ISBN 2-88145-115-2 © International Committee of the Red Cross, Frits Kalshoven and Liesbeth Zegveld, Geneva, March 2001 3rd edition Frits Kalshoven and Liesbeth Zegveld CONSTRAINTS ON THE WAGING OF WAR An Introduction to International Humanitarian Law 19, Avenue de la Paix, CH-1202 Geneva T +41 22 734 60 01 F +41 22 733 20 57 E-mail:
[email protected] Web: www.icrc.org Design: Strategic Communications SA Original: English March 2001 Produced with environment-friendly materials I must retrace my steps, and must deprive those who wage war of nearly all the privileges which I seemed to grant, yet did not grant to them. For when I first set out to explain this part of the law of nations I bore witness that many things are said to be ‘lawful’ or ‘permissible’ for the reason that they are done with impunity, in part also because coactive tribunals lend to them their authority; things which nevertheless, either deviate from the rule of right (whether this has any basis in law strictly so called, or in the admonitions of other virtues), or at any rate may be omitted on higher grounds and with greater praise among good men. Grotius: De jure belli ac pacis Book III, Chapter X, Section I.1. (English translation: Francis G. Kelsey, Oxford, 1925). TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE ........................................................... 7 FOREWORD ........................................................... 9 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ........................................................ 11 I 1 Object and purpose ............................................... 12 I 2 Custom and treaty ................................................. 15 I 3 Implementation and enforcement ................................. 16 I 4 Structure .......................................................... 17 CHAPTER II THE MAIN CURRENTS: THE HAGUE, GENEVA, NEW YORK .....