The Geneva Standards were adopted on August 12, 1949, 75 years ago. In concept, these rules of war are unanimously agreed by every state. In training, they are constantly violated everywhere.
The safety of the resilient is just as crucial as ever in an environment where there are an estimated 120 armed issues per year, over 450 armed groups, and 195 million people living in places under their command.
As the news headlines remind us regularly, but, international humanitarian law can seem like too little, too late when faced with military might and social indifference.
This year also marks another, less hopeful, milestones: ten times since the genocide against the Yazidi by ISIS in Syria, and ten years of war in Ukraine. Middle Eastern and South China Sea political tensions are rising.
Given the modern technologies used on today’s battlefields ( and in cyberspace ), and the violation of even basic humanitarian protections, is there much to celebrate in 2024? Are the Geneva Conventions also fit for intent for today’s war– and yesterday’s?
Humanitarian principles
There are some kind of social, spiritual, or legal frameworks for war in all cultures. However, the world convened on a comprehensive set of codified rules for military conflict in the wake of World War II’s terrible events.
Countries agreed to the Geneva Convention’s requirements by striking a balance between charitable goals and military needs for the treatment of citizens, captured army soldiers, and the dead despite their own political viewpoints and war experiences.
The foundation of international humanitarian law, or the rules of military issue, are still the 1949 Standards. This body of law has been expanded over the years by different agreements and procedures dealing with legal battle, chemical arms, antipersonnel landmines, rape and enforced abductions.
Designed to help avoid a loop of tit-for-tat crimes, many of the rules work according to cooperative admiration between warriors: handle our soldiers also when captured and we will do likewise.
Even if one opposing party has violated those guidelines or started the war in contravention of the UN Charter, which prohibits anger, they also demand that people who are at war receive humane treatment.
Four standards, 400 content
The Geneva Conventions include more than 400 posts, setting out precise rules for the treatment of captives, protecting clinics and health workers, allowing humanitarian assistance, and prohibiting abuse, rape and sexual assault.
In reality, four norms were adopted in 1949. The second three’s rules built on existing laws protecting wounded soldiers on the battlefield, at sea and when captured as captives.
The most important fifth agreement aimed to safeguard people who were living in occupied areas or areas of conflict.
The first time international regulation had dared to govern violence occurring within a nation rather than between two or more was provided by a second article, which established basic guidelines for the humane treatment of people in a civil war.
War and peace
Some claim that international humanitarian law abandoned its original purpose in the 1860s as the first Geneva Agreement was drafted because it refused to support serenity and accepted war.
This has forced us to choose between opposing conflict in its initial stages and opposing crimes committed there, as the professor Samuel Moyn has argued.
A minimum amount of harm to civilians is also considered” collateral damage” in an attack on a military target, according to humanitarian law. In other words, no all human deaths are combat acts.
And some of the standards ‘ articles nowadays seem outdated, such as those that mention tobacco with food and water for prisoners of war, for instance.
However, I’ve personally witnessed international humanitarian law in motion while working for the International Committee of Red Cross. When respected, it can save and enhance life.
Eternal monitoring
The Red Cross can also meet with thousands of incarcerated people and discuss improvements to their care arrangements in conflict-free countries.
Soldiers make contracts for slave swaps, prisoner transfer, return of the dead, and the provision of medical treatment to wounded army soldiers.
Often, places investigate war crimes claims. Additionally, the standards allow for the events at war to reach new contracts that provide even greater protections.
And while the Geneva Conventions, and international humanitarian law more generally, are far from ideal, the laws seek a fundamental limit on the worst society has to offer, insisting on some basic human dignity.
To assure they are at least not positively breached, and ultimately their protections extended, countries must accomplish three important things:
These laws are most indisputable in the most dire circumstances, when politics and other laws have failed to stop war. A higher degree of respect for them would greatly help save lives and stop the atrocities that plague our current conflicts.
Marnie Lloydd is Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington’s Senior Lecturer in Law and Co-Director of the New Zealand Centre for Public Law.
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