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The Fourth Geneva Convention was the first humanitarian law convention dedicated to protections for civilians during armed conflict. Amongst its numerous protective rules, it also provides the main rules of international humanitarian law (IHL) governing the exceptional practice of internment of protected persons – detention of such persons for security reasons during international armed conflict.

In this post, part of a series that delves into the grounds and procedures for internment contained in the Fourth Geneva Convention, Camilla Guldahl Cooper, Associate Professor at the Norwegian Defence Command and Staff College, gives some context to certain rules in the Fourth Geneva Convention which apply to the initial decision to intern a protected person. She elaborates on what these rules require and how they have been taken into account in Norway’s military manual.

The legal and practical issues related to the exceptional practice of internment of protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention are complex. One such question is when internment begins. The treaty provides guidance on grounds for internment and the procedural safeguards to be applied, as well on the requisite conditions of internment, but is silent on when this type of detention actually starts. This gap in the law, which is the focus of examination, has proven time and again to have pernicious effects on the protection of detained civilians.

In this post, and as part of a series on the rules governing the grounds and procedures for the internment of protected persons, former ICRC Senior Legal Adviser Jelena Pejic suggests that a detained civilian should be deemed an internee no later than two weeks after being deprived of liberty for reasons related to an armed conflict, if not released earlier or designated a criminal suspect.

The Fourth Geneva Convention, adopted 75 years ago, was the first humanitarian law convention dedicated to humanitarian protections for civilians during armed conflict. Amongst its numerous protective rules, it provides the main rules of international humanitarian law (IHL) governing the exceptional practice of internment of protected persons – i.e. the detention of such persons for security reasons during international armed conflict.

In this post, and in the lead up to the 75th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions later this year, ICRC Legal Adviser Mikhail Orkin introduces a new series on how the rules governing the grounds and procedures for the internment of protected persons – the primary source for which is the Fourth Convention – have been interpreted, presenting a range of questions and challenges that states have faced in implementing these rules.

Can military training in international humanitarian law (IHL) lead to greater adherence to IHL and increased protection for civilians in war?

In this post, Andrew Bell, a researcher in the ICRC’s Centre for Operational Research and Experience (CORE), outlines recent findings from his work reviewing results from U.S. Army surveys on the effects of IHL training on combatant views and behaviour in war. He demonstrates that training in IHL and norms of restraint can achieve significant effects in military forces, shaping both combatant attitudes and behaviour and generating more restraint in battlefield operations.

Today, there are over 120 armed conflicts around the world, involving over 60 states and 120 non-state armed groups. The majority of these armed conflicts are of a non-international character, the number of which has tripled since the turn of the millennium. To know what rules regulate an armed conflict, there is one crucial first step to take: its classification.

In this post, and in the run-up to the 75th Anniversary of the Geneva Conventions, ICRC Legal Advisers Samit D’Cunha, Tristan Ferraro, and Thomas de Saint Maurice introduce the latest ICRC Opinion Paper, which restates the rules, approaches and interpretations the organization uses to classify and declassify armed conflicts. They argue that, despite the many contemporary challenges, IHL remains today fit-for-purpose for the classification of armed conflicts.

Efforts to address the ethical challenges posed by autonomous weapon systems are growing. In December 2023, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution requesting the Secretary-General to seek states’ views for addressing, among other issues, the ethical challenges posed by these systems, and in April 2024 Austria is hosting the conference ‘Humanity at the Crossroads: Autonomous Weapon Systems and the Challenge of Regulation’, with the aim of bringing ethical challenges to the fore.

In this post, Alexander Blanchard, Senior Researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), argues that while ethics has been a prominent part of international regulatory debate on autonomous weapon systems for years, the promise and potential of ethics for advancing that debate is still far from being realized. He holds that, for progress to happen, new efforts must be coupled with work to clarify the role of ethics for regulation.