Le docteur Albert Reverdin était un homme d'action, à l'intelligence largement ouverte, à l'esprit lucide, impérieux et prompt, à la volonté droite, à la main sûre, au cœur secret et généreux: une personnalité forte, et souple, toujours d'accord avec elle-même, et où s'associaient, avec les certitudes de la raison, les impulsions du sentiment et les ressources séduisantes de l'intuition. Homme de franc parler, sans faiblesse et sans détours, homme de commandement, homme de dévouement. Ce qu'il voulait, il l'aimait; ce qu'il aimait, il le voulait. Les causes qu'il avait choisies, elles le prenaient tout entier.

Ambassador Maurits R. Jochems is currently Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Operations in the International Secretariat of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). His functions include responsibility for the Alliance's work in the field of civil emergency planning. As a Dutch Foreign Service career diplomat, he has been seconded to NATO since August 2005. Before taking up his current position he was Director of International Security Policy in the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, dealing with operations, NATO and EU security policy issues, UN disarmament and arms control, OSCE matters and arms export policy. He has also served at Dutch embassies in Kingston, Bonn, Beirut, Brussels (NATO) and Rome.

Only the members of the armed forces of a Party to a conflict (other than medical personnel, chaplains and military personnel engaged in civil defence) are combatants (Hague Regulations, Art. 1 and 3; P. I, Art. 43 and 67).

Combatants are entitled to take direct part in the hostilities (P. I, Art. 43), i.e. to commit acts of war which are intended by their nature or their purpose to hit specifically the combatants and other military objectives of the enemy armed forces.

Any combatant who falls into the power of an adverse Party is a prisoner of war (P. I, Art. 4).

With the globalisation of market economies, business has become an increasingly prominent actor in international relations. It is also increasingly present in situations of armed conflict. On the one hand, companies operating in volatile environments are exposed to violence and the consequences of armed conflicts. On the other hand, some of their conduct in armed conflict may lead to violations of the law.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) engages with the private sector on humanitarian issues, with the aim of ensuring compliance or clarifying the obligations that business actors have under international humanitarian law (IHL) and encouraging them to comply with the commitments they have undertaken under various international initiatives to respect IHL and human rights law.

In times of conflict, IHL spells out certain responsibilities and rights for all parties involved. Knowledge of the relevant rules of IHL is therefore critical for local and international businesses operating in volatile contexts. In this Q&A section, Philip Spoerri, ICRC Director for International Law and Cooperation, gives an overview of the rules applicable to business actors in situations of conflict, and discusses some of the ICRC's engagement with business actors.

Philip Spoerri began his career with the ICRC in 1994. Following a first assignment in Israel and the occupied and autonomous territories, he went on to be based in Kuwait, Yemen, Afghanistan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In Geneva, he headed the legal advisers to the Department of Operations. He returned to Afghanistan as head of the ICRC delegation there from 2004 to 2006, when he took up his current position. Before joining the ICRC, he worked as a lawyer in a private firm in Munich. He holds a PhD in law from Bielefeld University and has also studied at the universities of Göttingen, Geneva, and Munich.

The displacement of civilians during a protracted war is a difficult issue that deserves our attention, and Iraq is unfortunately an emblematic example of this phenomenon. Based on the literature produced by humanitarian organizations and academia, this article aims at analyzing what triggers displacement in protracted conflict, highlighting the role of international humanitarian law (IHL) violations. It discusses how Iraq has been struggling with acts of violence, hostilities and IHL violations that have generated displacement and human suffering.

Evaristo de Pinho Oliveira is the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Water and Habitat Unit. He started working with the ICRC as a water and sanitation engineer in 1995. Over the next ten years he completed missions in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Angola, Iraq, Sudan and East Timor, and provided water and habitat support to the ICRC's regional delegations in Asia. He then was based at ICRC headquarters in Geneva, where he held several positions supporting field operations in Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. In 2016, he co-authored the ICRC's report on Urban services in protracted armed conflict: A call for a better approach to assisting affected people. Prior to working at the ICRC, he worked in Quebec as an engineer and as a teaching assistant at McGill University.

Como desde hace cierto tiempo se está pensando en una posible revisión de los Estatutos de la Cruz Roja Internacional de 1952 y del Acuerdo entre el CICR y la Liga de 1969–1974, la Revista Internacional consideró que sería interesante y útil pedir al señor André Durand, ex delegado del CICR e historiador, autor del segundo tomo «De Sarajevo á Hiroshima», de la Historia del Comité Internacional de la Cruz Roja, que escribiera un artículo sobre la historia de los Estatutos y del Acuerdo. El lector encontrará en ese trabajo los acontecimientos, las diversas concepciones y las experiencias vividas por nuestros predecesores, que motivaron el origen y marcaron las sucesivas etapas de la redacción y la evolución de esos textos.

Los primeros estatutos de la Cruz Roja Internacional datan de 1928. Hasta esa fecha, la obra internacional de la Cruz Roja no disponía de una constitución.

This article seeks to demonstrate the nexus between agent-related technology and the protection of the environment in armed conflicts, looking at how agent-based modelling and simulation (ABMS) can be used as a tool to protect the environment in armed conflicts. It further analyzes the precautionary principle and due regard, as relevant rules, and explains the legal benefits of deploying ABMS to protect and preserve the natural environment. The article argues that the deployment of ABMS helps States to better understand the environmental effects of conflicts, reassess their military activities and comply with the relevant applicable rules and norms.

Following the adoption of the Additional Protocols in 1977, the ICRC decided to start working on the interpretation of these new treaties of international humanitarian law, just as it had published a Commentary on the Geneva Conventions after their adoption in 1949.

Henry Dunant's appeal for a neutral and impartial organization to provide care to wounded combatants aligned with growing criticism of mid-nineteenth-century European and North American conflicts. This article discusses the important convergence of Dunant's “lamentable pictures”, laid out in his Memory of Solferino, with spectators’ passionate responses to them and to battlefield photographs that circulated between 1855 and 1865. Through these images and reactions, there emerged a shared, expanded vision of humanity worth caring for, which brought into focus an international humanitarian movement.

Les bombes, qui, au cours de la guerre d'Ethiopie, ont atteint des hôpitaux de la Croix-Rouge, devraient rappeler à tous les pays qui sont exposés aux dangers d'une attaque aérienne, l'intérêt qui s'attaehe aux mesures destinées à assurer la sécurité de leurs hôpitaux contre les périls de l'air.