“Today, victims of war and other situations of violence need greater protection. Influential members of society have to try to guarantee that. Encounters, like this conference, between Islamic scholars and experts on humanitarian law can make a significant contribution," said Andreas Wigger, the ICRC's deputy director of operations.

The purpose of the conference was to identify features that are common to Islamic law and international humanitarian law. "The discussions made international lawyers more aware of Islamic tradition, and its methods for establishing obligations towards victims of war. At the same time, experts on Islamic law learnt about the comprehensiveness and universality of international humanitarian law,” Mr. Wigger said.

The protection of victims of armed conflicts was the underlying theme of all debate at the conference. Basic rules, like the obligation to protect wounded people, detainees and civilians, were considered through the prism of Islamic values and the provisions of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh).

This conference was jointly organized by the ICRC, the Iranian Red Crescent Society and some major institutions in Iran, such as the Ahl-e Beit World Assembly, the Iranian Foreign Ministry's Institute for Political and International Studies, Imam Sadiq University, the International Centre for Islamic Studies, the Islamic Culture and Communications Organization, the Islamic Science and Culture Research Centre, Mofid University, the Qom Hawza and the World Forum For Proximity of Islamic Schools of Thought.

In the last two years, as part of its ongoing dialogue with scholars and experts in Islamic jurisprudence, the ICRC has organized similar events in Islamabad, Aden, Fez, Dar es Salaam and Kabul, with the aim of broadening and deepening mutual understanding and finding common ground for protecting human dignity in armed conflicts.