The armed conflicts which are causing bloodshed in a number of regions of the world have led special emphasis to be laid on one of the fundamental problems of humanitarian action in times of war: how to ensure respect for emblems providing protection for the victims of violence and for those who come to their assistance.

By adopting the theme “Encounter between two worlds” for the celebration marking the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's first voyage to the Americas, the international community was seeking to highlight what the Old World and the New World have in common and what can bring the peoples on either side of the Atlantic closer together. Such concern is understandable in a community engaged in a ceaseless quest for a new world order based on dialogue and harmony.

Humanitarian issues have hardly ever before been given so much publicity by debates over what some people have described as the “droit” or “devoir d'ingérence”, which is then linked with the notion of the right to assistance. At the various levels at which the problem is perceived, the public at large, the media and legal experts have become involved in lively and even heated debates.

The condition of our planet today is, to say the least, a cause for great concern. As recently stated by Ms. Gro Harlem Brundtland, Prime Minister of Norway and Chairman of the World Commission on Environment and Development: “We are living in an historic transitional period in which awareness of the conflict between human activities and environmental constraints is literally exploding”. A decisive battle is now under way to preserve a truly endangered planet from the threat of extinction.

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.

The postponement of the 26th International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, which was to have taken place in Budapest, has already given rise to a number of analyses, and explanations have been furnished to those who were to have taken part.

Since the 1991 war between Iraq and the coalition powers there has been much interest in the question of how to limit the environmental damage of warfare. In addressing that question, it is necessary to look at the events of the war itself, and to draw some conclusions from that experience as well as from other experience and from more normative approaches.

These Regulations (hereinafter “the Regulations”) stipulate the various ways the emblem of the red cross or the red crescent on a white ground may be used by the National Societies, in keeping with the provisions of international humanitarian law and the Fundamental Principles of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement (hereinafter “the Movement”).

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.

While States ever more ardently defend their sovereignty, which does little to improve international cooperation, and as the application of humanitarian law in armed conflicts declines, men of good will throughout the world are doing their utmost to reverse these trends. The century now drawing to a close has witnessed a plethora of private initiatives taken in an effort to temper reasons of State by more humane considerations. Many non-governmental organizations, some symbolically styling themselves “without borders”, have taken over where governments can no longer cope, organizing relief, combating drought, preserving the environment or improving sanitary conditions. These voluntary organizations whose vocation is to serve mankind are without question pursuing humanitarian aims as defined in the first Red Cross principle, which is “to prevent and alleviate human suffering wherever it may be found”, and whose “purpose is to protect life and health and to ensure respect for the human being”. Emergency medical assistance organizations, stating that they wish to remain independent of the powers that be, demanding freedom of action to help all victims and encouraged by the example set by Henry Dunant and the ICRC, do not hesitate to claim that their activities fall within the terms of an as yet unwritten body of law entitling them to bring assistance to needy civilian communities, even against the will of the government. Indeed, they believe that receiving proper care is one of the basic human rights of the individual, wheresoever and whosoever he may be. Such basic rights know no national boundary. While awaiting recognition of their activities, the duty to intervene is created by moral considerations.

On 26 November 1991, the Standing Commission of the Red Cross and Red Crescent announced that it had been forced to postpone the 26th International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, owing to the risk “that political disagreement between governments on participation could jeopardize its outcome” (see IRRC No. 285, November–December 1991, p. 634).

Pain and suffering are as old as mankind, but so are compassion and clemency. In whatever mythology, the god of war is not always cruel, vengeful and ferocious. There have always been good Samaritans — even when the parable was first told it was spoken in the past tense. The history of humanitarianism runs parallel to that of mankind. Cruelty and kindness are opposites but inseparable.

The problem of protecting the environment in time of armed conflict has given rise to numerous discussions and major studies over the last two years.

In our opinion, there are at least two distinct reasons for the keen interest in this question. In the first place it is quite logically a response to the increasingly energetic efforts to improve, both nationally and internationally, the protection of the environment in peacetime. Secondly, this interest reflects the fears engendered during and after the 1990–1991 Gulf war that set the Middle East ablaze.

A few hours before leaving for Sarajevo last May, Frédéric Maurice let us have the final pages of an article for the Review. He wanted to mull over his text and polish it, but fate decided otherwise, since he lost his life in tragic circumstances on 19 May 1992, on the outskirts of Sarajevo.

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.

The Council of Delegates held its biennial session in Budapest from 28 to 30 November 1991. More than 120 National Societies were represented. The delegations of the ICRC and the Federation were led by their respective Presidents, Mr. Cornelio Sommaruga and Mr. Mario Villarroel Lander.

The ethical and legal problems raised by war loom large in the thinking of the theologians and jurists of Spain's Golden Age. In their reflections and pronouncements on these problems, however, they were not starting from nothing. They had before them a large body of teachings, mostly dating from the Middle Ages. An accurate assessment of their role in this field must therefore begin by recalling those mediaeval teachings on war. We shall thus start with an outline of those teachings, before moving on to consider how they were assimilated and modified by the Spanish authors of the sixteenth century.

Bearing in mind the plethora of rules applicable in time of war, jurists define international law rather elaborately as follows:

“International humanitarian law applicable in armed conflict means international rules, established by treaties or custom, which are specifically intended to solve humanitarian problems directly arising from international or non-international armed conflicts and which, for humanitarian reasons, limit the right of Parties to a conflict to use the methods and means of warfare of their choice or protect persons and property that are, or may be, affected by conflict”.

To crown the feature on humanitarian assistance published in the May-June 1992 issue of the Review, we now present the text of a lecture given by ICRC President Cornelio Sommaruga in several European cities in recent months, among them Freiburg im Breisgau, Como, Oslo and Paris.

In recent years a number of institutions, in particular non-governmental organizations, have brought their attention to bear on the plight of people displaced within national borders. Prompted by their interest in the protection of human rights, and in keeping with the charitable nature of their work, they have focused the international spotlight on the situation of those who leave their homes in a context marked by political violence. The international community has thus been made aware of two things simultaneously: first, that countries affected by internal armed conflicts have a large number of displaced persons, and second, that armed clashes often result in large-scale population movements. The displacement of minority communities can even become a deliberate policy.