There were six of them. Six individuals who with their skills, their hands and their hearts brought shelter, care, comfort and a smile to the wounded of the conflict in Chechnya. They came from Norway, Spain, Canada, the Netherlands and New Zealand, all under the banner of the Red Cross. They worked in the ICRC hospital at Novye Atagi. And they are no longer with us. A seventh lies wounded by the bullet which was intended to kill him. The grief of those who witnessed that carnage is felt by us all.

Analysing the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction, concluded a quarter of a century ago (10 April 1972), American expert Lynn M. Hansen wrote: “The spectre of biological warfare is something no person enjoys contemplating. The spectre is real, however, as man has learned how to use biology to wage war against himself. Fortunately, the international community in 1972 outlawed these weapons.” This is the essence of the Convention.

By adopting on 8 June 1977 the two Protocols additional to the 1949 Conventions, the States meeting in Geneva brought to a successful conclusion four years of arduous negotiations. The Protocols took four years, the Conventions only four months. Why such a huge difference?

In 1949, once the initial period of instinctive rejection of anything related to war had passed, a natural consensus emerged regarding the main evils which needed to be banned by law. Besides, the delicate subject of the rules governing the conduct of hostilities — the law of The Hague, as it is called, also part of humanitarian law — was left out of the discussions. It was also a time when the political map of the world was fairly monolithic, in the sense that the North still dominated the South, and East-West tensions had not yet escalated.

The idea of the dissemination project described in the present article first came up at the end of 1993, when what is known as interethnic violence broke out in Burundi following the attempted coup of October 1993 and the assassination of President Ndadaye together with a number of other leading figures. Given the scale of destruction and the heavy loss of life (it is now generally acknowledged that tens of thousands of people were killed during the first few weeks), and in view of the cruelty of the acts committed, ICRC delegates were at first hesitant to embark on any specific operation to promote humanitarian principles. Initially, they confined themselves to a practical demonstration of humanitarian conduct and to the use of radio broadcasts to supply information designed to facilitate operational work.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has been assisting the victims of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia since June 1991. Six years on, its delegates are still active in the region, addressing the lasting consequences of the conflict, but as the situation has evolved so has the nature of their work. This is particularly true of dissemination, which began as a concerted effort to promote greater understanding of international humanitarian law and the ICRC's role and mandate, but which has now been redirected towards meeting the needs of the post-conflict environment. This paper sets out to describe and analyse the development of dissemination in the present context. Though the ICRC's activities during the conflict were predominantly in Croatia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and there are similar dissemination initiatives in both these areas, this paper focuses on Bosnia and Herzegovina. Where relevant, reference may be made to dissemination activities in other parts of the former Yugoslavia.

Before addressing the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) itself, we should point out that any view of the treaty from a Southern perspective can be only partial, that is, one perspective among many possible others. Developing and non-aligned countries may have different — and equally legitimate — interests and expectations regarding a particular international instrument. In fact, this diversity is itself one of the defining characteristics of the “South”, a term we use to categorize developing States whose main point in common is the absence of alignment with any great power and, indeed, with each other.

Shortly after the Second World War the community of States, still shocked by the explosion of violence that had torn the world apart for more than five years, ratified an updated version of the Geneva Conventions in the hope of acquiring a sound legal instrument which would preserve human dignity even in times of war. They undertook to respect the fundamental rights of the individual in armed conflicts, whether international or otherwise, and to limit the use of force to what was strictly necessary to place an enemy hors de combat. Their resolve found confirmation in the two Additional Protocols of 1977.

Of the 51 opinions handed down by the Court of the Hague (28 by the Permanent Court of International Justice and 23 by the International Court of Justice), there is little doubt that the two delivered on 8 July 1996 in response to requests submitted by the WHO World Health Assembly and the United Nations General Assembly will become landmarks in the history of the Court, if not in history itself.

In the early hours of 17 December 1996, six delegates of the International Committee of the Red Cross were assassinated in a brutal attack by gunmen at the ICRC hospital in Novye Atagi, near Grozny.

In late summer 1996, the ICRC had decided to open a field hospital in Chechnya because the main hospitals in Grozny had been seriously damaged, thus leaving large numbers of war-wounded without proper care.

The Review has invited several persons who took part in the codification process to comment on the 1977 Additional Protocols and their history, including some stumbling blocks which had to be overcome. We have also asked the fateful question: How relevant are the Protocols today?

“The security [of humanitarian personnel in the field] is a political rather than a technical issue. No rule or protective measure can replace the establishment of a network of contacts among all the parties to a conflict, to convince every one of them of the ICRC's neutrality, impartiality and independence. If those in charge of combatants perceive the ICRC as taking sides, then the organization becomes a potential target. Conversely, neutrality, and above all the combatants' perception of that neutrality, offer the warring parties their best assurance that the ICRC poses no threat to them. The neutral stance of its delegates convinces combatants that the ICRC's humanitarian action has no effect on military operations.” This is one of the basic premises of the guidelines on security that the ICRC drew up a few years ago for use in its action in the midst of armed conflict.

At an ICRC seminar on training and information techniques a few years ago an instructor described the position of a dissemination delegate within an ICRC delegation, and hence of dissemination work in general, as follows:

“Within an ICRC delegation, the delegate responsible for disseminating international humanitarian law generally has his office at the end of a long corridor, right at the back between the office supplies cupboard and the toilets. But most of the time you won't find him there, as he (or she) is constantly out giving courses or suchlike, either at military installations or universities or among the National Red Cross Society's volunteers. And when you do find him for a short while in his office, he's fiddling around with scissors, paper and glue trying to put together a leaflet or a poster, or perhaps even a small brochure. His colleagues, the delegates dealing with the distribution of relief supplies, the tracing service or prison visits, smile indulgently when they see the dissemination delegate busy with work like that. They speak well of him because he regularly reads the International Review of the Red Cross and knows the ins and outs of international humanitarian law and ICRC policy; he is a good talker, so he always has to step in where armed protagonists in local conflict fail to observe the rules protecting the civilian population. He must often beware of being torn to pieces and is expected to be everywhere at once, because what he does, he alone can do. Many ICRC delegates admire the dissemination delegate; sometimes he gets called “the professor”, “the clown” or “the artist”. His work is a one-man show, and yet those delegates who distribute rice, visit prisoners or try to trace missing persons could not and would not want to do his job themselves.”

The two International Criminal Tribunals set up by the United Nations Security Council in 19931 and 19942 are in the process of demonstrating that international repression of serious violations of international humanitarian law is no longer a purely theoretical concept. A total of 21 persons charged with or suspected of committing such breaches have been transferred to the seat of the Arusha Tribunal, and two judgments sentencing the defendants to prison terms have been handed down by the Hague Tribunal. The two Tribunals are competent to hear cases against persons allegedly responsible for serious violations of humanitarian law, but in so doing they are also required, under their respective Statutes, to ensure that the internationally recognized rules relating to the rights of the accused are fully respected at all stages of the proceedings. Article 20 of the Statute of the Tribunal for Rwanda and Article 21 of that of the Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, modelled on Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, enumerate in detail the rights that must be accorded to every accused person.

My views concerning the negotiation of the 1977 Protocols were set forth some 13 years ago in my contribution to the book published in honor of Jean Pictet, and I do not want to repeat them here. But perhaps, from the perspective of the intervening years, there may be a few things I could usefully add.

The International Committee of the Red Cross is privileged to address this conference which has the task of strengthening one of the earliest prohibitions of international humanitarian law: the proscription against the use of poison as a means of warfare. This norm has its basis not only in the 1899 Hague Declaration (2) and 1907 Hague Convention (IV) but also in the rules of warfare of diverse moral and cultural systems. Ancient Greeks and Romans customarily observed a prohibition on the use of poison and poison weapons. By 500 BC the Manu Law of War in India had banned the use of such arms. A millennium later regulations on the conduct of war drawn from the Koran by the Saracens forbade poisoning.

The Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice represents the first time that the Court's judges have been called upon to analyse in some detail rules of international humanitarian law. Other instances, for example, the Nicaragua case, involved nowhere near such an extensive analysis. The Advisory Opinion is therefore of particular interest in that it contains important findings on the customary nature of a number of humanitarian law rules and interesting pronouncements on the interpretation of these rules and their relationship with other rules. Most judges based their final decision on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons on teleological interpretations of the law, choosing either the right of self-defence as being the most fundamental value, or the survival of civilization and the planet as a whole as paramount. Unfortunately, space does not permit a comment on these highly important analyses of the underpinnings of humanitarian law and its purpose in the international order. Therefore, rather than focusing primarily on the Court's conclusion as to the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons, this short comment will concentrate on the various pronouncements made on humanitarian law rules. Reference to the Court's finding on the legality of the use of nuclear weapons will only be made from the point of view of how it has contributed to the interpretation of those rules. For this purpose, reference will be made not only to the Advisory Opinion as such (hereafter referred to as the “Opinion”), but also to the various Separate and Dissenting Opinions.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) were established on 11 February 1993 and 8 November 1994 respectively by the Security Council to prosecute persons responsible for flagrant violations of international humanitarian law. The aim of the Security Council was to put an end to such violations and to contribute to the restoration and maintenance of peace, and the establishment of the ad hoc tribunals undoubtedly represents a major step in that direction. Moreover, it sends a clear signal to the perpetrators and to the victims that such conduct will not be tolerated.

The Review continues to report on questions raised by the tragedy of Novye Atagi, Chechnya, where six Red Cross staff were killed while working at a Red Cross hospital. The March–April 1997 issue described what actually happened and outlined the initial conclusions drawn by the ICRC and their implications for the conduct of its operations. In the present issue, the President of the Norwegian Red Cross, Astrid Nøklebye Heiberg, focuses on how a National Society which lost two of its members in the tragedy handled the situation, and what lessons have been learned for the future. In the second contribution, Dr Barthold Bierens de Haan gives a detailed account of the way the ICRC helps its delegates in the field to handle stressful situations, which can arise in any circumstances.

The adoption of the 1977 Protocols additional to the 1949 Geneva Conventions for the protection of war victims was an event of great historic significance. In 1977 the States were convinced that developments in weaponry had made it necessary to adopt new rules of conduct in armed conflicts: methods of using conventional weapons were being perfected and the resulting casualty rates were approaching those of weapons mass destruction, affecting everyone without exception and also damaging the environment, and thus threatening the survival of entire nations. This fact persuaded the States to agree upon new rules of conduct in armed conflict.

This paper will briefly examine the legal obligation placed on States to respect international humanitarian law and to train their armed forces in the subject. The practical problems this can create and how they might be overcome will also be addressed. The approach taken by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to training in general and the particular approach being used in South Asia will be discussed.