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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 March 2016
The second session of the Diplomatic Conference on the Reaffirmation and Development of International Humanitarian Law applicable to Armed Conflicts met in Geneva from February 3 until April 18, 1975. The purpose of this session of the Conference was the adoption — or perhaps more correctly the successful drafting — of two Protocols to be added to the Geneva Red Cross Conventions of 1949, in order to protect further the victims of international and non-international conflicts respectively; it was also to consider proposals directed to the humanization of methods of warfare, including the prohibition or restriction of conventional weapons considered to be purely indiscriminate or likely to cause an amount of suffering disproportionate to the purpose of the armed conflict.
* The writer was an advisor to and member of the Canadian delegation to the Geneva Humanitarian Law Conference, while serving as Academic in Residence, Bureau of Legal Affairs, Department of External Affairs, Ottawa. The views expressed are those of the writer alone.
