On sait que parmi les questions dont la Société des Nations avait été saisie par la Conférence de Gênes, figurait un projet de statuts d'une « Œuvre internationale de secours et d'assistance aux populations frappées de calamités. »

Le Ier septembre dernier, l'auteur de ce projet, M. le sénateur Ciraolo, président de la Société de la Croix-Rouge italienne, en exposait les grandes lignes par devant les membres du Conseil de la Société des Nations. On peut dès lors tenir pour assuré que la généreuse initiative de l'éminent sénateur du royaume d'ltalie sera mise à l'étude, et il faut souhaiter que lors de la 4me assemblée de la Société des Nations, au cours de laquelle se tiendra également à Genève la XIme Conférence internationale de la Croix-Rouge, le projet Ciraolo prenne corps et entre dans la voie des réalisations.

General Sir Rupert Smith served in the British Army in East and South Africa, Arabia, the Caribbean, Europe and Malaysia before commanding, as a major-general, the British 1st Armoured Division during the Gulf War. As the first Assistant Chief of Defence Operations and Security at the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence in 1992, he was intimately involved in the United Kingdom's development of the strategy in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In 1995 he was Commander UNPROFOR in Sarajevo and in 1996–8 was the Officer Commanding in Northern Ireland. His final assignment was as Deputy Supreme Commander Allied Powers Europe in 1998–2001, covering the NATO operation “Allied Force” during the Kosovo conflict and the development of the European Security and Defence Identity. He retired from the army in 2002. Since 2006 he has been international advisor to the ICRC. His experience is shared to some extent through the words of his treatise on modern warfare, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (Penguin, London, 2005).

What does Hinduism have to say about the rules of armed conflict? How might Hinduism enrich the modern global discourse on international humanitarian law (IHL)? What convergences might be found, and what areas of divergence? This paper examines and contextualizes the rules of armed conflict advocated in classical Hindu texts, especially in the epic Mahābhārata, where important norms of Hinduism are established. It also examines the other major epic, the Rāmāyaṇa, and the Dharmaśāstras (Law Codes), as well as the Arthaśāstra, which takes an alternative (realpolitik) approach. This paper focuses on conduct during armed conflict (jus in bello), now synonymous for many with IHL, rather than considerations leading up to war (jus ad bellum). The paper seeks to illuminate both convergences and divergences with IHL and highlight particular Hindu approaches on the righteous (dharmic) application of violence. Like IHL, classical Hinduism values (1) proportionality of force during armed engagement; (2) the minimization of human suffering during combat; (3) care for survivors of war; (4) immunity towards non-combatants, especially civilians; and (5) balancing military necessity with humanity. With respect to divergences, classical Hinduism extols non-violence in ways that critique even the warrior's duty to engage in righteous war (dharma yuddha). In contrast to IHL, the Hindu epics have some different limitations; for instance, they limit the right to combat to a particular caste, the kṣatriyas, though this concept could be modernized to mean uniformed personnel of the State. The epics also disavow certain practices that are legal under IHL, such as ambushes and surprise attacks against legitimate targets. The Hindu proportionality provision goes beyond IHL by prescribing that only warriors of the same type should fight. With its many deeply ethical considerations, Hinduism enriches modern IHL through its heightened emphasis on fair and humane conduct in battle and its call towards compassion on behalf of both combatants and non-combatants.

Ambassador Maurits R. Jochems is currently Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Operations in the International Secretariat of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). His functions include responsibility for the Alliance's work in the field of civil emergency planning. As a Dutch Foreign Service career diplomat, he has been seconded to NATO since August 2005. Before taking up his current position he was Director of International Security Policy in the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, dealing with operations, NATO and EU security policy issues, UN disarmament and arms control, OSCE matters and arms export policy. He has also served at Dutch embassies in Kingston, Bonn, Beirut, Brussels (NATO) and Rome.

General Jean-René Bachelet (2nd Son) was General Inspector of the Armed Forces of the French Republic. In 1995 he commanded the Sarajevo sector in the former Yugoslavia for UNPROFOR, during the paroxysm of the siege until its lifting. Between 1999 and 2004 he led a study to draw up an ethical and behaviour framework for the army and initiated an ambitious reform of the initial training of officers at Saint Cyr, the foremost French military academy. He gave the following opening address at the Interregional Meeting on the Role of Sanctions in Ensuring Greater Respect for International Humanitarian Law, held in Geneva on 15–17 November 2007.

William Lacy Swing is the Director General of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). He has held the office of Special Representative to the UN Secretary-General for the Democratic Republic of Congo (2003–2008) and Western Sahara (2001–2003), and headed the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara. This followed a long career in the United States Department of State, during which he served as ambassador six times.

The Honourable Sergio Jaramillo Caro is the Colombian Vice-Minister of Defence. Mr Jaramillo Caro studied philosophy and philology at Trinity College, University of Toronto, and Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford. He has an M. Phil. in philosophy from Cambridge University and was a doctoral candidate in Greek at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. He has been an adviser to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was in charge of diplomacy for peace (2000–1), and was political counsellor at the Colombian embassy in Paris (2001–2). He was also adviser for political and strategic affairs at the Ministry of Defence (2002–3) and drafted the policy of Democratic Security. From 2004 to 2006 he served as director of the Ideas for Peace Foundation in Bogotá.

This article seeks to explore the reasons why sanctions for international humanitarian law (IHL) violations are so difficult to put into effect. Beyond the lack of willingness of states to do so for political reasons, some more technical aspects should be emphasized. The implementation of sanctions is too often seen solely through the prism of international law, without enough attention being paid to the complexity and diversity of municipal legal systems. The author puts forward the idea that efficiency starts with a clear sharing of competencies. Three main issues are discussed: first, the influence of the sharing of competencies within the state (between the judiciary, the executive and the legislature) on the implementation of sanctions; second, the broad interpretation of their powers by regional or international bodies in charge of monitoring and reviewing human rights protection; and, third, the creation of new or specific bodies in charge of dealing with and if necessary punishing gross violations of humanitarian law.

Andrew Bearpark is the Director General of the British Association of Private Security Companies (BAPSC), an independent trade association representing the leading companies in the specialist private security and risk management sector in the United Kingdom. The association aims to raise the standards of its members and the emergent industry as a whole and ensure compliance with the rules and principles of international humanitarian law and human rights. Prior to taking up his position, Mr. Bearpark served as Director of Operations and Infrastructure for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. From 1998 to 2003, he was Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary General in charge of the European Union Pillar of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and was previously Deputy High Representative based in Sarajevo and responsible for the Reconstruction and Return Task Force, a grouping of international organizations facilitating minority return in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Before taking up his positions in Bosnia and Kosovo, Mr. Bearpark held a series of senior positions in the UK, such as Head of the Information and Emergency Aid Departments of the Overseas Development Administration (ODA) and Private Secretary to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Boris Cyrulnik is a neuropsychiatrist who is known in France for having developed and popularized the concept of resilience. Born to a Jewish family in Bordeaux in 1937, he lost both his parents during the Second World War and, at the age of 6, escaped deportation himself by hiding during a round-up of Jews organized by the Nazis. His recollections of that event, forty years after the end of the war, provided the foundations for a reflection on post-war traumatic memory. In this interview for the Review, he talks about the relationship between memory, trauma and resilience, both at an individual and a collective level.

Inter-State wars seem to have come to an end in the late 1990s; ever since, the global reality of collective violence has come down to the chaos of contemporary civil wars and terrorist attacks. In this article, it will be argued that in today's civil wars, as well as in terrorist violence, the traditional warrior ethos is fading, giving way to types of violence governed by a new psychological and social paradigm. In other words, it is assumed that the very set of values that has universally determined the male gender role and the frame of hegemonic masculinity since time immemorial has also informed the waging of war according to a “heroic regime of violence”, and this phenomenon has made war a desirable option for countless generations of young men. On the other hand, the global changes entailed by modernity seem to have undermined this warrior ethos, giving way to a “post-heroic regime” in which extermination-oriented violence, rather than combat-oriented violence, is fostered. In this article, the author will scrutinize the founding psychological and social determinants that have so far upheld the cultural construct of the heroic model, in order to illuminate the ominous consequences of the deculturation of war in today's chaotic conflicts. In such contexts, the men who are fighting1 suffer from a loss of meaning and the impossibility of gaining dignity and social recognition in an ecosystem of humiliation and ubiquitous violence that has little to do with the expectations of pride and dignity conveyed by the past ideals of heroism associated with a certain vision of masculinity. The article will also discuss ways and means of getting the message of international humanitarian law through to men on the front lines caught up in such circumstances.

The 9/11 attacks and the “War on Terror” brought terrorism and counterterrorism to the forefront of politics. Today, terrorism remains one of the most serious threats to national and international security. Yet, amid the surge of scholarly and policy interest in terrorism and counterterrorism, the literature on counterterrorism policies and strategies in the Middle East at the local and regional levels is sparse, limited and predominantly Western.

The experience of political terrorism and violence in the Middle East throughout the 1980s and 1990s, which led to the introduction of a securitization process and the adoption of counterterrorism measures in the region long before the 9/11 attacks, offers important lessons. This paper takes its point of departure from the definitional conundrum of the concepts of “terrorism” and “(national) security” within the Middle East context. It examines the evolution of the securitization process in the Middle East in response to terrorism, with reference to the experiences of countries in the region. As it analyzes the different counterterrorism models and methods employed, it argues that counterterrorism strategies in much of the Middle East have not been effective and have at times been counterproductive.

Negotiations with organized crime groups occur more often than realized, and raise complex questions of ethics, practice and policy. Currently, law provides few incentives for States to choose the path of negotiation, and thus the political costs and moral hazards remain very high and a mano dura (“firm hand”) approach prevails. This paper examines some of the challenges faced by those who in good faith might initiate or participate in negotiations with such groups, offering an assessment of how those challenges can be mitigated and an inquiry, in particular, into how law and policy might be improved or reimagined to make such negotiation more feasible and effective in contexts of armed conflict or other situations of violence.

Henry Dunant's appeal for a neutral and impartial organization to provide care to wounded combatants aligned with growing criticism of mid-nineteenth-century European and North American conflicts. This article discusses the important convergence of Dunant's “lamentable pictures”, laid out in his Memory of Solferino, with spectators’ passionate responses to them and to battlefield photographs that circulated between 1855 and 1865. Through these images and reactions, there emerged a shared, expanded vision of humanity worth caring for, which brought into focus an international humanitarian movement.