The present Report, submitted to the forty-eighth session (1993) of the United Nations General Assembly, follows on a report prepared by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in 1992 and examined by the General Assembly at its forty-seventh session. (1)

On that occasion, the General Assembly invited the ICRC to pursue its work on the subject and to report to it at its next session.

This Report supplements document A/47/328 by including a review of work of experts conducted under ICRC auspices over the past year. As a follow-up to a request made at the forty-seventh session of the General Assembly, it also contains a set of basic rules as "Guidelines for Military Manuals and Instructions on the Protection of the Environment in Time of Armed Conflict" (Annex I).

For maximum clarity, the ICRC has opted for an overall report on the issue. The present document therefore takes up - at times in a slightly summarized form - the main elements of document A/47/328, which may be considered as an interim report, superseded by this Report.

In recent decades, many armed conflicts have involved a wide range of threats to the environment. These have included long-lasting chemical pollution on land; maritime and atmospheric pollution; despoliation of land by mines and other dangerous objects; and threats to water supplies and other necessities of life. The consequences have affected not only belligerents, but also civilians and neutral States; and they have sometimes continued long after the end of the armed conflict. Such threats to the environment expose many difficult problems. Protection of the environment is of course only one of many considerations which must be borne in mind by those involved in armed conflicts, but it is an important one. The subject has come to be extensively discussed in national and international fora, including the United Nations.

On 9 December 1991, the United Nations General Assembly concluded its deliberations on item 140 of its agenda (2) with the adoption of Decision 46/417, which reads as follows:

"The General Assembly:

(a) Takes note that the protection of the environment in times of armed conflict is to be addressed at the Twenty-Sixth International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent;

(b) Decides to request the Secretary-General to report to the General Assembly at its forty-seventh session on activities undertaken in the framework of the International Red Cross with regard to that issue;

(c) Also decides to include in the provisional agenda of its forty-seventh session the item entitled 'Protection of the environment in time of armed conflict'".

The international community has given the ICRC a mandate "to work for the understanding and dissemination of knowledge of international humanitarian law applicable in armed conflicts and to prepare any development thereof" (3) . The ICRC has declared itself ready to undertake work aimed at protecting the environment in wartime and has submitted the results of its work to the forty-seventh session of the General Assembly. This report, (4) drawn up in response to the request contained in paragraph (b) of the decision quoted above, has been examined by the Sixth (Legal) Committee during the forty-seventh session. (5)

There is no need to review in detail the debate which took place in the Sixth Committee, since records of its proceedings are available. (6)

Mention should be made, however, of some of the items which were examined more thoroughly, and of the main conclusions reached by the Committee.

Most of the States which took part in the debate (as well as the ICRC) recognized the importance and relevance of existing rules and called for them to be implemented and respected.

Some States felt that the existing rules were sufficient and that what was needed was ensuring greater compliance with them. However, most of the States represented thought it also necessary to clarify and interpret the scope and content of some of those rules, and even to develop other aspects of the law relating to the protection of the environment in time of armed conflict. These include the need for better protection of the environment as such, the need for stricter application of the principle of proportionality (and, to this end, for a more precise definition of its scope in specific situations), the importance of defining more precisely the threshold of application of the rules, the need for a clear decision regarding the applicability in wartime of provisions of international environmental law, and the advisability of setting up a mechanism to sanction breaches thereof.

The suggestions aiming for a complete overhaul of existing law were not deemed opportune.

The debate led to the adoption of Resolution A/47/37 (7), which called on States to accede to the treaties in force and apply their provisions, in particular by incorporating them in their military manuals. Furthermore, the resolution invited the ICRC to continue its work on the question, to prepare a handbook of model guidelines for military manuals and to submit to the forty-eighth session of the General Assembly a report to be examined under the item of the agenda devoted to the United Nations Decade of International Law.

The present report begins by recalling the main provisions of existing law (I). It then goes on to list the results of the principal activities carried out recently by various organizations (II) and under ICRC auspices (III). Section IV describes the ICRC's position on issues relative to the protection of the environment in time of armed conflict, and section V presents some conclusions.

As mentioned above, the Annex to this report contains "Guidelines for Military Manuals and Instructions on the Protection of the Environment in Time of Armed Conflict".