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Red Cross Red Crescent Looking Back, Moving Forward Issue 1 The future of international humanitarian law An artist’s view of the rules of war in the year 2064 Our Red Cross and Red Crescent stories 8 May theme celebrates your connection with the Movement Red Cross Red Crescent Looking back, moving forward Issue 1 . 2014 www.redcross.int Remembering Rwanda’s past and building a brighter future Programmed for war Imagining the future of armed confl ict THE MAGAZINE OF THE INTERNATIONAL RED CROSS AND RED CRESCENT MOVEMENT RCRC_1.14_Eng+_IRL.indd i 02.04.14 16:01 The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is made up of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and the National Societies. International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies The International Committee of the Red The International Federation of Red Cross National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies Cross is an impartial, neutral and independent and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) is the embody the work and principles of the organization whose exclusively humanitarian world’s largest volunteer-based humanitarian International Red Cross and Red Crescent mission is to protect the lives and dignity of network, reaching 150 million people each year Movement in more than 189 countries. National victims of armed confl ict and other situations of through its 189 member National Societies. Societies act as auxiliaries to the public authorities violence and to provide them with assistance. Together, the IFRC acts before, during and of their own countries in the humanitarian fi eld The ICRC also endeavours to prevent suff ering by after disasters and health emergencies to meet and provide a range of services including disaster promoting and strengthening humanitarian law the needs and improve the lives of vulnerable relief, health and social programmes. During and universal humanitarian principles. Established people. It does so with impartiality as to wartime, National Societies assist the aff ected in 1863, the ICRC is at the origin of the Geneva nationality, race, gender, religious beliefs, class civilian population and support the army medical Conventions and the International Red Cross and and political opinions. Guided by Strategy 2020 services where appropriate. Red Crescent Movement. It directs and coordinates — a collective plan of action to tackle the major the international activities conducted by the humanitarian and development challenges of Movement in armed confl icts and other situations this decade — the IFRC is committed to ‘saving of violence. lives and changing minds’. The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is guided by seven Fundamental Principles: humanity, impartiality, neutrality, independence, voluntary service, unity and universality. All Red Cross and Red Crescent activities have one central purpose: to help without discrimination those who suff er and thus contribute to peace in the world. RCRC_1.14_Eng+_IRL.indd ii 02.04.14 16:02 Guest editorial The will to defeat genocide wenty years since the start of the In 1994, the United Nations Security Coun- The Rwanda tribunal has made signifi cant Rwandan genocide, the memory cil established the ad hoc International progress in terms of fi ghting impunity for of this horrifi c event continues to Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda as a direct genocide and seeking justice for victims. Tshock humanity’s shared conscience and response to the Rwandan genocide. As a permanent judicial mechanism, the fortifi es our commitment to fi ght impu- However, the wider lessons learnt from ICC has inherited this legacy and carries nity for this most heinous crime. Along the political hesitation that allowed the enormous potential. For the ICC — as with with the atrocities witnessed during the genocide to occur laid the foundations all such international judicial institutions Holocaust and in Srebrenica, the Rwandan for the establishment of a permanent in- — state cooperation is the indispensable genocide is part of a process of collective ternational penal tribunal, as originally requirement for its success. Though a rich recognition that the crime of genocide envisaged in the Genocide Convention and and comprehensive body of international cannot and must not go eventually crystallized humanitarian and criminal law is now in unpunished. in the form of the Inter- place, as are independent, international national Criminal Court institutions with the jurisdiction to apply These abhorrent epi- (ICC). such laws, the enforcement arm is key to sodes highlight the ensuring the full, timely and systematic im- importance of Raphael The definition for the plementation of the rule of law. Lemkin’s pioneering crime of genocide work and indefatiga- contained in the Geno- If judicial decisions are not executed; if sus- ble efforts,* which led cide Convention was pects are not apprehended to face justice in to the adoption of the adopted verbatim into the courtroom; if suffi cient resources are not Genocide Convention Article 6 of the Rome made available; if all eff orts are not exerted to and the codifi cation of Statute, which endows protect victims and witnesses; and if requests a pledge to humanity to the ICC with the ability for other types of cooperation are not fully both deter génocidaires to adjudicate incidents adhered to, then justice will neither be truly and hold them account- Gnago REUTERS/Luc Photo: of this grave crime. The done, nor seen to be done. As for the ICC, its able for their criminality. court brings into force States Parties must remain vigilant to uphold the obligations of states to defeat geno- the fundamental values that are enshrined in The legacy of the genocide in Rwanda cide and to promote the investigation and the Rome Statute and serve as robust custo- is built not only on the nearly 1 million prosecution of alleged perpetrators. The dians of the treaty’s object and purpose. As lives lost and betrayed by the inaction Rwanda tribunal and the ICC represent a a general rule, the whole is greater than the of the international community, but also new era of accountability, in which there sum of its parts. That’s certainly true for the on its impact on the development of in- shall be no refuge for génocidaires and no emerging system of international criminal ternational humanitarian law, atrocity sanctuary for those who violate the sanc- justice in which state cooperation serves as prevention and justice for victims. This an- tity of life and humankind. its indispensable lifeline. niversary is an occasion to remember those lives and to examine critically the lessons of The case law of the Rwanda tribunal is As we remember the horrors that un- this tragedy. instructive in many areas of international folded in Rwanda and honour its victims, criminal law, particularly genocide. For we renew our unyielding commitment to The horrors of the Rwandan genocide example, the Rwandan genocide involved prevent mass atrocities and the hope of ultimately compelled the international unspeakable violence against women. ‘never again’. We are reminded that pre- community to contemplate how to give Great strides have been made in legally venting genocide is an undertaking and a greater eff ect to the Genocide Conven- defi ning how rape and other acts of sexual challenge shared by humanity as a whole. tion, reaffi rming the worldwide consensus violence can be used as weapons of war The ICC will certainly do its part. that crimes of this nature and magnitude and charged as crimes. On 2 September should not go unpunished. The genocide 1998, the tribunal delivered a ground- By Fatou Bensouda, chief prosecutor of the Inter- was the most dramatic illustration of the breaking decision in the Akayesu case, national Criminal Court and former Attorney General and dangers of political vacillation and the con- which, for the fi rst time in history, explicitly Minister of Justice of the Republic of the Gambia. sequences of inaction. Today, taking action recognized rape as an instrument of geno- to prevent genocide is not a policy option, cide when used as a means to destroy, in * Raphael Lemkin is best known for his work against genocide, a but rather an international legal obligation whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial word he coined in 1944 and defi ned as ‘the destruction of a national to enforce a peremptory norm. or religious group. or an ethnic group’. ISSUE 1 . 2014 | RED CROSS RED CRESCENT | 1 RCRC_1.14_Eng+_IRL.indd 1 02.04.14 16:06 In brief... Movement reaches out to Fighting spreads in besieged populations South Sudan With the Syrian confl ict now Movement workers in South Sudan entering its fourth year, the have become increasingly alarmed Movement again called on all armed by the brutal attacks against people /Wolfgang Rattay actors to protect humanitarian not involved in the fi ghting that workers and allow civilians safe erupted in mid-December. “There REUTERS access to assistance. The pleas came have also been reports of health- Photo: after the death of yet another Syrian care facilities being destroyed Arab Red Crescent (SARC) volunteer, and patients being attacked,” said Rising up after Typhoon Haiyan Hekmat Mohamad Kerbaj, who Melker Mabeck, head of the ICRC’s Survivors of Typhoon Haiyan in the central Philippines continue to rebuild after one of died on 8 January from wounds delegation in South Sudan. The the worst storms in recorded history, but recovery will be a long process. The fi shing received while missing for roughly ICRC has expanded its operations and agricultural sectors were particularly hard hit, with 95 per cent of fi shing boats fi ve months, according to the IFRC. since December and South Sudan lost in some towns and millions of coconut trees destroyed. “It will take the coconuts Meanwhile, the ICRC and SARC Red Cross volunteers have provided fi ve years to grow, so in the meantime we will survive on rice and root crops,” says continued eff orts to reach people fi rst aid and other assistance.
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