"I see peace is too far away," Johana replies when asked about her life after the Peace Agreement signed between the Colombian government and the FARC-EP. "There was no calm or ceasefire for us. We …
Agriculture is essential for survival of people in South Sudan. When fighting erupts, agricultural cycles get disrupted and farmers can no longer produce food. This results in the severe food …
International Red Cross and Red Crescent Conference on the Prohibition and Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, Nagasaki, Japan. Speech by Christine Beerli, vice president of the ICRC. In the coming weeks …
It's been three years since the start of the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Before the conflict, people lived a different reality. Now their daily life has completely changed. Long hours waiting in the …
The seminar aims at providing humanitarian professionals with relevant background knowledge in IHL. The programme is designed to encourage discussions and debates on the main IHL issues arising in …
Empty Chairs, Waiting Families is a memorialisation project for the families of people who went missing during armed conflicts in Lebanon which began in 1975. They express their suffering by painting …
Thousands of people went missing during the armed conflict that plagued Lebanon from 1975 to 1990 and thousands are still missing. Their families have the right to know their fate. The Lebanese …
The ICRC's 21st course in International Humanitarian Law (IHL) for humanitarian professionals and policy makers is designed to acquaint participants with the international rules, principles and …
Twenty years ago, the four-month ordeal of 72 hostages held captive at the residence of the Japanese ambassador to Peru came to an end. For the ICRC, it meant deploying its humanitarian resources to …
Two years ago, Marmendu Tamang's world changed in just a few minutes. On 25 April 2015, Nepal was hit by one of the most devastating earthquakes recorded in the past eight decades. The earthquake …
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Created in 1863, the ICRC library, alongside the ICRC archives, provides an indispensable documentary reference on the organization itself and international humanitarian law.
International humanitarian law is based on a number of treaties, in particular the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols, and a series of other instruments.
Customary international humanitarian law consists of rules that come from "a general practice accepted as law" and that exist independent of treaty law.
