"I have no doubt that we will succeed in using solar energy. If sunbeams were a weapon of war, we would have had solar energy centuries ago," George Porter said. John F. Kennedy believed that because of the science of weapons and war, we have all become one world and one human race with a common destiny. The potential use of WMDs is a serious issue and an ongoing threat. The question of the justification for the use of WMDs is a common topic of humanitarian law and criminal law. Humanitarian law (when to wage war, how to conduct it, types of weapons permitted) somewhere reaches criminal law (when one party to a war violates the rules of war and uses prohibited weapons, for example WMDs).
The term "weapons of mass destruction" was first used in 1937 by William Cosmo Lang (a Scottish Angelic priest) when he expressed his sympathy for the people of Spain and China in a speech over the oppression of the fascists and the Japanese. But neither he nor many after him explained exactly what such weapons meant and which weapons were destructive. WMDs are all weapons that target and destroy more than one person, organism, place or body, such as chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons. Each of these weapons, if used, exceeds the limits of their effects on the individual and at once kills, distorts and destroys dozens of people, buildings, agricultural and natural land. That is why there are international treaties and measures to prohibit and reduce their use, as they exceed the criteria of proportionality no matter how they are used. Because according to humanitarian law and criminal law, the type of weapon and the nature of the targets must be compatible; WMDs are always above expectation, larger and more destructive than the targets themselves may require.
The general view of nuclear weapons is that their use is not explicitly prohibited by international law, as the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a 1996 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice state, especially in self-defense in extreme situations where the very existence of a state is in danger. However, its use goes against the principles of humanitarian law, as it goes against the principle of separating civilians from military targets and would also have unnecessary consequences. However, the manufacture, development, stockpiling and use of chemical, biological, toxic and suffocating weapons are prohibited in several international treaties and measures. Chemical weapons are banned by the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention and biological weapons by the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. According to the participants of the conferences, the two treaties cover individual responsibility in addition to the responsibility of states, and individuals accused of using them will be punished. That is the case in the criminal law of many countries, and liability is regulated by law. Internationally, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Article 8, paragraph 2) prohibits the use of poisons and poisonous weapons, as well as poisonous and asphyxiating gases or any similar liquids, substances or materials and are considered war crimes. However, the Statute does not directly prohibit or name "chemical" and "biological" weapons. According to experts, the provisions of the Statute could include such weapons, but it would be better to amend them and ban them directly. The reason for not mentioning chemical and biological weapons is due to pressure from nuclear-weapon states. Because these states did not want, did not allow and did not believe that the use of nuclear weapons is a crime and prohibited, so the chemical and biological weapons have been mentioned in this unclear manner.
Nuclear weapons, since they are newer than other types of WMDs, they are less used. After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II (August 1945), which killed at least 150,000 and at most 230,000 people, it was no longer used. Biological weapons, too, since their effects are often combined with the effects of natural factors, are not easy to identify and it is not clear when they were deployed. But chemical weapons have been used more often and are easier to identify; from World War I to the Iraq-Iran war, it has been used several times. In 1988, the cities of Halabja in the Kurdistan Region and Sardasht in East Kurdistan were attacked by chemical weapons of the Ba'ath and Saddam regime, killing at least 5000 people and wounding thousands more. In addition, according to a report by Human Rights Watch, during the Anfal genocidal campaign in 1988, the Iraqi government used chemical weapons against the people of the Kurdistan Region about forty times.