Geneva Convention: Definition from Answers.com
- ️Mon Jan 22 2007
(1864)
The Geneva Convention of 22 August 1864 was the world's first multilateral humanitarian treaty. Sixteen nations were present, responding to public concern about the sufferings of sick and wounded soldiers, well publicized by the labors of Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War, Clara Barton and the U.S. Sanitary Commission in the American Civil War, and the dramatic book The Memory of Solferino (1862) by Henry Dunant, a Swiss, about the casualties at the Battle of Solferino in 1859. Dunant and four other Genevan philanthropists had already launched, in October 1863, what would become the international Red Cross movement. Now the twelve initial signatories bound their armies to respect and protect the lives and workplaces of each other's ambulance and medical personnel; to incorporate volunteer auxiliaries into their medical corps; and to signify their virtual neutrality by a protective emblem, “a red cross on a white ground.” The United States acceded to the convention in 1882.
Its consequences were mixed. The popularity of national Red Cross societies actually facilitated social mobilization for war purposes. On the other hand, the convention set a valuable humanitarian precedent, of which the most obvious sequels were its successively extended versions of 1906, 1929, 1949, and 1977.
[See also Laws of War; Red Cross, American.]
Bibliography
- Dietrich Schindler and Jiri Toman, eds., The Laws of Armed Conflicts: A Collection of Conventions, Resolutions and Other’ Documents, 1973; 2nd ed. 1981.
- John F. Hutchinson, Champions of Charity: The Red Cross and the Great Powers, 1995
The first multilateral humanitarian treaty, established in Geneva August 22, 1864. It included provisions to protect all establishments and personnel that treated wounded soldiers, incorporate volunteers into the medical corps, and establish the Red Cross symbol as a sign of neutrality. Subsequent Geneva conventions were established in 1906 and 1929 to extend the provisions and concepts of the first. Another Geneva convention was approved on August 12, 1949, after World War II in response to the need to codify the nature of war crimes. They included torture and other inhumane treatment as violations of the laws of war and extended provisions from previous conventions. On June 8, 1977, two protocols to the 1949 conventions were approved to protect civilians from becoming objects of attack, extend protection to guerrilla combatants, and establish commissions to investigate violations of international law. Over 150 nations have approved the 1949 conventions, and approximately half that number have approved those of 1977. The United States has not approved the latter. The Hague Conventions also established similar treaties.
See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.
Series of four international agreements (1864, 1906, 1929, 1949) signed in Geneva, Switz., that established the humanitarian principles by which the signatory countries are to treat an enemy's military and civilian nationals in wartime. The first convention was initiated by Jean-Henri Dunant; it established that medical facilities were not to be war targets, that hospitals should treat all wounded impartially, that civilians aiding the wounded should be protected, and that the Red Cross symbol should serve to identify those covered by the agreement. The second convention amended and extended the first. The third stated that prisoners of war should be treated humanely and that prison camps should be open to inspection by neutral countries. The 1949 conventions made further provisions for civilians falling into a belligerent's hands. Guerrilla combatants were extended protection in two 1977 amendments, which the U.S. did not sign. Violations of the Geneva Conventions were among the crimes included in the jurisdictions of the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia (1993) and Rwanda (1994) and the International Criminal Court (2002). See also Hague Conventions; war crime.
For more information on Geneva Conventions, visit Britannica.com.
Geneva Conventions, a series of international agreements drafted for the amelioration (improvement)of the treatment of the sick and wounded, in particular—but all prisoners—in land and sea warfare. The first Geneva Convention (1864)covered field armies only. Subsequent conventions extended that coverage to include the sick and wounded at sea, the treatment of prisoners of war, and the protection of noncombatants during time of war. The principles first articulated in the Geneva Conventions have become the cornerstones of international laws regulating conduct in wartime.
The first agreement resulted from the outcry that followed the publication in 1862 of Un Souvenir de Solferino, by Jean Henri Dunant, a cofounder of the Red Cross. His book—describing the suffering of wounded French, Italian, and Austrian soldiers in northern Italy in 1859 because of inadequate medical facilities—resulted in the convocation of an unofficial congress at Geneva in 1863 and, in the following year, of the formal sessions whose convention was ratified by the United States, most other American countries, and twelve European nations. An 1868 convention, while not ratified, expanded the earlier agreement to include naval warfare. The articles of the two conventions were observed during the Franco-Prussian (1870–1871)and Spanish-American (1898)wars.
Another conference was held in 1906 at Geneva, at which the conventions were revised; these were adopted by the Hague Peace Conference of 1907. The brutality of World War I demonstrated the need for clearer international guidelines in regard to what constituted lawful and unlawful conduct in wartime. In 1929, the conventions—signed by forty-seven nations—were widened to include provisions to improve the lot of prisoners of war. On the eastern front of the European theater, as well as in the Pacific, both the Axis and Allied powers routinely violated the protocols of the Geneva Conventions. Nazi Germany, in particular, murdered huge numbers of Soviet prisoners of war. The war crimes committed by the Nazis, coupled with their perpetration of the Holocaust, constituted the major charges levied the German government leaders during the 1946 Nuremberg Tribunal. The latest Geneva Convention—in 1949—was ratified by sixty-one countries, including the United States. Its four articles covered the amelioration of conditions of the wounded and sick in the armed forces, including those in the field and those shipwrecked at sea (articles I and II); the treatment of prisoners of war (III); and, in response to Nazi atrocities in World War II, the treatment and legal status of noncombatants in wartime (IV). The subjects of the last two articles, issues in World War II, were raised also during the Vietnam War. Since the latter was partially a guerrilla war, the distinction between armed combatants in civilian dress and noncombatants was blurred, and the applicability of the conventions to the Vietnam conflict was questioned. The United States and South Vietnam both publicly adhered to the convention, unlike North Vietnam and the National Liberation Front, which were also unwilling to allow the International Red Cross to inspect their prisoner-of-war camps.
Bibliography
Ellis, L. Ethan. Frank B. Kellogg and American Foreign Relations, 1925–1929. New Brunswick, N. J. : Rutgers University Press, 1929; 1961.
Keegan, John. The Second World War. New York: Hutchinson, 1989.
—Richard A. Hunt/A. G.