New Life for the Laws of War

Abstract

On December 11, 1977, the Swiss Government opened for signature two Protocols to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 on the Protection of War Victims. Forty-four governments signed either one or both Protocols on that day, and, by September 1979, 62 governments had signed one or both Protocols. The Protocols entered into force on December 7, 1978, and by October 1980, were in force for 15 states. One of these Protocols develops the law applicable in international armed conflicts, and the other expands the protections currently accorded to the victims of noninternational armed conflicts by Article 3 common to the 1949 Conventions. Together the Protocols represent many years of effort, first by the International Committee of the Red Cross, and more recently by more than one hundred governments assembled in conference. During more than 8 months of conference sessions over 4 years, these governments struggled to correct the perceived deficiencies in the law and to develop and articulate new rules to improve the protections available to the victims of armed conflicts. Each government drew on its own experiences, and the result may reasonably be thought to be the composite reaction by the international community to the perceived inhumanities of wars during the past quarter century. Since we shall probably have to wait at least another quarter century before new efforts are made to develop the law further, it would seem appropriate to begin to analyze the two new Protocols and to draw some conclusions about them. This article, written by an active participant in the Geneva conference, attempts to contribute to this process by analyzing a few of the more significant developments in the law contained in Protocol I, that is, the Protocol dealing with international armed conflicts.