*HQHYD&RQYHQWLRQV%ULWDQQLFD2QOLQH(QF\FORSHGLD

Geneva Conventions
Geneva Conventions,a series of international treaties concluded in Geneva between 1864 and 1949 for the purpose of
ameliorating the effects of war on soldiers and civilians. Two additional protocols to the 1949 agreement were approved in 1977.
The development of the Geneva Conventions was closely associated with the Red Cross, whose founder, Henri Dunant, initiated
international negotiations that produced the Convention for the Amelioration of the Wounded in Time of War in 1864. This
convention provided for (1) the immunity from capture and destruction of all establishments for the treatment of wounded and
sick soldiers and their personnel, (2) the impartial reception and treatment of all combatants, (3) the protection of civilians
providing aid to the wounded, and (4) the recognition of the Red Cross symbol as a means of identifying persons and equipment
covered by the agreement.
The 1864 convention was ratified within three years by all the major European powers as well as by many other states. It was
amended and extended by the second Geneva Convention in 1906, and its provisions were applied to maritime warfare through
the Hague conventions of 1899 and 1907. The third Geneva Convention, the Convention Relating to the Treatment of Prisoners
of War (1929), required that belligerents treat prisoners of war humanely, furnish information about them, and permit official
visits to prison camps by representatives of neutral states.
Because some belligerents in World War II had abused the principles contained in earlier conventions, an International Red Cross
conference in Stockholm in 1948 extended and codified the existing provisions. The conference developed four conventions,
which were approved in Geneva on August 12, 1949: (1) the Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded
and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field, (2) the Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded, Sick, and
Shipwrecked Members of Armed Forces at Sea, (3) the Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, and (4) the
Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.
The first two conventions elaborated on the principle that the sick and wounded have neutral status. The prisoner-of-war
convention further developed the 1929 convention by requiring humane treatment, adequate feeding, and the delivery of relief
supplies and by forbidding pressure on prisoners to supply more than a minimum of information. The fourth convention
contained little that had not been established in international law before World War II. Although the convention was not original,
the disregard of humanitarian principles during the war made the restatement of its principles particularly important and timely.
The convention forbade inter alia the deportation of individuals or groups, the taking of hostages, torture, collective punishment,
offenses that constitute outrages upon personal dignity, the imposition of judicial sentences (including executions) without
due-process guarantees, and discriminatory treatment on the basis of race, religion, nationality, or political beliefs.
In the decades following World War II, the large number of anticolonial and insurrectionary wars threatened to render the
Geneva Conventions obsolete. After four years of Red Cross-sponsored negotiations, two additional protocols to the 1949
conventions, covering both combatants and civilians, were approved in 1977. The first, Protocol I, extended protection under the
Geneva and Hague conventions to persons involved in wars of self-determination, which were redefined as international
conflicts. The protocol also enabled the establishment of fact-finding commissions in cases of alleged breaches of the
convention. The second protocol, Protocol II, extended human rights protections to persons involved in severe civil conflicts,
which had not been covered by the 1949 accords. It specifically prohibited collective punishment, torture, the taking of hostages,
acts of terrorism, slavery, and outrages on the personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment, rape,
enforced prostitution and any form of indecent assault.
The end of the Cold War, during which tensions between ethnic groups had been suppressed in states throughout eastern and
central Europe and elsewhere, gave rise to a number of civil wars, blurring the distinction between internal and international
conflicts and complicating the application of relevant legal rules. In a number of cases (e.g., in Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Somalia),
the United Nations Security Council declared that internal conflicts amounted to a threat to or a breach of international peace
and security, which thus made its resolutions on the conflicts binding on the combatants. Because of the Security Councils
activities in expanding the definition of international armed conflicts, an increasing number of rules outlined in the Geneva
Conventions and their protocols have come to be regarded as binding on all states. Such rules include the humane treatment of
civilians and of prisoners of war.
More than 180 states have become parties to the 1949 conventions. Approximately 150 states are party to Protocol I; more than
145 states are party to Protocol II, though the United States is not. In addition, more than 50 states have made declarations
accepting the competence of international fact-finding commissions to investigate allegations of grave breaches or other serious
violations of the conventions or of Protocol I.
The importance of the Geneva Conventions and their additional protocols was reflected in the establishment of war-crimes
tribunals for Yugoslavia (1993) and Rwanda (1994) and by the Rome Statute (1998), which created an International Criminal
Court.
Malcolm Shaw

KWWSZZZEULWDQQLFDFRPSULQWDUWLFOH





*HQHYD&RQYHQWLRQV%ULWDQQLFD2QOLQH(QF\FORSHGLD

"Geneva Conventions".Encyclopdia Britannica. Encyclopdia Britannica Online.

Encyclopdia Britannica Inc., 2015. Web. 23 Oct. 2015
<http://www.britannica.com/event/Geneva-Conventions>.

KWWSZZZEULWDQQLFDFRPSULQWDUWLFOH