The Evolution of International Laws of War

Abstract

After centuries of little to no change in the norms of war, European nations began systematically signing treaties and agreements during the second half of the 19th century that placed limits on violent behaviour in war.1 The roots of these laws are in the 1856 Paris Declaration Respecting Maritime Law,2 and the Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field (also known as the Geneva Convention) that compiled the existing laws of war3 and was predecessor to the systematic body of rules known as the Law of Geneva which 12 European states signed in 1864. The document also laid the framework for the Laws of The Hague, the rules concerning the conduct of hostilities agreed upon at the two Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1906–1907. Post WWII, laws of war advanced in 1949, when 63 countries signed the Fourth Geneva Convention, and in 1977 with the signing of the Supplementary Agreements to the Fourth Geneva Convention, and of the four supplementary agreements to the Laws of The Hague: The Biological Weapons Convention, The Environmental Modification Convention, The Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, and the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. These agreements completed the modern structure of the present Geneva Laws.