This provision is common to the four Conventions. The rule of immediateeffect therefore applies to all four Conventions.

Article 128 requires the High Contracting Parties to communicate to oneanother the official translations they may have undertaken of theConvention, as well as of laws and regulations they may have adopted toensure the Convention’s application.

In the fourth chapter of the book I examine the third and last moment of the genealogy of modern comparative law: comparative law as an autonomous discipline. The mythical moment in which the discipline emerges is the First International Comparative Law Conference organized in Paris in 1900. This conference established the discipline's general objectives - on one hand, the unification and harmonization of legal systems. This purpose, animated by the cosmopolitan spirit of its promoters, emphasized the similarities that the legal orders of the world have and evaluated the idea of unity of law positively. On the other hand, the creation of taxonomies that allow for ordering, describing, and understanding the complexities of the legal world. The paradigmatic product generated by the realization of this objective was the concept of legal families. This idea constitutes one of the axes of twentieth-century comparative law and remains relevant in the happenings of the twenty-first century.The concept of legal families is articulated and developed paradigmatically in the work of René David, in France, and K. Zweigert and H. Kötz, in Germany. In this chapter, I examine the types of subject, geographies, and ideas of legal history created by the legal families narrative constructed by these paradigmatic authors.

The Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War is the third offour Conventions adopted by the Diplomatic Conference of Geneva of 1949. It providesa detailed and comprehensive framework for the treatment of prisoners of war, namelymembers of the armed forces and other defined categories of persons who fall intoenemy hands during an international armed conflict. Prisoners of war must at alltimes be treated humanely, with respect for their persons and their honour. Manyprovisions in the Third Convention flow from this fundamental principle or seek toput guarantees in place to ensure compliance with it.

Article 16 is one of the five introductory articles in Part II of the ThirdConvention that set down the fundamental principles for the protection ofprisoners of war. It is based on the overarching principles of humanity andhumane treatment, encompassing a broad prohibition of discrimination amongprisoners of war and making equal treatment an essential component of theirprotection.

Article 48 sets out the procedure for the transfer of prisoners of war.Agreements adopted during the First World War and, subsequently, Article26 of the 1929 Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War dealt withprocedures for transfer. The latter included most of the major pointsthat can now be found in Article 48 of the Third Convention, whichcontains only minor refinements and slightly more specific obligationsthan its predecessor. The provision was adopted unanimously at theDiplomatic Conference in 1949.

Article 117 is the concluding article in the section that regulates thedirect repatriation and accommodation or internment in neutral countries ofwounded and sick prisoners of war and of ‘able-bodied’ prisoners of war whohave undergone a long period of captivity. It prohibits the employment onactive military service by the Power on which they depend of prisoners ofwar who are repatriated during an armed conflict.