Remarks by George H. Aldrich

Abstract

It is apparent that the laws of war (by which I mean both the law protecting prisoners, sick and wounded, and civilians under the control of a belligerent on the one hand, and the law governing the conduct of hostilities on the other) are in large part old and in considerable part obsolete. The. Geneva Conventions of 1949, the most recent major international instruments in diis field, cover the protection of prisoners of war, the sick and wounded, and civilians in occupied territory. But they reflect the experience of World War II, and their applicability to more recent types of warfare is not always easy. Civil wars, mixed civil and international conflicts, and guerrilla warfare in general all raise problems under those conventions. Moreover, all too often nations refuse to apply the conventions in situations where they clearly should be applied. Attempts to justify such refusals are often based on differences between the conflicts presently encountered and those for which the conventions were supposedly adopted. Other aspects of the laws of war, except for the use of poison gas and bacteriological weapons (which were the subjects of the 1925 Geneva Gas Protocol), and the protection of cultural property (the subject of a 1954 Convention), have been left untouched since the Hague Conventions of 1907. The expansion of military objectives and changes in weaponry and fire power have increased many fold the vulnerability of noncombatants. The law has not developed apace.