Humanising warfare

The Battle of Solferino in 1859 was the decisive clash in the war of Italian unification. It also led to the creation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and, in turn, to the first Geneva Convention. The suffering of thousands of soldiers on both sides, many left to die on the battlefield without medical treatment, horrified Swiss businessman Henri Dunant (pictured on a stamp printed in Belgium) and inspired him to create the ICRC in 1863. One year later, the Swiss government invited the governments of all European countries, as well as the United States, Brazil and Mexico, to attend an official diplomatic conference. The conference adopted the first Geneva Convention ‘for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field’. Other conventions followed. In 1907, the Second Geneva Convention extended the terms of the First Convention to seamen. In 1929, the Third Convention addressed the protection of prisoners of war. Finally, in 1949, following the horrors of the second world war, another conference in Geneva adopted four conventions which replaced the first three and included, for the first time, a convention for the protection of civilians in time of war.

The Civilian Convention was proposed by the French (who had their own painful memories of Nazi occupation) but initially it found little support from the UK and US. Although the Civilian Convention was hailed by some at the time as a ‘miracle’, and a revolutionary moment in the history of the laws of war, the author explains how that convention remains silent on two of the greatest threats to the safety of civilians: air and nuclear bombing. Unrestrained air bombing had effectively ended the second world war and the UK and the US in particular were not prepared to see any restriction placed on its future use. The author also looks closely at the enforcement mechanisms in the Geneva conventions and concludes that, instead of strengthening the conventions in response to the gross violations perpetrated in the second world war, the drafters weakened enforcement mechanisms in various areas to reconstruct their sovereign power in the wake of imperial breakdown.

In the context of the Russian war in Ukraine and ensuing humanitarian disaster, the reader of this book cannot fail to focus on the definition of ‘protected person’ in the Civilian Convention. As Mariupol joins an infamous list, we are reminded once again that the Geneva conventions are still needed if we are ever to ‘humanise warfare’.

Kevin McVeigh is a partner at Elliott Duffy Garrett, Belfast