Sri Lanka: The tale of a team
In November 2014, a team of eight young field officers embarked on a journey across Sri Lanka. Their mission was to locate 392 families (out of 16,000) whose loved ones went missing during the …
In November 2014, a team of eight young field officers embarked on a journey across Sri Lanka. Their mission was to locate 392 families (out of 16,000) whose loved ones went missing during the …
Between 1986 and 2006, some 75,000 people were abducted in northern Uganda. The fate of several thousand remains unknown. The ICRC estimate that as many as 10,000 may still be missing. Their families …
Disappearances are a reality, whether linked to war, migration or disasters. They happen for different reasons, but the suffering of the families is the same. So is the need for documentation to …
Violence affecting Africa's Lake Chad region has forced thousands of people to flee their homes. The ICRC and the Cameroon Red Cross recently distributed food and household items to displaced persons …
After fleeing Syria Jamil and his family thought they were safe in Lebanon until an unexploded bomb from the 2006 conflict with Israel shattered their lives Article published in The Guardian on 11 …
Almost two decades after the signing of the 1994 cease-fire agreement regarding the Nagorny Karabakh conflict, the humanitarian situation remains difficult for communities on both sides of the …
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Almost 4,600 people are still unaccounted for, more than two decades after the signing of a ceasefire agreement in the Nagorny Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia. The ICRC is working …
The conflict in Yemen is causing immense suffering. Thousands of people have been killed, hundreds of thousands more have been forced to flee their homes. There have been attacks on medical …
Meet Dr Masao Tomonaga, Honorary Director of the Japanese Red Cross Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Hospital. Dr Tomonaga has cared for leukaemia patients, including atomic bomb survivors, and focused on how …
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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.