UMARU

 “Law of War” is a body of agreements regarded as laws and promoted by a nongovernmental

organization; the International Committee of Red Cross and Crescent (ICRC) with the support of

some important nations of the world as well as the United Nations. It is designed to protect non

combatants in conflict areas.

This law is rooted in the rules of ancient civilizations and religions because warfare has

always been subject to certain principles and customs, but the universal codification do not begin

until in the nineteenth century. Since then, States have agreed to a series of practical rules, based

on the bitter experience of modern warfare. These rules strike a careful balance between

humanitarian concerns and the military requirements of States and as the international

community has grown, an increasing number of States have contributed to the development of

those rules and therefore today international humanitarian law forms a universal body of laws

that covers two areas:

i. The protection of those who are not taking part in war, or they are no longer in

action due to either incapacitation or surrender.

ii. Restrictions on the means of warfare – in particular weapons– and the methods of

warfare, such as military tactics 1.

The origin of the campaign for such laws began with the publication of Un Souvenir de

Solferino (A Memory of Solferino), in 1862 by a Swiss philanthropist Jean Henri Dunant which

described the suffering of wounded soldiers at the northern Italian battlefield of Solferino in June

1859 and then advocated for the creation of a relief society and the adoption of a treaty that

would give protection on the battlefield to the wounded and those who assisted them. It was

these proposals that ultimately led to the adoption of the Geneva Conventions and the founding

of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which later became the International

Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.

These laws were first breached by many of the countries that have signed, ratified and

agreed to abide by it. For example the article sighted Germany as an example of country which

although a signatory to the 1929 Geneva Convention yet during the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler,

it killed nearly half of the POWs captured in course of its engagements with the Union of Soviet

Socialist Republics (USSR) during World War II (1939-1945) and also executed Soviet POWs at

concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Sobibór. There was also another example of the

breach of the agreement by the Japanese Empire, which although not a signatory to the 1929

agreement, had in 1942 announced that it would abide by its terms yet it brutally treated POWs,

it experiments on the use of biological and chemical weapons on POWs and other captives

during the WW 11.

Many of the provisions created by the Fourth Geneva Convention regarding the

protection of civilians were added in response to war crimes committed during World War I

(1914-1918) and World War II. For instance it sighted that the prohibition against collective

punishment, resulted from wholesale reprisals taken by the German Army against entire towns

and villages in retaliation for partisan activity.

Since the World Wars, there was no other war that attracts so many nations’ involvement

like the Gulf War which eventually end Saddam’s regime in Iraq. That war however had now

created another type of insurgency territorial control that renders ICRC type of humanitarian

work more difficult and yet more necessary because insurgents like al-Qaeda, Islamic State of

Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and their West African affiliates Boko Haram who now called

themselves “Wilāyat Gharb Ifrīqīyyah” meaning Islamic State's West Africa Province ISWAP

sees anybody that is not their member as good as dead or at best a slave if the prisoner is a

woman. The ICRC attempt to establish relations with the Islamic State group in hopes of

delivering aid to the 10 million people living under its control for sake of humanity as a whole is

something that all governments of the worlds especially those under umbrella the weapons these

people uses were produced.

ICRC Director-General Yves Daccord, should please use his good office and connections

to see to that also, because his work is not just the protection of those who are not taking part in

war, or they are no longer in action due to either incapacitation or surrender but also includes

restrictions on the means of warfare – in particular weapons– and the methods of warfare, such

as military tactics…which includes forces “marriages” or “comfort relations” as the Japanese

once called it.