Article 75 of Protocol I additional to the Geneva Conventions lays down with admirable clarity and concision that even in time of war, or rather especially in time of war, justice must be dispassionate. How does international humanitarian law promote this end? What can the International Committee of the Red Cross, an independent humanitarian institution, do in the harsh reality of an armed conflict towards maintaining respect for the fundamental judicial guarantees protecting persons accused of crimes, some of them particularly abhorrent?

This article will first consider the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols in relation to judicial procedure in time of armed conflicts. Thereafter it will examine the legal bases legitimizing international scrutiny of penal proceedings instituted against persons protected by humanitarian law. The next and principal part of the article will indicate how ICRC delegates appointed to monitor trials as observers do their job. In conclusion the article will try to evaluate this little-known aspect of the ICRC's work of protection.

One has only to glance at a newspaper to realize that much of today's world is in a state of upheaval and permanent crisis. Many countries are affected by internal conflicts of one sort or another, making the social stability usually enjoyed in North America and Western Europe a rare privilege. These internal conflicts constitute fertile breeding grounds for the most arbitrary violence against defenceless victims and for increasingly frequent violations of the fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual, whether a national of the country concerned or an alien.

The dissemination of international humanitarian law is more than an obligation laid down by the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols for all the States party to them. To spread such knowledge is to play a vital part — if not the most important part of all — in limiting the suffering caused by armed conflict.

Dissemination is the spreading of knowledge of international humanitarian law (IHL) and of the Fundamental Principles and ideals of the Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement so that they may be understood, accepted and respected; it is also intended to facilitate humanitarian work.

International humanitarian law is the body of rules (the four 1949 Geneva Conventions and their two Additional Protocols of 1977) governing the rights and obligations of the belligerents in war.

In signing and later ratifying the Conventions and their Protocols, the States party thereto undertake not only to respect and ensure respect for humanitarian law in all circumstances, but also to disseminate the relevant texts as widely as possible in time of peace as in time of war, among both the armed forces and police and the civilian population. This is stipulated in Articles 47, 48, 127 and 144 of the four Geneva Conventions respectively, which also require States to include the study of humanitarian law in programmes of military instruction. Moreover, States are duty-bound to incorporate the provisions of humanitarian law in their internal legislation.

Recently, a number of armed conflicts have broken out in Europe or not far away: armed conflicts between States — the Gulf War, for example, authorized by UN Security Council resolution 678 — or wars of national liberation, such as the armed conflict in Yugoslavia or the revolt in Kurdistan. Whether or not the use of force was legitimate in each of these situations, and even though the classic notion of a “just war” no longer exists, all parties to any armed conflict have a moral, legal and humanitarian obligation to abide by the laws and customs of war in the conduct of hostilities and indeed throughout the entire conflict.

At its meeting of 19 March 1992, the Assembly of the International Committee of the Red Cross elected Mr. Jacques Forster and Dr. Peter Fuchs to the ICRC's seven-member Executive Board. Dr. Fuchs was appointed Director General and will take up his duties on 1 May 1992.

Mr. Cornelio Sommaruga, President of the ICRC, has conducted a number of missions since the beginning of the year. They have taken him to the United States, to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, and to Germany, Portugal and Norway.