50th World Medical Assembly
Ottawa, Canada, October 1998
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.
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