1 The “laws of humanity” are referred to in the St Petersburg Declaration of 1868, and in what is now known as the Martens Clause derived from the preamble to Convention (IV) respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, adopted by the 1907 International Peace Conference at The Hague. Legal recognition of crimes against humanity originated in the jurisprudence of the Nuremberg Tribunal; such acts also constitute a category of crime in the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. – Brownlie states that humanity is a source of international law. He cites as a classic reference the judgment in the Corfu Channel case (I.C.J. Reports 1949, p. 22): the court relied on certain “general and well recognised principles”, including “elementary considerations of humanity, even more exacting in peace than in war”. Brownlie, I., Principles of Public International Law, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1998, p. 28.Google Scholar

2 See generally Diamond, J., Guns, Germs and Steel: a Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years, Vintage, London, 1998Google Scholar; The Economist, Special Millennium Edition, 31 December 1999, pp. 10–14; Ehrenreich, B., Blood Rites, Metropolitan Books, New York, 1998, pp. 175–193.Google Scholar

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4 Chapter I of the UN Charter. See also Boutros-Ghali, B., “The United Nations at fifty”, Melbourne University Law Review, vol. 20, 1995, pp. 9–13Google Scholar. Farer, T., “International Law: The Critics are Wrong”, Foreign Policy, 1988, pp. 22–45.Google Scholar

5 Op. cit. (note 3).

6 The definition of violence adopted by the World Health Organization is: “[T]he intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a likelihood to result in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation.” From Koplan, J. et al. Violence Prevention: A Public Health Policy, Atlanta, Centers for Disease Control, 1998Google Scholar. See also Coupland, R., “Armed violence”, Medicine and Global Survival, vol. 7, 2001, pp. 33–37.Google Scholar

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8 Pictet, J., Red Cross Principles, ICRC, Geneva, 1956, pp. 14–31.Google Scholar

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11 In the 1868 St Petersburg Declaration, the use of explosive projectiles of less than 400g in weight is deemed to be contrary to the “progress of civilization” and the “laws of humanity” because they would “uselessly aggravate the sufferings of disabled men, or render their death inevitable”.

12 Lauren, P., The Evolution of Human Rights, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1998, pp. 4–36Google Scholar. See also Abou, Selim, “Natural and philoso phical foundations of ethics”, Diogenes, vol. 43, 1995, pp. 35–54.Google Scholar

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14 Quoted in Greenwood, C., in Fleck, D. (ed.), The Handbook of Humanitarian Law in Armed Conflicts, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995, para. 112.Google Scholar

15 1907 Hague Convention (IV) respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, preambular paragraph.

16 Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), 8 June 1977.

17 Art. 1(2) of Protocol I reads: “In cases not covered by this Protocol or by other international agreements, civilians and combatants remain under the protection and authority of the principles of international law derived from established custom, from the principles of humanity and from the dictates of public conscience.”

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20 Op. cit. (note 18), p. 144.

21 Separate Opinion of President Nagendra Singh, Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua (Nicaragua v. the United States of America), Merits, I.C.J. Reports 1986, pp. 143 and 146 respectively.

22 Statute of the International Criminal Court, Art. 5.

23 The obvious exception is the crimes cited in Art. 7(1)(g): rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity. Whilst this category of crime could clearly be committed without weapons, the power differential required to commit them is given by weapons and also by the difference in physical build between most men and women.

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27 “The quality of being inhuman or inhumane; want of human feeling and compassion; brutality, barbarous cruelty”, op. cit. (note 7).

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29 Op. cit. (notes 17, 25, 26 and 28, respectively).

30 Coupland, op. cit. (note 6).

31 The definition of health as given in the World Health Organization's mission statement is: “A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” WHO website.

32 Jackson, R., The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000, pp. 185–215.Google Scholar

33 See note 31. The definition of security is “the state of being or feeling secure”, and of secure: “certain to remain safe and unthreat- preened; protected against attack or other criminal activity; feeling free from fear and anxiety”, op. cit. (note 7).

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38 Ibid., p. 6.

39 See note 31.

40 UN Charter, Art. 2(7).

41 UN Charter, Art. 1(1).

42 UN Charter, Art. 40.

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45 This is a reference to Franklin D. Roosevelt's “Fundamental Freedoms” speech of 1941. The four freedoms are: freedom from fear, freedom from want, freedom of speech and freedom of worship.

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48 The right to health arises from Art. 25 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Art. 12 of the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Art. 12 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and Art. 24 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

49 Coupland, op. cit. (note 6).

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54 UN Charter, Arts 1(1) and (2), and Art. 51.

55 Examples are the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention and the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention.

56 Matthews, R./McCormack, T., “The relationship between international humanitarian law and arms control.”, in Durham, H./McCormack, T. (eds), The Changing Face of Conflict and the Efficacy of International Humanitarian Law, Kluwer, The Hague, 1999, pp. 65–98.Google Scholar

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59 The principle treaties of international humanitarian law are the 1949 Geneva Conventions for the protection of war victims and the 1977 Additional Protocols thereto. Some other treaties are considered part of international humanitarian law, such as the 1980 UN Convention on Conventional Weapons and the 1997 Ottawa Anti-personnel Mines Treaty.

60 Op. cit. (note 28), p. 410. P. Alston, “The myopia of handmaidens: International lawyers and globalization”, EJIL, vol. 3, 1997, pp. 435–448.

61 To coincide with the 50th anniversary of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the British Medical Journal published a special theme issue on 14 August 1999 entitled “Medicine and international law.” It examined the role of health professionals in the upholding of human rights and international humanitarian law.

62 Slim, H., “Sharing a Universal Ethic: the Principle of Humanity in War”, International Journal of Human Rights, vol. 2, 1998, pp. 28–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar