In times of armed conflict a civilian is any person who is not a combatant. The term is used officially to describe those who do not belong to the military. It is often used as a slang term to identify people who are not members of a particular profession or occupation, espcially by Law Enforcement agencies, that use a rank structure to Military organizations. It should be noted that the US Department of Defense officially defines US Law Enforcement agencies to be Civilian agencies. (see link below) A combatant is a person who takes a direct part in the hostilities of an armed conflict who upon capture qualifies for prisoner of war under the Third Geneva Convention (GCIII). ...
The term is used in this context by models and in the performing arts, recently becoming more widely used as a result of the New York Theater Company production, "The Civilians". [citation needed] Art modeling involves the posing of a model to as an aid in creating a work of art. ...
Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Wiktionary is a Wikimedia Foundation project intended to be a free wiki dictionary (hence: Wiktionary) (including thesaurus and lexicon) in every language. ... The two parts of the laws of war: Law concerning acceptable practices while engaged in war, like the Geneva Conventions, is called Jus in bello; while law concerning allowable justifications for armed force is called Jus ad bellum. ... The Law of Land Warfare is that part of the Laws of War applicable to the conduct of warfare on land and to relationships between belligerents and neutral States. ... The term unlawful combatant (also unlawful enemy combatant or unprivileged combatant/belligerent) is a term used by the Bush administration to label certain persons as outside of the protection of the Geneva Conventions; those that have such protections are known as lawful combatants. ...
However, civilianproperty may be destroyed in pursuit of a military objective; civilianproperty may be seized for military use; and collateral damage is an accepted part of war.
It is sometimes argued that the division between civilian and military and the abhorrence towards attacks on civilians is a reflection of Western attitudes to war, and that other societies do not make such distinctions but find other aspects of Western-style warfare abhorrent (such as strategic bombing).