This article explores the methodology and main findings of field studies conducted for the ICRC's Health Care in Danger project in Afghanistan, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 2010 and 2013. It discusses some of the actions that the ICRC takes in its health programmes to facilitate access to health care, and its approach to promoting better respect for the laws protecting it. It then suggests what more needs to be done to curb the violence.

The rising pressures of urbanization in fragile and conflict-affected countries have increased concerns about the vulnerability of cities to armed threats. Changes in the character of armed conflict during the twenty-first century and its effects on cities in the developing world have exposed gaps in the planning and practice of peace and security, which retain a “nation-State bias” that circumvents local perspectives and agencies. Whereas full-scale use of military power in cities remains as destructive today as it has ever been, international organizations such as the United Nations have called for changed approaches to State tactics in urban areas. Mechanisms designed to prevent conflict or to help countries transition back to peace are particularly key if massive human and economic damages are to be avoided in a world of increasingly dense cities. Another key concern is the vulnerability of developing-world cities to low-intensity, if protracted, forms of violence by non-State actors, particularly in post-conflict contexts. Conflict prevention and peace transitions in cities (including mainstream international tools such as peacekeeping, stability and reconstruction aid) are affected by specifically urban pressures linked to rising populations, migration, ethnic tensions, institutional deterioration and the weakening of urban services. Therefore, the physical and social characteristics of cities interact with military and developmental policies in unique ways. An understanding of key local actors, services and institutions affecting urban drivers of armed conflict – an urban strategic environment – can help practitioners and strategists to craft comprehensive policies.

This article examines the progress of the humanitarian initiative to reframe the nuclear weapons discourse internationally. The initiative seeks to shift debate away from theories of strategic stability and towards a focus on the impact of nuclear weapons themselves. This effort has now gathered significant support at an international level, and its implications are increasingly recognized by both nuclear-armed and non-nuclear-armed States. The initiative has been underpinned by the deliberate logic of humanitarian disarmament. A treaty banning nuclear weapons, around which momentum is gathering, would be an achievable, legally coherent and logical next step developing from the initiative.

Despite the growing attention being paid to “victims” in the framework of criminal proceedings, this attention does not seem to be meeting their needs under either national criminal justice systems or the international regime. In the latter, the difficulties encountered by the victims are aggravated by factors specifically arising from the prosecution and punishment of mass crimes at international level. This has prompted the authors to point out that the prime purpose of criminal law is to convict or acquit the accused, and to suggest that the task of attending to the victims should perhaps be left to other entities.

On the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of St. Petersburg, the International Review of the Red Cross devoted to this important first document of the law of war an article examining the relation between the notion of the “legitimate object” of war as defined in the Declaration and the means of warfare used, whose lawfulness was declared to be limited by their conformance to that legitimate object and by their necessity. Since 1868 the law of international armed conflicts has been supplemented by Protocol I additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which enlarged on the central point of the Preamble to the Declaration of 1868 — i.e. the concept of “maux superflus” (“superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering”); although it was not formulated as such until 1899 in Article 23 e) of the Regulations respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, it may, as we shall demonstrate, be traced back to the Declaration's Preamble. Protocol I broadened the concept's scope of application to include methods of warfare, but it also and above all introduced a new rule of considerable import by narrowing the definition of military objectives that may lawfully be attacked.

This article examines the relationship between Hinduism and war and the extent to which the fundamental concepts of humanitarian law are recognized in Hinduism. After reviewing the sources of Hinduism, it considers the permissibility and types of war in ancient India, explores the rules of warfare and investigates whether war was a matter of course or regarded as a ruler's last choice. It then sets out the humanitarian principles that already applied at that time. Finally, it considers how far the concepts of Hinduism have helped in the development of international humanitarian law.

The duty to rescue persons in distress at sea is a fundamental rule of international law. It has been incorporated in international treaties and forms the content of a norm of customary international law. It applies both during peacetime and during wartime, albeit with the necessary adjustments to take into account the different circumstances. States are also under the duty to provide search and rescue services. This article discusses the content and limitations of these provisions and assesses their potential to ensure the protection of human lives at sea. Furthermore, the article suggests that reference to the right to life, as protected in international human rights law, may be useful in further safeguarding human life and ensuring compliance by States with their duties.

Pour I'auteur, le principe de l'humanité inclut la possibilité et la volonté de réduire la capacité de se livrer à la violence armée et d'en limiter les effets sur la sécurité et la santé. L'humanité ainsi interprétée englobe l'humanitarisme, la moralité, le développement, les droits de l'homme et la sécurité humaine. À ce titre, elle est une des principales sources du droit international en général et du droit international humanitaire en particulier. Dans cet article, l'auteur décrit les conséquences du lien étroit qui existe entre humanité et droit international.

Facilitating critical reflection on the words and concepts used to write policy enables practitioners to avoid unconsciously reproducing the different forms of oppression and exclusion that their policies seek to overcome. In this article, the author provides an analysis of Chapter 5.10 of the United Nations Integrated Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Standards, arguing that policy makers, scholars, students and practitioners cannot avoid making and/or changing meaning through their well-meaning interventions, but that this need not lead to political or practical inertia.

The question of whether non-state armed groups could and should provide reparations to their victims has been largely overlooked. This article explores this gap, with a particular focus on symbolic reparations, such as acknowledgement of the truth and apologies. It argues that, while the question is fraught with legal, conceptual, and practical difficulties, there are some circumstances in which armed groups are capable of providing measures of reparations to their victims. The article identifies the issue of attacks on informers as one potential area for armed groups to provide such measures, and demonstrates that in a few cases armed groups have already engaged in actions that could be seen as analogous to symbolic reparations. The article's main case study is provided by recent actions by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in relation to its past attacks against suspected informers.

Ever since the Security Council decided for the first time to send armed forces into a troubled area, the question has remained open as to whether such peace-keeping or peace-enforcement contingents were required to comply with international humanitarian law when they had to use force. The ICRC has always argued in favour of the applicability of that body of law, in particular the 1949 Geneva Conventions, to operations conducted under the control of the United Nations. Under the title « Observance by United Nations forces of international humanitarian law» the United Nations Secretary-General has now issued a set of fundamental principles and rules of international humanitarian law applicable to forces conducting operations under United Nations command and control. The text is given below.

Since the early 1970s, the steady deterioration of the natural environment has given rise to widespread awareness of man's destructive impact on nature.

This awareness of the vital importance for humanity of a healthy environment and the determined efforts of numerous environmental protection agencies have led over the years to the adoption of a large body of laws for the protection and preservation of the natural environment.

Civilians play an increasingly important and complex role in armed conflicts, both as victims and as perpetrators. While this overall trend towards ‘civilianization’ encompasses all types of present-day conflicts, it is twofold: it takes on a very different nature in high-technology warfare than in the context of low-technology combats that are typical of many civil wars. This article explores these two trends, shows how they merge in asymmetric warfare and outlines key implications for international stabilization and state-building efforts. The present-day conflict landscape is presented from a security policy point of view, placing the ongoing debates on the civilian participation in hostilities in a broader strategic context.

This case study of a network of evangelical churches in Lebanon, based on data collected during an evaluation in 2014, presents a critique of common understandings about the humanitarian principle of impartiality, and questions assumptions about the compatibility between religious fervour and humanitarian values. Churches attempting to respect impartiality while implementing a food aid project for Syrian refugees have sought to mitigate potential problems through relationship-building and promotion of human dignity in order to ensure needs-responsiveness. Though many Lebanese Evangelical Christians do continue to engage in evangelistic activity, they benefit from strong community ties and demonstrate a high level of sensitivity to their beneficiaries' urgent needs as well as their sense of dignity.

In recent years, and especially in 1992, the number of United Nations peace-keeping operations has increased at an unprecedented rate. Thirteen such operations were carried out between 1945 and 1987, whereas fourteen have been initiated since 1987. In 1992 alone, three new operations were started — in Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia and Somalia — and 1993 brought another, in Mozambique. The number of United Nations personnel deployed in the field quadrupled during 1992 to more than 50,000 persons, with a total budget of some $2,500 million at the end of the year.

The humanitarian enterprise has grown in size and complexity over the past generation. Modern systems of scrutiny and accountability demand a higher level of accountability than ever before, both to programme beneficiaries and to donors. This, we believe, puts pressure on the system to become more professional and on aid workers to consider the establishment of a formal profession of humanitarian aid. This article reports on research carried out to test this hypothesis and on an approach that is presently being used to establish the necessary components of a professional system.

More than one billion people nowadays live as slum-dwellers in informal settlements characterized by vulnerability and poverty. The ‘normal’ situation in slums can, in several ways, be classified as a ‘crisis’, and violence levels often contribute to situations akin to ‘armed conflict’. The plight of these people should be the concern of humanitarian organizations, which should consequently widen their spectrum and address vulnerability to disasters and to violence as mutually reinforcing. Applying the ‘human security’ framework and ‘livelihoods’ approach can enable them to take a proactive role. However, particularly for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, a greater involvement also poses several challenges.

On 27 June 1986, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) gave judgment in the case concerning Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua. The case, involving Nicaragua against the United States of America, is remarkable in many respects, and so is the judgment. I should like to single out two special features: it deals with a situation of armed conflict, and it mentions the Red Cross.