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Dictionary of Gross Human Rights Violations


International Humanitarian Law

International Humanitarian Law (IHL) is the body of laws governing the conduct of armed conflict. At its heart, IHL is paradoxical because it seeks to make something inherently inhumane (war), humane. International humanitarian law differs from human rights law in that it applies only during times of war (human rights law also applies in times of war, but many rights, other than those deemed to be most fundamental, may be derogated during armed conflicts). Crimes against humanity and genocide are unique crimes because they apply both to war and to peace and therefore some scholars argue they are part of both international human rights law and international humanitarian law. International humanitarian law (jus in bello) may also be distinguished from jus ad bellum (the law that regulates when it is lawful to go to war). These two concepts exist autonomously of each other – IHL applies whether the decision to go to war was lawful or not.

The idea that war should be limited by humanitarian considerations is not a modern invention. For historical antecedents one can look at such things as the Hindu Code of Manu, the Knights code of Chivalry, or the way of the Samurai. The birth of modern IHL can be traced to the Battle of Solferino in June 1859 when an Austrian force clashed with a Franco-Italian army and forty thousand soldiers died in just a few days. A young Swiss businessman named Henri Dunant witnessed the horrible aftermath of the battle and founded the International Committee of the Red Cross a few years later. The 1st Geneva conventions were drawn up in 1864 and, during the same period, professor Lieber was tasked by Lincoln to draft code of conduct for the Union forces in the American Civil War. The law was expanded and refined in the many treaties that followed including such important documents as: the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare the 1935 Geneva Gas Protocol, the 1948 Genocide Convention, the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the 1954 Hague Convention on Cultural Properties, the two Additional Protocols to the Geneva conventions in 1977, and the 1980 Convention on Conventional Weapons.

There are two main branches of humanitarian law: the law of The Hague (dealing with the regulation of armed combat) and the law of Geneva (dealing with protected persons). The protected persons under the law of Geneva are the wounded and shipwrecked, prisoners of war, civilians, medical personnel, and clerics. IHL also dictates that when a soldier surrenders, they must be “given quarter” and allowed to live. Lastly, it is important to note that the regulations governing international armed conflicts are much more detailed than those covering internal armed conflicts.

  1. One can summarise IHL in terms of Five General Principles:
    Military Necessity: No action can be taken that is not militarily necessary. One should use only the minimum necessary force to achieve a legitimate military objective.
  2. Humanity: The techniques of war used (including the weaponry) should not cause “superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering.” There are many treaties dealing with the prohibition of certain classes of prohibited weapons such as poisonous gases, landmines, hollow tip bullets, etc. The idea of protected persons is also part of the concept of humanity.
  3. Distinction: One should not directly target civilians and civilian objects, only military personnel and objectives.
  4. Proportionality: An objective must receive military benefits proportional to the humanitarian costs.
  5. Honourable Conduct: This includes a prohibition on tactics that undermine IHL such as intentionally blurring the distinction between civilians and combatants, misusing symbols like the red cross, or pretending to surrender or be wounded and then attacking.

There are a number of provisions of IHL that have risen to become part of customary international law (such as the protected status of the wounded). The most egregious violations of international humanitarian law (such as grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions) are deemed to be war crimes. War crimes fall under the jurisdiction of all international criminal courts (such as the International Criminal Court and Special Court for Sierra Leone), as well as many national (military) tribunals. Some war crimes (such as torture, rape, and indiscriminate attacks on civilians) are extreme enough to be considered as gross human rights violations.

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