Le Comité international de la Croix-Rouge est en deuil car il a perdu en la personne de Jean Pictet l'un de ses plus remarquables serviteurs, qui fut aussi un maître pour des générations de collaborateurs de l'institution et, pour ceux qui ont eu la chance de travailler étroitement avec lui, un ami.

The attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001 and the subsequent “war on terrorism” have suddenly brought international humanitarian law into the limelight and again highlighted the relationship between the causes of a conflict on one hand and the respect for rules on the conduct of hostilities and protection of victims of war on the other. The article traces the history of rules limiting violence and the interdiction of recourse to war. Despite the general banning of war in the Charter of the United Nations, the application of the jus in bello remains independent of the causes of war, even in a war against aggression, and every discriminatory application of international humanitarian Law has to be rejected. There are imperious reasons for maintaining the principle of egality of the belligerants with repect to the law of war. Whatever its moral and legal intentions, the theory of discriminatory application of the hws and customs of the war leads to the same unacceptable result, namely unrestricted warfare, as the conception that wars of agression are not covered by international humanitarian law. State practice and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which entered into force on 1st July 2002, confirm the strict separation between jus in bello and jus ad bellum.

The XIVth Congress of the International Society of Military Law and the Law of War, held in Athens in May 1997, adopted the following recommendation : "Disciplinary regulations should provide for a procedure allowing subordinates to exercise, with no prejudice to themselves and without breaching discipline, their right and duty not to obey orders whose execution would obviously lead to the commission of a war crime."

In the year 2000, the Belgian Seminar of Military Law and the Law of War set up a working group with the task of preparing a draft text that would give effect to this recommendation and could be incorporated in the Belgian army's disciplinary regulations.

Le titre donné à mon exposé paraîtra bien ambitieux ou du moins le sujet trop vaste. De fait, mon propos est de présenter, à bâtons rompus, quelques réflexions et expériences d'un praticien du droit humanitaire, qui a eu la chance insigne d'être associé à ce travail fascinant dès le début de sa carrière.

Any international crime creates victims, often in a large number. Such victims may be asked to testify in court about what has happened: they become witnesses. This article examines the role that victims of international crimes currently play in international criminal proceedings and gives an account of the protection provided by international law to safeguard the rights of this especially vulnerable category of persons. Particular emphasis is placed on the jurisprudence of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, respectively, and on the Draft Rules of Procedure and Evidence which will be applicable to proceedings before the International Criminal Court.

Starting from the middle of the nineteenth century, the principles governing the processing of corpses and the accounting of those deceased on the battlefield were inscribed in military codes. The military and civil authorities carried out the official collection and recording of the effects of the dead: the bodies were to be searched for, identified, and protected from plundering and ill treatment. In Europe and in the United States, tombs were constructed containing non-identified remains under the name of “unknown soldiers”. Gradually, intelligence services and resources were mobilized to ensure as far as possible an individualized processing of the bodies of those killed in war. These procedures were extended little by little to civilian victims. Today in the Balkans, or in Argentina, pits are being opened, human remains are exhumed, and anthropologists and physicians examine bodies, remains and bones in order to establish the identity of the dead and the circumstances of the death. In this regard, the tombs of unknown soldiers are likely to be replaced by monuments to the memory of non-identified civilian victims of war.