What are the Geneva Conventions & International Humanitarian Law?

Today, many people are asking questions about the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law (IHL). We offer this selection of Basic Rules of IHL, which was developed a few years ago for a course for secondary schools, Exploring Humanitarian Law.

The body of IHL itself is extensive, encompassing several treaties that have evolved over time. The Geneva Conventions are comprised of four treaties with numerous articles. Each treaty protects a different group at risk during armed conflict and specifies how they must be humanely treated. These “Basic Rules” were:

• Selected as important ones for conveying the substance and spirit of the laws to young people
• Edited to be accessible to their reading level

What Are the Basic Rules of International Humanitarian Law?

These two pages of “Basic Rules” are visited many times in Exploring Humanitarian Law as students compare them to rules they themselves have proposed for situations of armed conflict, analyze news accounts to see which rules were violated, analyze the rules to see what further violations might be provoked by a violation of each rule.

Exploring Humanitarian Law was developed for youth worldwide by the International Committee of the Red Cross in close cooperation with Education Development Center, Inc. For more information about this and related programs on international humanitarian law, contact a member of the American Red Cross international humanitarian law dissemination team at EHL@usa.redcross.org.

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