Gazans return home to scenes of utter desolation
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 …
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 …
The ICRC has a delegation in Kiev, offices in Donetsk, Kharkiv and Odessa and sub-offices in Severodonetsk and Mariupol. We have over 50 staff in the country, and are currently sending further …
The Akanin'ny Marary ("Home for the Sick") Centre in Madagascar is located in Ambositra, a town in the Amoron'i Mania region, Fianarantsoa province. It treats people with leprosy, tuberculosis and …
Country-wide intensification of hostilities has claimed the lives of thousands and worsened access to water, food, and basic health-care services for tens of thousands of people. Over three million …
The cities of Dohuk and Khanik are overwhelmed with families who have fled the fighting in Sinjar and elsewhere in northern Iraq. Many of them spent days without food and water on Mount Sinjar before …
1864: Protecting wounded and sick soldiers Ottoman Empire, Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78. First-aid post for wounded soldiers. The 1864 Geneva Convention stipulated that wounded soldiers and those …
Try one of the following resources:
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.