Interview with the head of the ICRC's arms unit, Kathleen Lawand, on the humanitarian consequences and legal implications of using explosive weapons in populated areas. She emphasizes the need for …
The seven "Fundamental Principles of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement" are the expression of a set of values and experiences distilled from over a century and a half of …
Speech given by Peter Maurer, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross, at the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, Turkey. Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen, We have heard the …
Gérard is 13 years old. He was separated from his parents and then his brother when a wave of violence swept through Burundi in April 2015. He is now a refugee in Rwanda. I used sit alone and wonder …
It has been almost a year since Dunia Gul, a farmer and father of 12 children, fled with his family from Abdul-khil in eastern Afghanistan to Achin Bazaar, an hour and a half by car from Jalalabad. …
"The possibility of something new in our past." This is how one participant described an ICRC gathering in São Paolo for relatives of people who disappeared during the military regime in Brazil …
Checkpoints have become an integral part of life for citizens in the front-line town of Gorlovka, in eastern Ukraine, two years into a conflict that has torn families apart and etched a line through …
On 19 May 2016, the ICRC launched Humanitarian Law & Policy , a digital forum for those concerned with how to better protect and assist people affected by conflict and violence. Powered by the …
It is 5 P.M. on a windy spring afternoon in Jerusalem. Despite the drastic drop in temperatures, in the East side of the city, more than 250 people headed to the Palestinian National Theatre to …
In April 2016, head of ICRC arms unit Kathleen Lawand was invited to London to give the keynote address at the annual meeting of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC) Summit, …
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Created in 1863, the ICRC library, alongside the ICRC archives, provides an indispensable documentary reference on the organization itself and international humanitarian law.
International humanitarian law is based on a number of treaties, in particular the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols, and a series of other instruments.
Customary international humanitarian law consists of rules that come from "a general practice accepted as law" and that exist independent of treaty law.
