If the subject covered by medical law must be stated, it is easy to say that it is the practice of medicine. This, the work of the doctor, should be defined by the jurist. The doctor in the first place is he who cures. It is an axiom that the purpose of medicine is to protect and preserve human life as far as possible. Confronted daily by the suffering and death of his neighbours, the doctor, nolens volens, finds himself as a privileged technician at the centre of a problem which it would be illusory to ignore.

Notwithstanding the volume reached by the Geneva Conventions in 1949, they do not cover the whole field of human misfortunes. It is now more than twenty years since they were drafted. Moreover, although Geneva Law was developed in detail in 1949, The Hague Law, on the contrary, which deals more with the regulation of hostilities and of the utilization of weapons, goes back to 1907, when bomber aircraft had not yet come into existence.

Exchange of prisoners of war.—On 31 January 1971, the 37 Saudi and 24 South Yemeni prisoners of war captured during border incidents in November 1969 were repatriated under the auspices of the ICRC.

Two aircraft took the former prisoners, accompanied by ICRC delegates, from Riyadh and Aden to Cairo where the exchange took place.

On 14 May 1969, the International Committee of the Red Cross, had signed an agreement with the European Economic Community (EEC), under which the latter was to make available various kinds of cereals for the assistance programme in aid of the victims of the Nigeria conflict. After the cessation of hostilities in Nigeria, the relief action was terminated, leaving a surplus of 12,671 tons of cereals.

The Neutral Commission appointed by the ICRC to decide on applications by Polish victims of pseudo-medical experiments in Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War met from 7 to 9 January 1971 at ICRC headquarters in Geneva. It consisted of Mr. W. Lenoir, President, a judge of the Geneva Court of Justice, Dr. S. Mutrux, assistant director of the Bel-Air psychiatric clinic in Geneva, and Dr. P. Magnenat, professor and assistant at the Nestlé Hospital university clinic in Lausanne.

In its desire to spread as much as possible knowledge of the Geneva Conventions among nursing personnel, the ICRC has published a booklet entitled Rights and Duties of Nurses under the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949. It is available in a pocketsize edition, bound in a plastic cover, and has been reprinted several times since it came out in July 1969. Already 17,345 copies have been sold: 3,421 in French, 7,236 in German, 3,980 in English, and 2,708 in Spanish.

The two principal tasks pursued by the Central Tracing Agency at the ICRC in Geneva are to maintain links between prisoners and their families and to trace persons who have disappeared or have been separated from each other as a consequence of various events (international conflicts, civil wars, internal disturbances).

In 1970, the ICRC, through its delegates in Israel and the occupied territories as well as those in Arab countries, continued its activities consistent with the Geneva Conventions. Their tasks consisted essentially in visiting civilian and military prisoners, in delivering family messages, in organizing the re-uniting of members of families that had been separated and in tracing missing persons.

On several occasions, International Review has mentioned the efforts of the International Committee of the Red Cross to disseminate knowledge of the principles of the Geneva Conventions in schools, through the publication of a textbook “The Red Cross and My Country” with its complement the “Teacher's Manual”. It is highly desirable that these booklets, edited and illustrated by the ICRC, should be made known and disseminated as widely as possible.