The Nuremberg Tribunals after World War II institutionalized the notion that an individual could face criminal prosecution under international law for acts committed while in government. This was revolutionary at the time and echoes of that principal are what animate the International Criminal Court. Before Nuremberg, criminal law was understood as a relationship between a person and their government – there was very little connection between individuals and international law. The change is remarkable: by the end of the twentieth century, the idea that it was possible for a person to violate “international criminal law” and be prosecuted by a judicial institution at the international level had not only become widespread but was the foundation of an entirely new body of rules known as international criminal law.

The UN estimates that about a billion people live outside their country of citizenship. That means that about one eighth of the world’s population has moved or emigrated from their “home” country. It is the largest number in history and it is on an upward trend. Some of these people have moved by choice, pursuing education, work, or other opportunities in new countries. But most of the world’s emigrants live abroad because they have been forced to by dire circumstances at home, and most will never be able to return. These are people who would have preferred to stay in their home country but some danger compelled them to leave searching for safety elsewhere. Wars, persecution by governments, and collapsing natural or social environments are the main causes of migration and they often combine in ways that make it hard to distinguish one pressure from the other. These forces are largely the result of the active choices of governments; they are not accidents.

The World Trade Organization enforces a set of rules that limit the choices of governments with respect to international trade. These rules define what policies a government can have with respect to a wide range of topics that might affect international trade. These include policies on import tariffs, subsidies and incentives, labeling, trade zones, the movement of goods, and all manner of taxes and regulations. For WTO member countries, any government policy that might have an impact on private firms that trade across its borders could conceivably come under the scrutiny of the organization. However, not all goods and services are covered, and not all trade-influencing policies are prohibited, and so interpreting the WTO’s rules has become an important industry both inside the organization and its Dispute Settlement Body and outside the organization in the universe of international trade lawyers, lobbyists, and activists.

This chapter traces the way in which the destruction in the Vietnam War became a springboard for a renewed humanitarian disarmament discourse. Two major campaigns against particular weapons were waged in this period: the ‘human rights in armed conflict’ initiative spearheaded by states in the Non Aligned Movement through the UN General Assembly, and the ICRC-led campaign to further develop international humanitarian law by limiting or even prohibiting the use of weapons considered by many to be indiscriminate. Although neither campaign was ultimately successful in that no weapons were banned as a result, both campaigns are important instances of attempts to use humanitarian arguments to constrain development and use of weapons. The final section of the chapter analyses the Convention on Conventional Weapons 1980, arguing that it constitutes the first humanitarian disarmament instrument of the post-Second World War era. Although certainly a compromise in terms of its limited scope and reach, it stood as testament to the humanitarian disarmament work of the preceding decades and it set the stage for future breakthroughs.

The Charter of the United Nations, signed in 1945, created two things that the postwar planners thought would improve world politics from its prewar patterns: a set of basic rules of conduct for governments, and a formal institution with defined organs, powers, and obligations. The basic rules include commitments to refrain from the use of force to solve international disputes, to respect the decisions of the International Court of Justice, and to pay the required dues to the United Nations itself. The formal organization of the United Nations is composed of separate organs, including the Security Council, the General Assembly, and the Secretariat. Each has a specific area of competence and they vary in how much authority they exercise over member states.

The chapter identifies three dynamics that were at play in providing a space for the Anti-Personnel Landmines Convention (APLM) to emerge: the inadequacy of Protocol II to the Convention on Conventional Weapons which had been agreed in 1980; the development of a broad partnership between the Non Aligned states and some European middle powers; and the reemergence of a humanitarian sensibility generally with the ending of the Cold War. The lead up to the treaty is explained and a detailed analysis of the humanitarian credentials of the APLM Convention is provided, with a focus on four aspects of the treaty: the way the treaty challenged existing disarmament negotiating paradigms; the increased transparency of disarmament diplomacy because of the greater presence and engagement by civil society; the way verification was led civil society post-EIF; and the attention to victim assistance. The final part of the chapter sets out some broader reflections on the extent to which the APLM Convention can be considered to be ‘humanitarian disarmament perfected’.

The IMF and the World Bank, the two big international financial institutions created after World War II to stabilize the global economy have similar goals and mechanisms but work with different instruments and in different contexts. Both pool the resources of their members and use that capital to make loans to governments with specific needs. The IMF lends to countries experiencing critical balance-of-payments problems. It makes short-term loans of foreign currencies that the borrowing country must use to finance the stabilization of its own currency or monetary system. As a precondition to the loan, the Fund generally requires that the borrower change its policies in ways that enable future monetary stability. The World Bank makes longer-term loans to pay for specific projects related to development or poverty reduction. Most Bank loans are tied to a particular project undertaken by the borrowing government – an urban sewage system or a rural farm project, for instance.

The chapter explores the ways in which, and the reasons why, humanitarian discourse in disarmament was marginalised in the first two decades following the Second World War. The chapter starts by providing a brief overview of the way in which weapons technology developed in advance of and during the Second World War, looking in particular at anti-personnel landmines, incendiary weapons, major developments in aerial warfare and nuclear weapons. It also identifies reasons why the overall environment was so resistant to humanitarian disarmament in this period, including a possible desensitisation to the harms wrought by the War, the security rather than peace focus of the new United Nations and the way in which humanitarianism itself became institutionalised and therefore politically suspect. Despite the inhospitable environment, important efforts were made through the work of the International Committee of the Red Cross to regulate the use of indiscriminate weapons through its attempt to persuade states to adopt various rules against particular types of weapons and means of warfare. Although ultimately unsuccessful, this campaign was a clear attempt to use humanitarian arguments to support calls for legal prohibitions on the use of certain weapons.