Geneva Conventions

Series of four international agreements (1864, 1906, 1929, 1949) signed in Geneva, Switz.

, that established the humanitarian principles by which the signatory countries are to treat an enemy's military and civilian nationals in wartime. The first convention was initiated by Jean-Henri Dunant; it established that medical facilities were not to be war targets, that hospitals should treat all wounded impartially, that civilians aiding the wounded should be protected, and that the Red Cross symbol should serve to identify those covered by the agreement. The second convention amended and extended the first. The third stated that prisoners of war should be treated humanely and that prison camps should be open to inspection by neutral countries. The 1949 conventions made further provisions for civilians falling into a belligerent's hands. Guerrilla combatants were extended protection in two 1977 amendments, which the U.S. did not sign. Violations of the Geneva Conventions were among the crimes included in the jurisdictions of the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia (1993) and Rwanda (1994) and the International Criminal Court (2002). See also Hague Conventions; war crime.

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▪ 1864–1977

      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 (Red Cross and Red Crescent), whose founder, Henri Dunant (Dunant, Henri), 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 (Hague Convention) 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 (prisoner 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 Council's 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

Additional Reading

Works examining the Geneva Conventions and the laws of war include Geoffrey Best, War and Law Since 1945 (1994, reissued 1997); L.C. Green, The Contemporary Law of Armed Conflict, 2nd ed. (1999); Ingrid Detter, The Law of War, 2nd ed. (2000); Christophe Swinarski (ed.), Studies and Essays on International Humanitarian Law and Red Cross Principles in Honour of Jean Pictet (1984), in French and English; Antonio Cassese (ed.), The New Humanitarian Law of Armed Conflict, 2 vol. (1979–80); and Jean Pictet, Humanitarian Law and the Protection of War Victims (1975; originally published in French, 1973).Collections of documents and commentaries include Adam Roberts and Richard Guelff (eds.), Documents on the Laws of War, 3rd ed. (2000); Dietrich Schindler and Jiří Toman (eds.), The Law of Armed Conflicts: A Collection of Conventions, Resolutions, and Other Documents, 3rd rev. and completed ed. (1988); and Jean Pictet (ed.), Les Conventions de Genève du 12 août 1949: Commentaire, 4 vol. (1952–59).Malcolm Shaw

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