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Protection of Children in International Humanitarian Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2010

Denise Plattner
Denise Plattner*
Affiliation:
Lawyer, ICRC
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Extract

The legal protection of children was introduced into international humanitarian law after the Second World War. Experience during that conflict had, in fact, pointed to the urgent need to draw up an instrument of public international law for protecting civilian population in wartime. The results of the ICRC's efforts in this field led to the adoption of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the protection of civilian persons in time of war. From that time on, children, as members of the civilian population, were entitled to benefit from the application of that Convention. Moreover, the first international humanitarian law regulations concerning armed conflicts not of an international character, contained in article 3, common to the four 1949 Geneva Conventions, were drawn up at the 1949 Diplomatic Conference. Here again, children were protected, in the same way as all “persons taking no active part in the hostilities”.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of the Red Cross (1961 - 1997) , Volume 24 , Issue 240 , June 1984 , pp. 140 - 152
Copyright
Copyright © International Committee of the Red Cross 1984

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Footnotes

1

Paper read at the International Symposium “Children and War”, at Siuntio Baths, Finland, 24–27 March 1983.

References

2 As of 31 December 1983, thirty-eight States had become parties to Protocol I and thirty-one to Protocol II.

3 Translation of: L'Enfance, Victime de la Guerre: Une étude de la situation européenne, par le docteur Thérèse Brosse, UNESCO 1949, Paris, pp. 11–12 Google Scholar, quoted in the “Report on the Work of the Conference of Government Experts”, Vol. II, ICRC 1972, p. 89.Google Scholar

4 The origin of the provisions on the Central Information Agency in the Geneva Conventions goes back to the very first actions of the ICRC on behalf of the victims of conflicts. But it was in 1914 that the ICRC first established an international Prisoners of War Agency which was responsible for collecting and forwarding information on prisoners (wounded, sick or deceased) and also on civilians. The Geneva Convention relative to the treatment of prisoners of war of 1929 gave legal sanction to the existence and operation of this Agency. During the Second World War, the ICRC opened the Central Prisoners of War Agency in Geneva, which, dealing also with civilians, handled a considerable work load. The 1949 Diplomatic Conference confirmed the legal basis of the Central Information Agency in the Third Geneva Convention relative to prisoners of war, and, in identical terms, in the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to civilian persons. According to the Geneva Conventions, the main tasks of the Central Information Agency are the collecting and transmitting of information on protected persons. The ICRC's Central Tracing Agency continues the work of the Central Prisoners of War Agency and, since 1960, has been run, under this name, as a permanent department of the ICRC.

5 Commentary of the Fourth Geneva Convention, International Committee of the Red Cross, Geneva 1958, re article 68, p. 347.Google Scholar

6 Ibid., re article 24, p. 186.