[JURIST] Both Russia and Georgia must investigate possible violations of the laws of war [HRW press release] during and after the week-long South Ossetia conflict [BBC backgrounder] in August 2008, according to a report [text, PDF] released Friday by Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website]. The report, entitled "Up in Flames: Humanitarian Law Violations in the Conflict Over South Ossetia," alleges that Russian, Georgian, and South Ossetian militias violated the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 [materials] and its First Additional Protocol of 1977 [text], to which both Georgia and Russia are parties. The report further claims that Georgia violated the Second Additional Protocol of 1977 [text] to the Geneva Conventions, to which it is a party. The alleged violations involve attacks on civilians and civilian targets, use of cluster bombs [JURIST news archive], poor treatment of prisoners of war and detained civilians, and the displacement of Georgian civilians. The report says that these violations flow from:

the indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks by both Georgian and Russian forces, ... the South Ossetian forces' campaign of deliberate and systematic destruction of certain ethnic Georgian villages in South Ossetia [and from] Russia's failure to ensure public order and safety in areas of Georgia that were under its effective control.