Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis speaks during an informal visit of UN Security Council members at the Palais des Nations. UN marks 75th anniversary of Geneva Conventions International Law
Seventy-five years after the 1949 Geneva Conventions, a former child soldier turned Sierra Leone foreign minister has called on the international community to step up support for the implementation of these vital agreements.
“I am a former child soldier, forcibly recruited during a civil conflict that killed more than 50,000 of my countrymen… I would not be where I am today without the critical support of the ICRC and the international community,” Moussa Timothy Kabbah told Security Council members meeting in Geneva on Monday. He was referring to a key UN partner, the International Committee of the Red Cross, founded in Switzerland in 1863 to provide humanitarian assistance under agreements designed to protect people in conflict.
The forum gathered in Geneva to mark the moment when, in 1949, the international community revised three previous conventions – on the protection of soldiers wounded in action, victims of conflict at sea and prisoners of war – and added a fourth, on the protection of civilians affected by war.
‘A Moral Beacon’
Permanent Representative of Mozambique to the UN Pedro Comissário Afonso said in his speech that the Geneva Conventions had been a “moral beacon and a legal compass” during and after the armed conflict that had been going on in his country since 1998. 1977 to 1992.
The international humanitarian law enshrined in these documents “guide[s] the actions not only of the parties involved in the conflict, but also of the humanitarian organizations that have worked tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of the Mozambican people,” he added.
“A worrying international context”
Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis, who represented the host country, drew the audience’s attention to the “worrying international context” of the current date.
“There are more than 120 armed conflicts unfolding around the world,” he said. – Sudan, Ukraine, Yemen, the Middle East – these are just some examples of wars that could not be avoided either through multilateralism or through international law.”
Calling on warring parties to increase their support for international humanitarian law, which aims to limit the consequences of armed conflict, Ignazio Cassis stressed that it “cannot simply be law written ‘on the paper of our good conscience’, but must be law in action.”
The changing nature of modern wars
ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric-Egger said the blatant disregard shown by many states for the Geneva Conventions needed to be addressed. According to her, countries must use their influence and authority to allow independent and neutral humanitarian organizations to do their job.
The ICRC President noted the rapidly changing nature of modern warfare, which poses another challenge to international humanitarian law: “States must ensure that the use of new technologies of warfare, artificial intelligence, information and cyber operations strictly complies with international humanitarian law.”
A Common Cause
Professor of International Law at the Geneva Institute Andrew Clapham said in his speech that the responsibility for protecting civilians during conflicts and ensuring access to them for humanitarian workers should not rest solely with the International Criminal Court or the International Court of Justice, humanitarian workers or the Red Cross: “Violations of the Geneva Conventions must rest with shoulders of the authorities of all states.”