Initiated in the form of the first Geneva Convention of 1864, contemporary humanitarian law has evolved in stages, all too often after the events for which they were sorely needed, to meet the evergrowing need for humanitarian aid resulting from developments in weaponry and new types of conflict. The following are the main treaties in chronological order of adoption:
1864 Geneva Convention for the amelioration of the condition of the wounded in armies in the field
1868 Declaration of St. Petersburg (prohibiting the use of certain projectiles in wartime)
1899 The Hague Conventions respecting the laws and customs of war on land and the adaptation to maritime warfare of the principles of the 1864 Geneva Convention
1906 Review and development of the 1864 Geneva Convention
1907 Review of The Hague Conventions of 1899 and adoption of new Conventions
1925 Geneva Protocol for the prohibition of the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases and of bacteriological methods of warfare
1929 Two Geneva Conventions:
- Review and development of the 1906 Geneva Convention
- Geneva Convention relating to the treatment of prisoners of war (new)
1949 Four Geneva Conventions:
- I Amelioration of the condition of the wounded and sick in armed forces in the field
- II Amelioration of the condition of wounded, sick and shipwrecked members of armed forces at sea
- III Treatment of prisoners of war
- IV Protection of civilian persons in time of war (new)
1954 The Hague Convention for the protection of cultural property in the event of armed conflict
1972 Convention on the prohibition of the development, production and stockpiling of bacteriological (biological) and toxic weapons and on their destruction
1977 Two Protocols additional to the four 1949 Geneva Conventions, which strengthen the protection of victims of international (Protocol I) and non-international (Protocol II) armed conflicts
1980 Convention on prohibitions or restrictions on the use of certain conventional weapons which may be deemed to be excessively injurious or to have indiscriminate effects (CCW), which includes:
- the Protocol (I) on non-detectable fragments
- the Protocol (II) on prohibitions or restrictions on the use of mines, booby traps and other devices
- the Protocol (III) on prohibitions or restrictions on the use of incendiary weapons
1993 Convention on the prohibition of the development, production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons and on their destruction
1995 Protocol relating to blinding laser weapons (Protocol IV [new] to the 1980 Convention)
1996 Revised Protocol on prohibitions or restrictions on the use of mines, booby traps and other devices (Protocol II [revised] to the 1980 Convention)
1997 Convention on the prohibition of the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of anti-personnel mines and on their destruction
1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court
1999 Protocol to the 1954 Convention on cultural property
2000 Optional Protocol to the Convention on the rights of the child on the involvement of children in armed conflict
2001 Amendment to Article I of the CCW
Prompted by events
This list clearly shows that some armed conflicts have had a more or less immediate impact on the development of humanitarian law. For example:
The First World War (1914-1918) witnessed the use of methods of warfare that were, when not completely new, at least deployed on an unprecedented scale. These included poison gas, the first aerial bombardments and the capture of hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war. The treaties of 1925 and 1929 were a response to those developments.
The Second World War (1939-1945) saw civilians and military personnel killed in equal numbers, as against a ratio of 1:10 in the First World War. In 1949 the international community responded to those tragic figures, and more particularly to the terrible effects the war had on civilians, by revising the Conventions then in force and adopting a new instrument: the Fourth Geneva Convention for the protection of civilians.
Later, in 1977, the Additional Protocols were a response to the effects in human terms of wars of national liberation, which the 1949 Conventions only partially covered.
The origins of the 1949 Conventions
In 1874 a Diplomatic Conference, convened in Brussels at the initiative of Tsar Alexander II of Russia, adopted an International Declaration on the laws and customs of war. The text was not ratified, however, because some governments present were reluctant to be bound by a treaty. Even so, the Brussels draft marked an important stage in the codification of the laws of war.
In 1934, the 15th International Conference of the Red Cross met in Tokyo and approved the text of an International Convention on the condition and protection of civilians of enemy nationality who are on territory belonging to or occupied by a belligerent, drafted by the ICRC. No action was taken on that text either, the governments refusing to convene a diplomatic conference to decide on its adoption. As a result, the Tokyo draft was not applied during the Second World War, with the consequences we all know.
The origins of the 1977 Protocols
The 1949 Geneva Conventions marked a major advance in the development of humanitarian law. After decolonization, however, the new States found it difficult to be bound by a set of rules which they themselves had not helped to prepare. What is more, the treaty rules on the conduct of hostilities had not evolved since the Hague treaties of 1907. Since revising the Geneva Conventions might have jeopardized some of the advances made in 1949, it was decided to strengthen protection for the victims of armed conflict by adopting new texts in the form of Protocols additional to the Geneva Conventions .
The Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977 contain almost 600 articles and are the main instruments of IHL.
