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Australian Red Cross leadership in the promotion of international humanitarian law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 September 2015

Tim McCormack
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Abstract

Editor's note: In this Opinion Note, Tim McCormack highlights the Australian experience of setting up and developing an IHL programme domestically as an example of how IHL can be disseminated and promoted at the national level. The Australian experience is a great success story and can serve as an example for others seeking to do the same.

Type
Integrating and implementing the law – the mandate and role of different actors
Information
International Review of the Red Cross , Volume 96 , Issue 895-896: Generating respect for the law , December 2014 , pp. 969 - 986
Copyright
Copyright © icrc 2015 

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References

1 Information provided by the editorial team of the International Review of the Red Cross.

2 Out of the top twenty institutional users of the site, between 2011 and the end of July 2014, over 23% of full-text views (ie., views of the articles in full) came from Australian universities. From January to July 2014, over 24% of abstract views came from Australian universities, while over 20% of full-text views by frequent institutional users during that period came from Australian universities.

3 Statistics available at: www.worldatlas.com/aatlas/populations/ctypopls.htm (all internet references were accessed in April 2015).

4 Australian War Memorial statistics are available at: www.awm.gov.au/atwar/ww1/.

5 Australian Army, “Victoria Cross”, available at: www.army.gov.au/Our-history/Traditions/Victoria-Cross.

6 See Australian War Memorial, “Private John Simpson Kirkpatrick”, available at: www.awm.gov.au/people/P10675912/.

7 See Australian War Memorial, “Biographical Note: Sir (Ernest) Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlap”, available at: www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/dunlop/bio/.

8 See Australian War Memorial, “Major General Peter John Cosgrove”, available at: www.awm.gov.au/people/P10676762/#biography.

9 Lady Helen Hermione Blackwood was the eldest daughter and second child of Lord Dufferin (later the first Marquis of Dufferin and Ava), a professional diplomat who served in a number of senior posts including as Viceroy of India (1884–1888). Lady Helen married Sir Ronald Munro-Ferguson, who was appointed sixth governor general of Australia in 1914. For more detailed information, see Melanie Oppenheimer, “Lady Helen Munro-Ferguson and the Australian Red Cross: Vice-Regal Leader and Internationalist in the early Twentieth Century”, Founders, Firsts and Feminists: Women Leaders in Twentieth Century Australia, eScholarship Research Centre, University of Melbourne, 2011, available at: www.womenaustralia.info/leaders/fff/pdfs/ferguson.pdf.

10 Sir Ronald and Lady Helen Munro-Ferguson's home was in Kircaldy, Fifeshire.

11 Melanie Oppenheimer, The Power of Humanity: 100 Years of Australian Red Cross, HarperCollins Australia, Sydney, 2014, p. 44, Table 21.

12 Using the Reserve Bank of Australia's Pre-Decimal Inflation Calculator, available at: www.rba.gov.au/calculator/annualPreDecimal.html. On an equivalent per capita basis, today's Australian population of just under 24 million would need to donate almost AU$8 billion to match the generosity of the Australian people during the Great War of 1914–1918. (Australia's population today is 5.33 times the 1914 population of 4.5 million; AU$1.5 billion × 5.33 = AU$7.995 billion.)

13 Australian War Memorial statistics available at: www.awm.gov.au/atwar/ww1/.

14 See ICRC, “Henry Dunant medals awarded”, News Release, 30 November 2003, available at: www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/misc/5ttb2c.htm.

15 For more information on the Australian Red Cross Heritage Collection, see its website at: www.redcross.org.au/heritage-collection.aspx.

16 For more on the flow-on effect of this changing reality, see, for example, McCormack, Tim, “The Contribution of the International Criminal Court to Increasing Respect for International Humanitarian Law”, University of Tasmania Law Review, Vol. 27, No. 1, 2009, pp. 22–46Google Scholar.

17 See Australia in ICRC, “Treaties and States Parties to Such Treaties”, Database, available at: www.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/vwTreatiesByCountrySelected.xsp?xp_countrySelected=AU.

18 The ADF Military Law Centre was established in 2000 to oversee the specialist graduate training of ADF legal officers in core subject areas including military operations law, and training has continued since then. More information is available at: www.defence.gov.au/legal/mlc.html#jolt.

19 This author teaches IHL every second year at the University of Tasmania Law School's summer school in Hobart, for example.

20 More information available at: http://law.anu.edu.au/masters-program/military-law-program.

21 Details of the volumes in the IHL Series are available at: www.brill.com/publications/international-humanitarian-law-series.

22 See Helen Durham and Tracey Gurd (eds), Listening to the Silences: Women and War, Martinus Nijhoff, Leiden and Boston, MA, 2005; Bruce Oswald, Helen Durham and Adrian Bates (eds), Documents on the Law of UN Peace Operations, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010; Ian Henderson, The Contemporary Law of Targeting, Martinus Nijhoff, Leiden and Boston, MA, 2009; Alison Duxbury and Mathew Groves (eds), Military Justice in the Modern Age, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, forthcoming 2015; Yuki Tanaka, Tim McCormack and Gerry Simpson (eds), Beyond Victor's Justice? The Tokyo Trial Revisited, Martinus Nijhoff, Leiden and Boston, MA, 2011 (also translated and published in Japanese by Otsuki Shoten, 2013, and currently in translation for publication in Chinese).

23 Very little has been published about these trials and they remain virtually unknown in Australia, let alone elsewhere, despite the fact that the trial transcripts are accessible through the National Archives of Australia. This project has been undertaken with Australian Research Council funding in collaboration with the Australian War Memorial and with the Legal Division of the Department of Defence. The publication of the report series will render the primary Australian trial material much more accessible and may also inspire colleagues in other Allied nations to undertake similarly comprehensive and systematic studies of their own national post-World War II trials. See http://apcml.org/post-wwii-war-crimes-trials for more information.

24 Minister for Foreign Affairs, Attorney General, “Australia Votes for International Criminal Court”, Joint Media Release, 18 July 1998, available at: http://foreignminister.gov.au/releases/1998/fa096a_98.html.

25 The story of how Australia only deposited its instrument of ratification to the Rome Statute at the UN Treaties Secretariat on the morning of 1 July 2002 – the last opportunity for Australia to be counted amongst the original States party to the Statute – is too long and too complicated to be told here. For a detailed account, see The Hon. David Harper, “Australia's Road to Ratification of the International Criminal Court”, International Humanitarian Law Magazine, Vol. 1, 2014, pp. 26–27.

26 See Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, “Report 45: The Statute of the International Criminal Court”, May 2002, available at: www.iccnow.org/documents/AustraliaICCReport45.pdf. The JSCOT Report is replete with references to Australian Red Cross submissions to the Committee, both written and oral. Of the eleven recommendations in the JSCOT Report, six are direct adoptions from the wording of Australian Red Cross submissions and an additional two are based on Australian Red Cross submissions. It is impossible to read the Report objectively and miss the significance of Australian Red Cross influence on the JSCOT process. This view was confirmed to me in person by the new chair of the Committee, Julie Bishop (now the Australian foreign minister). After Australian ratification of the Statute was announced, Ms Bishop thanked the author profusely for the contribution that the Australian Red Cross had made to her committee's deliberations.

27 ICRC, above note 17.

28 For more information on the work of the Centre, see its website at: www.apcml.org.