Armenia: The human face of war
The ICRC works worldwide to provide humanitarian help for people affected by conflict and armed violence. As Head of the ICRC Delegation to Armenia, one of the issues that Sarah Epprecht addresses is …
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Penal Repression: Punishing War Crimes
Factsheet on how to punish war crimes . In particular, the following questions/topics are addressed: war crimes and the 1949 Geneva Conventions; grave breaches must be punished; violations of …
Activities of the ICRC delegation for Mexico, Central America and Cuba
Content: Who we are Promotion of international law applicable to the protection of persons Political authorities Multilateral organizations Academia Promotion and integration of international law …
Peru: Overcrowding in prisons
Sarita Colonia Prison, Callao district, Lima. A cell designed to hold four people can end up housing 15 inmates. Prisoners who cannot find room in the cell have to sleep on mattresses in the …
Empty chairs in Libya
Picture an empty chair in the middle of a room, in the house of a missing person's family. Picture a child standing in front of the chair, imagining their missing parent, brother or other relative is …
Colombia: A victim of sexual violence suffers in silence
This video tells the story of a woman who was a victim of sexual violence in Nariño department, one of the regions of Colombia where the armed conflict has taken its heaviest toll. In 2013, the ICRC …
Autonomous weaponry and armed conflict
On April 10th 2014, the American Society of Internaitonal Law and the International Law Association organized a joint Conference in Washington DC on autonomous weaponry and armed conflict. The panel …
Colombia: The bravery of Holmes, victim of an explosive device
Losing a foot to an explosive device could have shattered the dreams of Holmes, a young man from Caquetá department in southern Colombia. But today he’s studying at university and making a go of his …
From our archives: The First World War
A town in ruins. There was massive destruction of civilian property: houses, factories, fields, villages – sometimes even whole towns – were obliterated. The catastrophic results for civilians …
Colombia: Mother and son reunited after 15 years
He went to fight for an armed group as a boy; she thought he was dead. More than 10 years later, in prison, he told his story to an ICRC delegate and asked him to trace his family. The painstaking …
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Customary international humanitarian law consists of rules that come from "a general practice accepted as law" and that exist independent of treaty law.