For many injured and sick people in Bangui, access to medical care has become very difficult. Julien Columeau, an ICRC delegate who spent four months in the country, describes the extreme …
Haiyan, the world’s most powerful typhoon to make landfall, not only destroyed lives and livelihoods but left millions of houses in central Philippines in ruins. More than eight months after the …
The Gaza Strip now has less than 20 percent of the limited electricity supplies it had before the conflict began. Sara Badiei, an ICRC water engineer in Gaza, describes the devastating knock-on …
As a result of a military operation in North Waziristan, in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced to various districts in neighbouring Khyber …
During a brief ceasefire, Gazan residents return to find their homes reduced to dust and rubble. Heavy shelling of Shijaia in Gaza City has left scenes of appalling destruction. For residents …
Peter Maurer has begun a three-day mission to see for himself the human cost of the on-going conflict. …
The conflict in northern Iraq is making it difficult for patients, staff and supplies to reach hospitals. Hundred of thousands have fled to safer areas. ICRC delegate Saleh Dabbakeh reports on the …
The food security situation is deteriorating in South Sudan and Somalia. Mathias Frese, head of relief for the ICRC in Eastern Africa, takes stock of the factors that have led to too many people …
"It was one morning in May 2014, the day fighting started again between the Malian army and armed groups," he explained. The people of Kidal had left their homes to stock up on supplies during a …
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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.
