As one of the leaders of the Polish workers, Lech Walesa was detained several times during the 1970s. He led the shipyard strike and later negotiated the Gdansk agreement of 31 August 1980. In December 1981, Walesa, along with several thousand others, was arrested when General Jaruzelski imposed martial law and “suspended” the labour movement “Solidarnosc” (Solidarity). Walesa was interned in a country house in a remote part of Poland, close to the then Soviet border, and was visited three times by ICRC delegates. During this period, the ICRC visited 4,850 other internees (79 visits to 24 different places of detention) and it provided assistance and helped to restore contact between internees and their families abroad. At the same time and in conjunction with the Polish Red Cross and the League of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (as it was then known), the ICRC carried out an extensive assistance programme for the benefit of the civilian population which was in dire need of basic goods.

Dr Ahmad Ali Noorbala is President of the National Red Crescent Society of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Professor of Psychiatry at the Medical Faculty of Tehran University. The Iranian Red Crescent was established in 1922 and changed its former name, the Persian Red Lion and Sun Society, to the present one in 1980. It has 30 governorate headquarters, and 330 branches throughout the country. With about 7,000 paid staff members and more than two million volunteers, as well as the mainly high school and university student members of its youth organization, it is one of the worlds largest National Red Cross/Red Crescent Societies. Beside its core activity of relief and disaster preparedness, the Iranian Red Crescent engages in wide-ranging humanitarian services in health and rehabilitation, training and research. The Society is held in high esteem by the Iranian general public.

Fergal Keane is a Special Correspondent for BBC News. He has reported from many of the world's major trouble spots, from Northern Ireland to Rwanda and Iraq, attracted widespread critical acclaim and won a string of awards for his reports. Among many other prizes, he was named Journalist of the Year at the Royal Television Society Awards (1995). He also took the Amnesty International Television Award for his 1994 Panorama report “Journey into Darkness” — an account of the genocide in Rwanda and the Index on Censorship prize for journalistic integrity. He won the George Orwell prize for his book on the Rwandan genocide “Season Of Blood.”

Mr Terence Taylor is a member of the Directing Staff of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and President and Executive Director oj IISS-US. His main area of work is at the intersection of science technology and international security policy. He is co-director of a project to develop a charter for a code of conduct for life scientists in academic circles and private industry on safe, secure and ethical behaviour. In addition, he is leading a project for the development of concepts and methodologies on risk assessment for high-level policymakers faced with complex emergencies. He is also a member of the Board of Editors of the International Review of the Red Cross.

The authors draw upon the principles of the social identity tradition in order to elaborate a psychological model of mass communication. This centres on the way in which people construe their social identities and the meanings of events for these identities. They then go on to look at the ways in which these principles have been employed both to mobilize collective support for genocide and collective resistance to genocide. They conclude that it is critical to understand these principles and to apply them effectively in order to promote social harmony and the defence of vulnerable groups.

The author analyzes the impact of religion in current conflicts throughout the world. The main focus lies on the monotheistic religions, i.e. Judaism, Christianity and Islam, all of which have recently been reproached for potentially fostering the temptation to resort to violence. The article focuses on this accusation and departs from an analysis of the concept of “holy war” in the three religions. The article concludes with setting out a pragmatism of peaceableness highlighting that wars in the twenty-first century can neither be regarded as just, nor holy, nor clean and that absolute pacifism will not only be politically impossible but might as a political principle even be irresponsible.

The article goes back to the early discussions of the morality of city bombing which took place before and during World War II and attempts to analyze both the moral argumentation and its historical context from the 1940s until today. The development of the doctrine of “collateral damage” which recognized that attacking enemy factories was permissible even if it cost the lives and homes of civilians was soon widened beyond its original notion. After the war, the dropping of the atomic bombs became an issue in its own right, to be considered separately from the earlier recourse to conventional bombing — even when conventional bombing achieved equally destructive results. Twin inhibitions have reigned in the issue of what force against civilians was justified: the reluctance of German commentators to seem apologetic for the Third Reich, and the difficulty in the U.S. of seeming to cast any aspersions on those who fought “the good war.”

International human rights law abhors a legal black hole. It applies wherever a State exercises its jurisdiction, not only in peacetime but also during armed conflict, as a compliment to humanitarian law. The deprivation of liberty is subject to certain conditions, and even initially lawful detention becomes arbitrary and contrary to law if it is not subject to periodic review. Indefinite detention is incompatible with Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. While temporary derogation from this provision is allowed in Article 4 of the ICCPR, such derogation is only possible “in time of public emergency which threatens the life of the nation” and “to the extent strictly required by the exigencies of the situation” Persons deprived of their liberty are entitled to a prompt trial or release, and in cases of arbitrary detention, they are entitled to compensation. Neither the war on terror nor restrictive immigration policies justify indefinite detention.

This article by an Islamic scholar describes the principles governing international law and international relations from an Islamic viewpoint. After presenting the rules and principles governing international relations in the Islamic system, the author emphasizes the principles of sovereignty and non-interference in the internal affairs of other States and the aspiration of Islam to peace and harmony. He goes on to explain the relationship between Muslims and others in peacetime or in the event of war and the classical jurisprudential division of the world into the abode of Islam (dar al-islam) and that of war (dar al-harb). Lastly he outlines the restrictions imposed upon warfare by Islamic Shari'a law which have attained the status of legal rules.

This article explores the relationship between precision attack and international humanitarian law. It begins by addressing the nature of precision attack, including precision technologies, the combat environment in which it occurs, attacker tactics, and the targeting process. Modern precision attack's greatest impact on international humanitarian law lies in four areas: indiscriminate attack; proportionality; precautions in attack; perfidy and protected status. The author concludes that precision warfare has both positive and negative implications for the interpretation and application of international humanitarian law on the twenty-first-century battlefield.

The article reviews recentfindings on the quality of war reporting, the conditions under which it takes place, the information policies of the warring parties and their effects. Focusing on German media coverage of the 1991 Gulf war, the Kosovo war and the 2003 Iraq war, it discusses both typical shortcomings of reporting and recent improvements, highlights information control strategies and proposes standards for war reporting.

Thousands of individuals have been detained abroad in the context of the “war on terror”, both during the armed conflicts in Afghanistan and in Iraq and as a result of transnational law-enforcement operations. This paper argues that, notwithstanding contrary positions expounded by some States, the protections of international humanitarian law and/or international human rights law remain applicable to these individuals, wherever detained, and examines recent decisions of domestic courts and international bodies which appear to reveal a reassertion of international standards.

Although international humanitarian law and human rights law were originally intended to operate in different areas of competence, thirty years of visits by human rights mechanisms to places of detention in parallel with visits made by the International Committee of the Red Cross have shown that they are clearly complementary in several respects. First, there is complementarity in terms of action, in that different but not competitive visits are made. Secondly, through the formulation of increasingly precise legal rules there is complementarity in codification. Lastly, there is institutional complementarity through cooperation between the respective bodies. The result is broader and above all more effective protection for detainees — whatever the legal status assigned to them — which, if it cannot entirely eliminate the possibility of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, can at least help to prevent and remedy such abuses.

Momentum is growing around a proposed treaty governing the international transfer of small arms and light weapons. Those promoting the new instrument emphasize the existing obligations of States, under the law of State responsibility, not to aid or assist another State in violating international law. This article explores the extent to which the prohibition of “complicity” is a sufficient basis for requiring States to consider the end-use of the weapons they transfer. It offers suggestions for strengthening the effectiveness of the current draft treaty in a way that places respect for international humanitarian law and human rights at its core.

This article examines the relationship between Hinduism and war and the extent to which the fundamental concepts of humanitarian law are recognized in Hinduism. After reviewing the sources of Hinduism, it considers the permissibility and types of war in ancient India, explores the rules of warfare and investigates whether war was a matter of course or regarded as a ruler's last choice. It then sets out the humanitarian principles that already applied at that time. Finally, it considers how far the concepts of Hinduism have helped in the development of international humanitarian law.

To consider the relationship between war and the media is to look at the way in which the media are involved in conflict, either as targets (war on the media) or as an auxiliary (war thanks to the media). On the basis of this distinction, four major developments may be cited that today combine to make war above all a media spectacle: photography, which opened the door to manipulation through stage-management; live technologies, which raise the question of journalists' critical distance vis-à-vis the material they broadcast and which can facilitate the process of using them; pressure on the media and media globalization, which have led to a change in the way the political and military authorities go about making propaganda; and, finally, the fact that censorship has increasingly come into disrepute, which has prompted the authorities to think of novel ways of controlling journalists.