If recent estimates are to be believed, more than two million people may have died in the famine that engulfed North Korea in 1997 and 1998. In 1997, the United Nations estimated that 4.7 million North Koreans were in danger of starvation. In response, the international community pledged food aid. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies presented an expanded appeal for aid in June 1997. In January 1998, the World Food Programme (WFP) launched its biggest appeal, setting a target of 380 million US dollars in food aid, nearly double the amount requested for 1997. Yet, the international community has met resistance in attempting to assist North Koreans suffering from malnutrition and facing starvation.

A number of authors, notably Hardcastle and Chua writing in this issue of the Review, have recently argued the case for either the existence of an international legal right to humanitarian assistance or the need to speedily establish such a right.

Fifty years after the United Nations proclaimed its ambitious Universal Declaration of Human Rights, skeptics will have no trouble demonstrating that the international community's commitment to the document is shallow at best. The pretense was laid bare by the UN's inadequacy to stop genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda, compounded by the institution's failure to conduct a thoroughgoing self-examination to determine the lessons of the debacle in Bosnia.

Modern conflict often takes place in a communication vacuum, and it is time that something were done to fill it.

Those engaged in war today appear to have ever less desire to make their voices heard, in most cases for good reason. In this post-Cold War era, the belligerents do not care as much as they once did about what the rest of the world thinks. They no longer live in fear of annoying or embarrassing their sponsors; indeed in most cases they no longer have sponsors at all, nor do they need them. It is no longer their dream to make speeches at the United Nations in New York, as it was for so many national liberation movements a few decades ago. Many simply care nothing about their international image, or about the outside world.

International humanitarian law does not deal directly with the right to information, but it is useful to highlight some of the law's features in considering people's right to information in wartime.

The right to indispensable items

International law stipulates that civilians have a right to items indispensable to their survival. This entails an obligation for the parties to the conflict, both in enemy territory occupied by them and in their own territory, to allow international action to provide these items if they themselves are unable to do so.

For the outside world, images of division, conflict and suffering today largely sum up the African continent. Even when these images do not reflect Afro-pessimistic cliches, they fail — deliberately or not — to take account of the secular traditions of respect for the individual and the enlightened humanity that exist virtually throughout Africa.

On 26 July 1953, a group opposing the regime of General Fulgencio Batista, led by Fidel Castro, made an abortive attempt to storm the Montecada barracks at Santiago de Cuba. Castro was captured and sentenced to 15 years in prison. In May 1955 he was released under a general amnesty; he left Cuba and emigrated to Mexico.

After years of relentless effort and five weeks of intense and difficult negotiations, the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) was adopted and opened for signature in Rome on 17 July 1998. This historic event represents a major step forward in the battle against impunity and towards better respect for international humanitarian law. For too long it has been possible to commit atrocities with total impunity, a situation which has given perpetrators carte blanche to continue such practices. The system of repression established by international law clearly has its shortcomings, and the time has come to adopt new rules and set up new institutions to ensure the effective prosecution of international crimes. A criminal court, whether at the national or international level, does not put a stop to crime, but it may serve as a deterrent and, consequently, may help reduce the number of victims. The results achieved in Rome should thus be welcomed, in the hope that the new Court will be able to discharge its mandate to the full.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has witnessed in its work for war victims throughout the world the increasingly devastating effects for civilian populations of the proliferation of weapons, particularly small arms. The difficulties of providing humanitarian assistance in an environment where arms have become widely available to many segments of society are well known to most humanitarian relief agencies today. However, until recently the relationships between the availability of weapons, the worsening situation of civilians during and after conflict and the challenges of providing humanitarian assistance have not been addressed directly.

As the First Review Conference of the 1980 Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) closed in Geneva on 3 May 1996, there was widespread dismay at the failure of the States Parties to reach consensus on effective ways to combat the global scourge of landmines. The CCW Protocol II as amended on 3 May 1996 (Protocol II as amended) introduced a number of changes that were widely welcomed, but it fell far short of totally prohibiting these weapons, a move already supported by more than 40 States. Keen to sustain the international momentum that might otherwise have slackened, the Canadian delegation announced that Canada would host a meeting of pro-ban States later in the year to develop a strategy to move the international community towards a global ban on anti-personnel mines.

Concern has been expressed recently that the rules of international humanitarian law pertaining to civil defence have been somewhat neglected since 1977 and that, 20 years on, the time has come to assess whether these rules are sufficiently realistic and have retained their validity. The purpose of civil defence rules is clear, i.e. “to mitigate the losses, damage and suffering inflicted on the civilian population by the dramatic developments of the means and methods of warfare”. But while the primary purpose of civil defence rules may be formulated quite simply, the means of achieving it are naturally far more complex, indeed increasingly so given the effects of the ever more destructive methods of warfare as well as the changing nature of conflicts, which is resulting in a larger proportion of civilians being killed. It has also been recognized that the rules governing civil defence would remain a dead letter if they were not made known to those for whom they are intended. The current lack of awareness has therefore made efforts to spread knowledge of these rules a matter of necessity.