In this issue, the Review has chosen to give a voice to former child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Children recruited by armed groups experience separation from their families, physical and psychological violence, sometimes including sexual exploitation, as well as interruption of their education. Whether they joined an armed group forcibly or by choice, as a fighter or carrying out a different function – every story is unique, reflecting numerous challenges faced by children in these circumstances. The testimonies below reflect children's experiences, the difficulties they have faced and their hopes for a new life. In order to protect them and their relatives, their testimonies have been anonymized.

The idea that Rio de Janeiro has been plunged into an actual “war” against organized crime is widely discussed and is supported by an ever-increasing number of people in Brazil. Not surprisingly, such discourse has led to less protection for the civilian population, particularly in the so-called favelas, while allowing security forces to carry out operations with even greater relative impunity. This article argues that although urban violence in Rio de Janeiro is indeed a serious problem, it does not reach the threshold required to be considered a non-international armed conflict.

The Montreux Document on Private Military and Security Companies (Montreux Document) was adopted in 2008 by seventeen States to reaffirm and, as far as was necessary, clarify the existing obligations of States and other actors under international law, in particular under international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHRL). It also aimed at identifying good practices and regulatory options to assist States in promoting respect for IHL and IHRL by private military and security companies (PMSCs). Today, fifty-one States and three international organizations have endorsed the Montreux Document. It contains twenty-seven “Statements” – sections recalling the main international legal obligations of States in regard to the operations of PMSCs during armed conflicts. Each statement is the reaffirmation of a general rule of IHL, IHRL or State responsibility formulated in a way that clarifies its applicability to PMSC operations. This article aims to detail the basis of each legal obligation mentioned in the first part of the Montreux Document (Part I). The article follows the structure of Part I, in order to better facilitate its comprehension. The second part of the Montreux Document, relating to good practices, is not covered in this article.

S. Exc. M. le Dr Abbas Naficy, vice-président du Lion et Soleil Rouges de I'Iran, ancien ministre, a bien voulu rédiger pour la Revue internationale de la Croix-Rouge l'article qu'on va lire et qui, par son titre et son inspiration, constitue une suite aux études que notre Revue a consacrées précédemment à l'idéal humanitaire dans les diverses civilisations.

Le Dr Naficy est particulièrement qualifié pour traiter ce sujet, puisque sa carriére de médecin et ses fonctions de professeur de médecine à Téhéran l'ont maintenu sans cesse en présence de la souffrance humaine, de même que son activité féconde au sein du Lion et Soleil Rouges, cette Société qu'inspire, on le sait, de sa sollicitude, S. A. I. la Princesse Chams Pahlavi, présidente d'honneur. (N.d.l.R.)

At the International Colloquium held by the International Institute of Humanitarian Law, at Sanremo last September, a paper was submitted on military instructions concerning the treatment of prisoners in situations arising from guerrilla warfare. In view of the importance of the subject and of the interesting references made to history, we are publishing the introduction and conclusion of this study, which will later appear in the official records of the International Institute of Humanitarian Law, as well as some of the historical examples given by the author. (Ed.)

The closing years of this century will be challenging ones indeed for all Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Vulnerability is increasing for much of the world's population as political and economic changes accelerate. Constraints on the resources that may be applied to meet the needs of the vulnerable are also becoming more numerous.

It is necessary, first of all, to define what is understood here by the expression “reuniting of families”.

In this article, the term is used in a narrow sense. It refers to the humanitarian protection given, on an international plane, for the reuniting of the members of one and the same family, who have been separated from each other against their will, as a result of external events—international wars, civil wars, internal disturbances, grave political tension—and who have ended up in different countries on either side of a frontier which they find impossible to cross. In most cases, the difficulties involved for such persons to obtain permits allowing them to leave a particular country and enter another are practically insurmountable. It is such persons who are referred to here and it is to them that the ICRC endeavours to bring its assistance.

International humanitarian law and human rights law share a common goal, namely to protect the individual and to ensure respect for human dignity. Yet these two branches of international public law each have their own characteristics and origins and have evolved in different ways.

Nevertheless, the troubled aftermath of the Second World War, the unchecked rise of violence and poverty in recent decades and the resulting need for improved protection of the ever-growing number of victims of violations of fundamental human rights have all contributed not only to the evolution of the two branches of law but also to their convergence, like “two poor crutches on which disarmed victims can lean simultaneously”, to quote an expressive image by Karel Vasak. This expert went so far as to estimate in 1984 that “the convergence of the two branches has led to an overlapping both on paper and, increasingly, in practice as well”.

Rara vez los debates originados por lo que algunos califican de derecho o de deber de injerencia, vinculándolo posteriormente al concepto de derecho de asistencia, han dado a las cuestiones humanitarias tal publicidad. A diferentes niveles de comprensión, el público en general, los medios de comunicación y los juristas especializados se han apasionado por esta cuestión; incluso han llegado a encararse.

En el fondo no es una mala cosa, porque estas pasiones no dejan indiferentes a los Gobiernos y así se puede avanzar en el ámbito humanitario. De hecho, es indiscutible que se han planteado, y aún se plantean, importantes cuestiones.

A l'heure où le dixième anniversaire de la Convention sur l'interdiction et la limitation de l'emploi de certaines armes classiques qui peuvent çtre considérées comme produisant des effets traumatiques excessifs ou comme frappant sans discrimination, adoptée le 10 octobre 1980 (ci-après: la Convention de 1980), marque le progrès réalisé par ce traité dans le domaine des limites que la norme fixe aux souffrances de la guerre, nous assistons, paradoxalement, à un nombre croissant de situations qui échappent, formellement tout au moins, à son application. II s'agit des conflits armés de caractère non international.

Following the events of 11 September 2001, measures aimed at countering the financing of terrorism (CFT) were intensified by States. Many countries around the world adopted strict anti-money laundering and CFT regulations for the transfer of funds globally. This process increased the costs of complying with regulatory requirements and imposed high penalties on banks for non-compliance. As a result, preventive measures – often known as “de-risking” – were taken up by banks, including terminating the accounts of clients perceived as “high-risk” for money laundering or terrorist financing, and delaying transfers. These measures, however, have had negative consequences, reducing financial access for local civil society organizations in conflict-affected contexts that are deemed high-risk for terrorist activities. Drawing on five years of research to understand the impact of de-risking on conflict-affected contexts from a local perspective, this paper reflects on the local political economy of CFT, with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa. It explores two key areas of inquiry. The first of these is the politics of interpretation – how counterterrorism as a discourse and a set of practices, of which CFT is one, gets interpreted by local authorities and banks, and subsequently gets reinterpreted to the population. This also has implications for which local actors are better positioned to access funds than others, and why. The second area of inquiry is the politics of vulnerability – how the local political economy impact of CFT can increase the social and economic vulnerabilities of some groups more than others. This paper demonstrates that under the guise of “counterterrorism”, local authorities in conflict-affected contexts have used CFT to restrict the non-profit and philanthropic space and are using banking regulations to shape that space in ways that are bound to have negative medium- and long-term implications for it.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Library was first created at the initiative of the ICRC's co-founder and president, Gustave Moynier. By the end of the nineteenth century, it had become a specialized documentation centre with comprehensive collections on the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, international humanitarian law (IHL) and relief to war victims, keeping track of the latest legal debates and technological innovations in the fields related to the ICRC's activities. The publications collected by the Library until the end of the First World War form a rich collection of almost 4,000 documents now known as the ancien fonds, the Library's Heritage Collection.

Direct witness to the birth of an international humanitarian movement and of IHL, the Heritage Collection contains the era's most important publications related to the development of humanitarian action for war victims, from the first edition of Henry Dunant's groundbreaking Un souvenir de Solférino to the first mission reports of ICRC delegates and the handwritten minutes of the Diplomatic Conference that led to the adoption of the 1864 Geneva Convention. This article looks at the way this unique collection of documents retraces the history of the ICRC during its first decades of existence and documents its original preoccupations and operations, highlighting the most noteworthy items of the Collection along the way.