L'apparence d'être plusieurs fois séculaire qu'ont les termes ius ad bellum et ius in bello, favorisée par les mirages de l'auguste solennité du latin, est trompeuse. En réalité ces termes n'apparaissent qu'à l'époque de la Société des Nations; ils ne s'imposent comme lieu commun dans la doctrine et la pratique qu'après la Seconde Guerre mondiale, et plus précisément à l'extrême fin des années quarante. L'objet des quelques lignes qui suivent est d'en retracer l'émergence.

Tel est le texte de l'article 34 de la Convention de Genève du 12 août 1949 relative à la protection des personnes civiles en temps de guerre. Si cet article est le plus court de tous ceux que la Conférence diplomatique a élaborés, il en est peu dont l'importance soit aussi grande; il met fin à une pratique qui répugne profondément à tout homme de cœur et il constitue un progrès remarquable dans le domaine du droit de la guerre.

The termination of captivity for reasons of health is one of the rights of prisoners of war stipulated by the Geneva Conventions.

Article 109 of the Third Convention lays down that Parties to the conflict are bound to send back to their own country, regardless of number or rank, seriously wounded and seriously sick prisoners of war.

The same article stipulates that the belligerent Parties shall endeavour to make arrangements for the “accommodation in neutral countries”, as a subsidiary solution, of all cases where captivity should be terminated for humanitarian reasons, but where, for military motives, the States concerned are unable to agree to repatriation. We are here above all thinking of aged prisoners, of those who have undergone a long period of captivity or of those whose mental health has deteriorated.

The international community recently realized that certain types of emergency assistance could have negative effects on the still to come development phases. In that context, a theme has been brought under the limelight: the “emergency-development continuum”, underlying the need to design the activities in time of crisis taking into account the following stages.

This Protocol relates to the use on land of the mines, booby-traps and other devices, defined herein, including mines laid to interdict beaches, waterway crossings or river crossings, but does not apply to the use of anti-ship mines at sea or in inland waterways.

In the history of humankind, no matter how far back we look into the past, peaceful relations between people and nations have always been the ideal, and yet this history abounds in wars and bloodshed. The documentary evidence, oral tradition and the mute testimony of archaeological sites tell an incontrovertible tale of man's cruelty and violence against his fellow man. Nevertheless, manifestations of compassion, mercy and mutual aid have a no less ancient record. Peace and war, goodneighbourly attitudes and aggression, brutality and humanity exist side by side in the contemporary world as well.

The current initiative on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons has offered States the opportunity to reinvigorate the disarmament debate. While Africa has taken this opportunity to engage on nuclear disarmament, the impact of its efforts remains to be seen. The purpose of this article is to recall the value of African engagement, and to identify the important role that South Africa could play in leading the African continent in its call for a world free of nuclear weapons.

This article examines how the protection of migrants, refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) is spoken about and framed. Today it is evident that the dominant responses of sovereign States to each of these groups is heavily reliant on the language of security and (de)securitization, and this article openly conceptualizes ongoing attempts to protect migrants, refugees and IDPs as a series of overlapping (de)securitized “games”. At least three arguments follow from this claim. First, adopting this approach serves as a reminder that the ways in which different groups of people are spoken about often constitutes a dividing line between life and death. Second, the language games of (de)securitization are not identical when it comes to protecting different groups. Third, using securitization as the theoretical point of departure provides a timely reminder that none of the three categorizations listed above is guaranteed to apply. On the contrary, the adoption of each linguistic label – migrant, refugee, IDP – is subject to and dependent upon audience acceptance. Remembering the latter dimension is imperative to fully comprehend the ongoing contestations and countermoves in response to people moving in search of security. By way of conclusion, the article contends that far more attention must be paid to broader understandings of acceptance and love to ensure the protection of migrants, refugees and IDPs.

To understand how war is perceived and how it has evolved over time, we must first choose the right agent to study: one that is at once involved in the bellicosity, and yet keeps its distance. Such an agent will be better placed to maintain an objective and rational view of developments. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) would seem to fit the bill. As a humanitarian organization that has been working with the victims of armed conflict for more than 153 years, the ICRC has plenty of experience of war, yet it preserves its ability to interpret critically in its capacity as non-belligerent. It is therefore in a position to grasp the evolution of mankind's oldest activity over one and a half centuries – a period during which warfare has undergone incredible and deadly transformations in conjunction with technological breakthroughs and the rise of extremist political ideologies. On top of this, the ICRC was itself, in its early days, made up of people who had experienced war in one way or another. Of the five members who decided to found the organization in February 1863, three had personally experienced armed violence to varying degrees. This fact also made the nascent organization uniquely entitled to voice its views on a subject of which it had empirical experience.

This Opinion Note continues the discussion started in Antonio Donini and Daniel Maxwell's “From Face-to-Face to Face-to-Screen: Remote Management, Effectiveness and Accountability of Humanitarian Action in Insecure Environments”, published previously in the Review, by exposing the realities of Médecins Sans Frontières' (MSF) struggle with the issue of remote management. By reviewing MSF's experience with remote management in Somalia and Afghanistan, the authors explore how operational compromise evolves over time, based on specific contextual factors, and highlight the challenges that this form of compromised action poses to MSF's identity and principles.

This article examines the value of the African Union Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa (Kampala Convention) in the general quest for the regional and global protection of internally displaced persons (IDPs). It contends that the absence of a globally binding legal instrument for the protection of IDPs underlines the importance of the Kampala Convention and the possible contribution it can make to global and regional efforts to create a binding legal framework for the protection of IDPs. While recognizing some challenges that may impact the full implementation of the Convention, the article concludes by noting its various positive elements that are invaluable in overall efforts to create a comprehensive global legal framework to enhance protection of IDPs.

A significant increase in the number of arrivals of refugees and migrants in Europe along the Western Balkans route brought several Balkan countries into the spotlight of international refugee protection in 2015 and 2016. Out of hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants recorded entering the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Serbia, only a handful remained to seek asylum from their authorities. Under the circumstances, the applicability of the 1951 Refugee Convention with respect to refugees refraining from seeking asylum was brought into question, as well as the extent of transit countries’ legal obligations under refugee law. Based on the Western Balkans experience, the present article seeks to re-examine the relationship between the concept of asylum and the regime of the 1951 Refugee Convention, the Convention's scope of application in “transit countries”, and minimal standards stemming from positive law regarding the treatment of refugees and migrants in a transit context.

Compliance with or violations of international humanitarian law during an armed conflict undoubtedly influence the conduct of the judiciary, the situations of the victims and the correlation of forces in the post-conflict society. This article seeks to determine the influence of international humanitarian law on the transitional justice process. The author examines the specific experience of certain Latin American states that have been deeply affected by serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law.

Although the Geneva Conventions have been successively revised since 1864, norms regarding the protection of medical care have been frequently disregarded. Despite current claims of international humanitarian law in crisis, comparing historic levels of violations with contemporary incidents is quantitatively challenging. Reviewing past reactions and justifications used by perpetrators of attacks on medical care can, however, be revealing. Based on a series of emblematic cases, qualitative analysis of perpetrator discourse can contribute to a better understanding of why the protection of medical care in armed conflict continues to be problematic to this day, notably through the rationales given for attacks, which have remained remarkably consistent over time.

Examining unintended consequences of the makings and processing of biometric data in counterterrorism and humanitarian contexts, this article introduces a two-fold framework through which it analyzes biometric data-makings and flows in Afghanistan and Somalia. It combines Tilley's notion of “living laboratory” and Larkin's notion of infrastructure into a framework that attends to the conditions under which biometric data is made and to subsequent flows of such data through data-sharing agreements or unplanned access. Exploring such unintended consequences, attention needs to be paid to the variety of actors using biometrics for different purposes yet with data flows across such differences. Accordingly, the article introduces the notion of digital intervention infrastructures, with biometric databases as one dimension.

In any discussion about security, the primary consideration must be the need to preserve the neutrality, independence and impartiality of humanitarian action. This is the essential precondition for the ICRC's ability to protect and assist the victims of conflict. Sooner or later, any humanitarian activity which runs counter to these fundamental principles either incurs the mistrust of the people it intends to assist or becomes completely paralysed.

Red Cross doctrine and human rights doctrine have gradually converged, revealing spheres of activity and formal research common to both. It may be interesting to consider to what degree the idea of protection of human rights was present in the minds of the founders of the Red Cross, and how their original purposes were extended until they included some basic aspects of protection of the human individual.

In the last decade considerable expense has been invested in non-lethal weapons development programmes, including by the United States military and other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and members of the European Working Group Non-Lethal Weapons. This paper acknowledges the potential suitability of non-lethal weapons for specific situations arising on the battlefield, but cautions against those who advocate for any weakening of existing international humanitarian law frameworks to provide for greater employment of non-lethal technologies.

For decades it has been taboo to mention the role played by religious organizations in development cooperation. Today, however, there is growing awareness of the contribution that these organizations can make to sustainable development, just as there is of the risk they pose of abuse and conflict aggravation. Those involved in development therefore have to learn to cope with the double-edged nature of these organizations. Government donor agencies and faith-based organizations should jointly monitor their work in conflict-prone areas to ascertain whether it fosters peaceful settlement of conflict or whether, in fact, it aggravates the violence.