On 10 October 1980, the “United Nations Conference on Prohibitions or Restrictions of Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May be Deemed to be Excessively Injurious or to have Indiscriminate Effects” ended with the adoption by consensus of the following instruments:

– Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons,

– Protocol on Non-Detectable Fragments (Protocol I),

– Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices (Protocol II),

– Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Incendiary Weapons (Protocol III).

After a period spent almost entirely in performing relief work, an activity which takes precedence over everything else during a civil war, the Lebanese Red Cross started, some three years ago, on a new phase development, based on two main activities: stirring the population awareness of the human problems peculiar to Lebanon, and secondly, teaching and training young people. At the same time, the Lebanese National Society naturally continued to carry out its medico-social activities, for the grave incidents which still take place in several parts of the country are but the natural consequences of the conflict which broke out in 1975 and which has not yet been brought to a conclusion.