We are grateful to the Government of France for having called for a conference to review the 1980 United Nations Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons which May be Deemed to be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects.

The Review Conference for the 1980 Convention is an important event, as it provides the opportunity, for the first time since that Convention entered into force in 1983, for States to make an assessment of its impact and to decide whether it needs to be amended in order to be more effective.

In addition to the religious motivation, another equally old tradition can be said to have played a part in the emergence of the Red Cross Movement. This involved the perception, by the sole means of human intelligence, of an ideal concept of goodness separate from, and in some cases even opposed to, the consideration of a person's immediate interests.

What is the present situation, what are the lessons to be learned and what strategies should be adopted in the field of communicable diseases? These are the issues now facing us, some 15 years past two milestones in the evolution of health care: the Alma Ata Declaration on primary health care and the discovery of the last case of smallpox worldwide. The present article will attempt to address these issues, on the basis of the experience of the Swiss Tropical Institute in Africa.

The immense problems created by the indiscriminate laying of mines are now beginning to be recognized. ICRC surgeons have for some time reported that some of the worst injuries they see are caused by mines, and it was our Medical Division that decided it was essential to study this problem thoroughly from all relevant angles. As a result, in April 1993 the ICRC organized a multidisciplinary symposium on antipersonnel mines. The symposium gathered information on the present use of mines and the humanitarian and social consequences of such use, the trade in mines, the technical characteristics of mines, mine clearance, the professional military use of mines and the legal situation. The symposium was attended not only by specialists in these fields, but also by a representative of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, a number of non-governmental organizations that had begun to take a serious interest in the problem and some journalists. As a result, there is now more information available on the various problems caused by mines. More important, the efforts undertaken by interested persons to draw the attention of governments to the need for action have begun to bear fruit: several governments have declared a moratorium on their mines exports, the United Nations has just adopted a resolution setting up a fund for demining operations, and possible further restrictions on the use of mines will be discussed in 1994 during a United Nations conference which will review a treaty on the use of conventional weapons.

The importance of adopting national measures to implement international humanitarian law has been stressed on many occasions. It was repeated in the Final Declaration of the International Conference for the Protection of War Victims (Geneva, 30 August–1 September 1993), which reaffirmed the obligation laid down in Article 1 common to the four Geneva Conventions to respect and ensure respect for international humanitarian law in order to protect the victims of war. The Declaration urged all States to make every effort to “adopt and implement, at the national level, all appropriate regulations, laws and measures to ensure respect for international humanitarian law applicable in the event of armed conflict and to punish violations thereof”. The Conference thus reasserted the need to bring about more effective compliance with that law.

At its meeting on 11 November 1994, the Assembly of the International Committee of the Red Cross appointed a new member, Professor Ernst A. Brugger.

Professor Brugger, of Gossau in the canton of Zurich and Möriken in the canton of Aargau, Switzerland, was born in 1947. He holds a degree in economic geography and a doctorate in natural sciences from the University of Zurich, where he now lectures.

The Assembly of the International Committee of the Red Cross, at its meeting of 25 August 1994, elected Ambassador Eric Roethlisberger as new permanent ICRC Vice-President. He will take up his duties in the course of this autumn.

At its meeting of 7 and 8 December 1993, the ICRC Assembly took note of the departure of Professor Marco Mumenthaler. Elected a member of the ICRC in 1989, for personal reasons Professor Mumenthaler did not seek to have his mandate renewed.

In addition, the Assembly conferred honorary membership on Mr. Pierre Languetin, who had reached retirement age.

In the 1980s and 1990s vulnerable people worldwide have suffered assaults on their basic survival and civilized existence. Ethnic upheavals have convulsed the former Yugoslavia and new republics of the former USSR. The struggles have produced human tragedies beyond calculation in Rwanda. Political terrorists have operated freely in some Latin American, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries. Hunger, disease, ethnic strife, and praetorian governments continue to stalk much of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Economic restructuring has marginalized citizens of some countries, placing people even further below already abysmal poverty lines. Families and civilized social values continue to disintegrate in the inner cities of the United States of America where income disparities between the poor and everyone else are increasing, threatening to create an underclass extending well beyond current geographical confines.

During the century now nearing its end, the human race has undoubtedly fostered the notions of peace, solidarity and human rights. For this purpose, it has established bodies transcending national borders and creating awareness that everyone is a citizen of the world. Paradoxically, this century has also attained extremes of violence and horror. Yet the paradox is only apparent, since the awareness came about precisely because conflicts grew to world proportions.

July-August 1993 — No. 295

Anti-Personnel Mines by Gerald C. Cauderay,

Page 275. The objective in laying minefields, lines 12-17.

The quotation by Col. C. Sloan referred to by A.P.V. Rogers only contains the paragraphs a), b) and c) in italics.

The following two paragraphs as follows:

“Anti-personnel mines are also used to protect military positions and installations or to prevent access to a locality, village of particular region.

Unfortunately, it is also a fact that anti-personnel mines are sometimes laid to prevent the civilian population from leaving a region or from having access to arable land, pastoral areas and ricefields”

are wrongly in italics, as they are not part of the said quotation, but they should be in Roman characters, as they are part of G. C. Cauderay's text.