Red Cross chief urges international law respect amid rampant abuses

GENEVA: The International Committee of the Red Cross was hosting on Tuesday representatives from over 100 countries in Geneva for discussions on bolstering respect for international law at a time of rampant abuses.

The issue is pressing, ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric told the gathering, warning that the so-called laws of war were increasingly being trampled on even as the globe grapples with over 130 armed conflicts — its highest number since World War II.

“We are living through an age of fading restraint, where the rules are too often ignored, rejected or used to justify violations,” she warned.

“We don’t need stricter rules,” she insisted.

“What we need is political commitment to respect the existing ones and a renewed determination in applying these rules in good faith.”

The ICRC, along with Brazil, China, France, Jordan, Kazakhstan and South Africa, launched an initiative in 2024 aimed at galvanizing political support for international humanitarian law, or IHL.

Enshrined in the Geneva Conventions, IHL consists of a set of rules that seek, for humanitarian reasons, to limit the effects of armed conflict, protecting civilians and civilian objects and imposing limits on the means and methods of warfare.

IHL “does not abolish war, nor can it prevent all of the suffering that inevitably comes with them,” Spoljaric acknowledged, “but its rules, if they are respected, have the power to save lives.”

Over the past two years, more than 160 countries have taken part in discussions seeking to identify concrete ways to boost respect for IHL.

They produced guidelines, presented at the Geneva event, proposing ways that states can counter narratives and behaviors that portray individuals or groups as less deserving of protection.

This includes guidance for armed forces on how to refer to the enemy and civilians, the monitoring of social media use by armed forces and public authorities, and integrating humanitarian values into civic education, ICRC said.

States were also urged to ensure that new technologies strengthen rather than undermine the protection of civilians in armed conflict.

The Geneva meeting will be followed by a high-level conference in Jordan on December 7, hosted by King Abdullah II, and with invitations extended to the leaders of the 127 countries that have officially joined the Global IHL Initiative, ICRC said.