Public understanding of humanitarian emergencies tends to focus on one story and one type of victim. Examples are manifold: amputees in Sierra Leone, victims of kidnapping in Colombia, or victims of chemical weapons in Syria. At times, the aid community, and the media in turn, seizes upon a particular injustice – landmines, female genital mutilation and child soldiers are examples from recent decades – and directs resources and attention its way. Similarly, thematic trends tend to dominate aid discourse, with funding proposals to donors replete with references to the framework du jour. In a related phenomenon highlighted by author and aid worker Fiona Terry, “[w]ords are commandeered to give a new gloss to familiar themes: ‘capacity building’ became ‘empowerment’, which has now become ‘resilience’”. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the conflict has been largely defined by sexual violence, and raped women are its most prominent victims.

The Secretary-General of the Albanian Red Cross reports on action taken by her National Society in response to the massive flow of refugees into Albania from neighbouring Kosovo in the spring of 1999. Pandora Ketri shows how a National Society, only a few years after it started to gain strength, met an enormous challenge and coped with huge difficulties. Though the Albanian Red Cross could count on support from other National Societies, the International Federation and the ICRC, the members of this young Society had to bear the brunt of the work. The experience gained through its activities for refugees from Kosovo helped the Albanian Red Cross consolidate its position as a member of the Movement and as a full-fledged relief society.

The legal protection of children was introduced into international humanitarian law after the Second World War. Experience during that conflict had, in fact, pointed to the urgent need to draw up an instrument of public international law for protecting civilian population in wartime. The results of the ICRC's efforts in this field led to the adoption of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the protection of civilian persons in time of war. From that time on, children, as members of the civilian population, were entitled to benefit from the application of that Convention. Moreover, the first international humanitarian law regulations concerning armed conflicts not of an international character, contained in article 3, common to the four 1949 Geneva Conventions, were drawn up at the 1949 Diplomatic Conference. Here again, children were protected, in the same way as all “persons taking no active part in the hostilities”.

Despite the recurrence of hostage-taking through the ages, the subject of hostages themselves has thus far received little analysis. Classically, there are two distinct types of hostages: voluntary hostages, as was common practice during the Ancien Régime of pre-Revolution France, when high-ranking individuals handed themselves over to benevolent jailers as guarantors for the proper execution of treaties; and involuntary hostages, whose seizure is a typical procedure in all-out war where individuals are held indiscriminately and without consideration, like living pawns, to gain a decisive military upper hand. Today the status of “hostage” is a combination of both categories taken to extremes. Though chosen for pecuniary, symbolic or political reasons, hostages are generally mistreated. They are in fact both the reflection and the favoured instrument of a major moral dichotomy: that of the increasing globalization of European and American principles and the resultant opposition to it — an opposition that plays precisely on the western adherence to human and democratic values. In the eyes of his countrymen, the hostage thus becomes the very personification of the innocent victim, a troubling and haunting image.

Starting from the middle of the nineteenth century, the principles governing the processing of corpses and the accounting of those deceased on the battlefield were inscribed in military codes. The military and civil authorities carried out the official collection and recording of the effects of the dead: the bodies were to be searched for, identified, and protected from plundering and ill treatment. In Europe and in the United States, tombs were constructed containing non-identified remains under the name of “unknown soldiers”. Gradually, intelligence services and resources were mobilized to ensure as far as possible an individualized processing of the bodies of those killed in war. These procedures were extended little by little to civilian victims. Today in the Balkans, or in Argentina, pits are being opened, human remains are exhumed, and anthropologists and physicians examine bodies, remains and bones in order to establish the identity of the dead and the circumstances of the death. In this regard, the tombs of unknown soldiers are likely to be replaced by monuments to the memory of non-identified civilian victims of war.

Plus de sept ans ont passé depuis la première édition de cet ouvrage. Sept années qui ont vu une montée plutôt qu'un déclin de la violence, et souvent un mépris croissant pour le respect de la vie et des droits fondamentaux de la personne humaine.

The proliferation of crises around the world has led to a sharp increase in the scale of humanitarian aid required to meet the vital needs of the people affected by them for food, water, medical care and shelter. Humanitarian organizations can either meet those needs directly or support local services engaged in the same work. In most cases, both approaches are used.

At the end of 2008, the number of people internally displaced by conflict, generalized violence or human rights violations across the world stood at 26 million, a record high since the IDMC started to monitor internal displacement in 1998. This high figure remains in spite of the growing recognition and implementation of the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement. This article presents the findings of the latest IDMC survey on trends in internal displacement, challenges faced by displaced populations, and the measures taken to address these.

There is a persistent belief in the power of media images to transform the events they depict. Yet despite the instant availability of billions of images of human suffering and death in the continuous and connective digital glare of social media, the catastrophes of contemporary wars, such as in Syria and Yemen, unfold relentlessly. There are repeated expressions of surprise by some in the West when the dissemination of images of suffering and wars, particularly in mainstream news media, does not translate into a de-escalation of conflict.

In this article I consider today's loosening of the often presumed relationship between media representation, knowledge and response under the conditions of “digital war”. This is the digital disruption of the relationship between warfare and society in which all sides participate in the uploading and sharing of information on, and images and videos of, conflict.

Is it the case that the capacity of images of human injury and death to bring about change, and the expectation that they would stir practical intervention in wars, is and has been exaggerated? Even if we are moved or shocked upon being confronted by such images, does this translate into some form of action, individual or otherwise? In this article I contend that the saturation of information and images of human suffering and death in contemporary warfare has not ushered in a new era of “compassion fatigue”. Rather, algorithmically charged outrage is a proxy for effects. It is easy to misconstrue the velocity of linking and liking and sharing as some kind of mass action or mass movement.

Humanitarian catastrophes slowly unfold in an age of continuous and connective digital glare, and yet they are unseen. If the imploded battlefield of digital war affording the most proximate and persistent view of human suffering and death in history cannot ultimately mobilize radically effective forms of public response, it is difficult to imagine what will.

This report presents the instruments and strategies used by non-state actors to respect international humanitarian law during intra-state conflicts in Africa and highlights the recognition by these non-state actors of the role of humanitarian organizations. It examines the impact of such recognition on the development of international humanitarian law and the activities of humanitarian organizations, and shows the problems encountered by non-state actors with respect to their commitments. It concludes with some suggestions as to a way forward.

Little attention is paid to the obligation of ‘care’ in Article 55(1) of Additional Protocol I. Beyond a general principle of upholding environmental value in times of armed conflict, what is the scope and content of the obligation? If it is worthless, what makes it so? Since the care provision includes the same high threshold of harm found elsewhere in the environmental provisions, has this stumbling block now been removed by state practice? Rule 44 of the Customary Law Study might appear to suggest that this is so, or does it? Ultimately then, is the care obligation worth caring about?

This article assesses the causes of the crisis of detention in Latin America. It is argued that this crisis, which manifests itself in overpopulation of the region's prison systems, deficient infrastructure, prison informality and violence propelled ultimately by political processes, is mostly related to, on the one hand, disastrous human rights conditions inside Latin American prisons, and on other, the political denial of these conditions. This denial produces a state of institutional abandonment that is preserved by the interests of politicians and bureaucrats, who are engaged in denying prison violence and human rights abuses while simultaneously calling for more punishment and imprisonment.

• International humanitarian law cannot serve as a basis for armed intervention in response to grave violations of its provisions; the use of force is governed by the United Nations Charter.

• It is not for the ICRC to pronounce on the legality or legitimacy of such intervention.

• International humanitarian law applies when intervention forces are engaged in hostilities with one or more of the parties to the conflict.

• The ICRC seeks to promote the term “armed intervention in response to grave violations of human rights and of international humanitarian law”.

The ethical and legal problems raised by war loom large in the thinking of the theologians and jurists of Spain's Golden Age. In their reflections and pronouncements on these problems, however, they were not starting from nothing. They had before them a large body of teachings, mostly dating from the Middle Ages. An accurate assessment of their role in this field must therefore begin by recalling those mediaeval teachings on war. We shall thus start with an outline of those teachings, before moving on to consider how they were assimilated and modified by the Spanish authors of the sixteenth century.

The Responsibility to Protect is being touted as a new approach to protecting populations from mass atrocities. Certainly it would be encouraging to believe that an end to genocides, large scale ethnic cleansing and large scale loss of life were within humanity's reach. However, whilst the holistic approach of the doctrine is to be commended, the legality of the proposal requires further analysis. This paper specifically addresses the evolution of the legality of humanitarian intervention and looks at whether the Responsibility to Protect doctrine advances the legality of the use of force for humanitarian ends.

“What is an ICRC delegate?” Here, in a sentence, is the focus of this article. Going through the in-house perception, which highlights the extraordinary and singular nature of this humanitarian player, and through the view of the public, which oscillates between the missionary of humanity and the mere holder of a temporary job, the authors attempt to give the reader the key to unveil and discover this peculiar profession.

The Libyan crisis of 2011 has again raised the crucial problem of the choice of means in protecting civilians. Authorized by the international community as part of military operations in Libya, the use of force in protecting civilians has revived the concept of ‘humanitarian war’ and has raised a number of issues for humanitarian organizations, in particular concerning the notion of neutral, impartial, and independent humanitarian action.1 The article focuses on these humanitarian issues and, inter alia, on the possible impact on humanitarian action of the concept of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), which was at the basis of the intervention in Libya.