Update 12:10 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The US intends to negotiate a legally binding protocol on cluster munitions under the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW), says Harold Hongju Koh, legal advisor to the US Department of State.
Missing persons, working with families: Peru (image: © 2009 B Heger / ICRC)
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Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – When the second world war came to an end in 1945 it was clear to witnesses of the more than six years of massive abuses of human rights that the world needed to banish the idea of “total war” and find a way to protect non-combatant victims of war. The four Geneva Conventions were signed 12 August 1949 in Geneva, sixty years ago today, cementing and extending earlier conventions to protect military people, prisoners, and civilian populations in times of war. They became the legal basis of humanitarian protection during war, around the world. Jakob Kellenberger, the president of the ICRC (International Red Cross) in Geneva, an organization whose history is closely intertwined with that of the Conventions, called on governments to better respect the treaties. “The lack of respect for existing rules remains, as ever, the main challenge,” he told a gathering in Geneva. The ICRC is the custodian of the Conventions.
The Geneva Conventions, with additional Protocols to the Conventions, are in fact a series of treaties, ratified by 194 countries, making them the most widely embraced treaties after the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Bosnia, 10 years later: identifying bones (image: © 2009 B Schaeffer / ICRC)
”They aimed to abolish the concept of ‘total war’ as witnessed during the second world war by establishing a legal framework to place limits on how war is waged. Today, they continue to constitute the bedrock of international humanitarian law, or IHL, and are among the most important treaties governing the protection of victims of armed conflict,” Christine Beerli, vice-president of the ICRC (International Red Cross) told a group in London in July.
