New challenges for humanitarian protection

The fourth Geneva Convention, adopted 50 years ago, on 12 August 1949, describes the actions that warring parties must take to protect civilian populations from the worst excesses of war. Building on the concept developed in the previous three conventions—that certain activities and people, especially civilians, can be seen as hors de combat—the fourth Geneva Convention defines in detail the many ways in which civilians must be dealt with to shield them from the direct and indirect effects of conflict between combatant forces. Among the responsibilities that this convention sets for the warring parties are explicit actions that would grant medical personnel, and all aspects of the medical enterprise, complete protection from interference or harm. This neutral status for medical relief (and, by extension, all humanitarian aid) rests on the reciprocal assumption that those who deliver this relief are practising in accord with their professional ethics and will take specified steps to maintain their neutral posture vis à vis the warring parties.

The moral impetus for this addition to the Geneva Conventions derived from international reaction to the great civilian death toll of the second world war. In virtually all wars of the subsequent 50 years the fourth Geneva Convention has been variously observed and routinely violated—and there has been no calling to account. Moreover, and this is what prompts new attention to the issue of humanitarian protection in war, in recent wars the warring parties have shown an increasing tendency to flout the fourth convention entirely. The problem is no longer a failure to abide by the rules but a failure to acknowledge that the rules even exist.1

This failure is particularly relevant for the medical community. Without the guarantees of protection defined in the fourth convention, civilians can be slaughtered with impunity and physicians and other relief …