Neutrality, a foundational principle in humanitarian efforts and peace mediation, encounters significant practical challenges in the modern landscape of armed conflicts, particularly in the intermediary role of humanitarian organizations. This study examines the role of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) as a neutral intermediary in Yemen, focusing on the release and repatriation of detainees during the 2016–20 peace efforts. Drawing on the ICRC's experience, the analysis highlights the evolving understanding of neutrality from a rigid concept to a more flexible, context-sensitive approach. The findings emphasize the importance of neutrality in fostering trust and facilitating dialogue while acknowledging the operational complexities and strategic considerations involved. This study provides insights into enhancing the contributions of neutral intermediaries to sustainable peace processes.

This article examines the links between the concept of peace and international humanitarian law (IHL). It takes a closer look at how the originator of IHL, the International Committee of the Red Cross, justified the existence of this body of law, which was supposed to regulate war, in the face of those who wanted to see war abolished once and for all. The article also questions the attitude of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, which, while wanting a peaceful society, did not give itself the means to achieve one.

How can humanitarians carry out their work during a genocide? Between April and June of 1994, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) faced that very question. After bloodshed broke out in Rwanda, the ICRC was the only remaining humanitarian organization in the country and continued its aid work while surrounded by brutal violence. Based on previously published materials,1 this article examines the strategies that enabled the ICRC to pursue its humanitarian mission in the face of the most basic inhumanity. In particular, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement's Fundamental Principles of neutrality and impartiality were critical to establishing contact with all involved parties: dialogue, including with those perpetrating genocide, was key to ensuring the safety of ICRC staff, and to facilitating the organization's work on behalf of those affected by the violence. Additionally, the ICRC spoke out frequently as the violence was unfolding in Rwanda, and this article addresses the question of public communications, in both principle and practice, during a genocide.

This article examines the authority of the 2005 International Committee of the Red Cross Study on Customary international humanitarian law within the international legal system by collecting and analysing citations to the Study in documents containing expressions of State positions, in the judgments of international and domestic courts and tribunals and in the outputs of other influential actors. Our analysis establishes that the Study is increasingly seen as a highly authoritative instrument, such that a particular proposition will be found to reflect customary international law simply on the basis that the Study says so. We argue that the Study's authority will likely only increase over time.

This article explores the interface between religion and international humanitarian law (IHL), and the degree to which they might complement and reinforce each other. It examines some of the challenges inherent in regulating armed conflict and the understandable limitations of IHL in this respect, and argues that re-engagement with IHL's religious roots can help to alleviate them. Engagement with religious circles mobilizes the vast resources of religions to increase knowledge of IHL and corresponding religious norms, thereby enhancing their legitimacy across religious and cultural divides. This is most effective when comparative study of IHL and religious teachings stimulates mutual learning and debate, in which both correspondences and differences are embraced. In the absence of a strong legal enforcement regime, religions can reinforce military ethics by tapping deeply into the identities, motivations and moral values of many belligerents, and possess powerful means to socialize the rules of war and improve voluntary compliance. Introspective religious practices encourage the moral self-reflection that is most effective at internalizing norms in this respect, as well as providing belligerents with the spiritual and psychological support needed to bolster their resilience and enable them to perform with precision and restraint.

Presidents of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) occupy a special position: they are not only direct witnesses to the march of history, but they also participate in it given their prominent role in the humanitarian sphere. This dual status becomes particularly salient when they write about the organization they run. By reviewing the published writings of ICRC presidents, this article analyzes how these individuals combine their personal experience with the organization's history, and the role this history plays in their writing.

Humanitarian actors sometimes have to decide whether to render assistance in situations that put them at risk of liability for aiding and abetting under international criminal law. This is the problem of the virtuous accomplice—the idea that knowingly contributing to the wrongdoing of others might, exceptionally, be the right thing to do. This article explains why the problem arises and clarifies its scope, before turning to criminal law in England and Wales and Germany to assess potential solutions. It argues that the best approach is to accept a defence of necessity—of justified complicity—and shows that such an argument works in international criminal law.

The early years of the Review, then called the Bulletin International des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, provide numerous insights into the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which edited the journal. Since the ICRC was very small in those days and without support staff, one learns a great deal, especially about Gustave Moynier, who led the organization and carried out most of the editing duties at the Bulletin. The reader can trace the role of religious and other motivations, attitudes toward colonialism, the evolving nature of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and the ICRC's place therein, and complex relations with States. This early era, as richly recorded in the journal, stimulates a number of questions about further research into ICRC and Red Cross history.

Since 2011, the humanitarian impact of the crisis in Syria has continued to worsen. The conflict is characterized by frequent violations of international humanitarian law (IHL): indiscriminate attacks in urban areas, the targeting of civilians and essential services such as water supply and health care, and the use of prohibited weapons, to name just a few. All of these have devastating consequences for the Syrian people, who are caught between the opposing sides. The conflict has brought not only bombs and missiles but also harsh living conditions, displacement, lack of access to food, water and medicine, uncertainty regarding the fate of missing or detained loved ones, and interruption of all aspects of life, including the education of a generation of Syrian children. Many people have fled, while others have stayed and attempted to live their lives amid the chaos of war.

In the face of these overwhelming needs, humanitarian organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) struggle to respond. The ICRC is helping people both inside Syria, who are facing extremely difficult conditions because of the conflict, and the hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and elsewhere. In partnership with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, the ICRC distributes food and other essentials, restores water supplies and supports medical services.

In this interview, ICRC president Peter Maurer reflects on the complexities of the armed conflict in Syria, the difficulties of providing a neutral and impartial humanitarian response in this context and the importance of the parties to the conflict upholding their obligations to the civilian population.

International humanitarian law and international human rights law seek to prevent people from going missing, and to clarify the fate and whereabouts of those who do go missing while upholding the right to know of their relatives. When implementing international law at the domestic level, national authorities should plan carefully before engaging in any policy or legal reform that will address the issue of missing persons and the response to the needs of their families. This article seeks to present a general overview of the provisions of international law that are relevant to understanding the role of national implementation vis-à-vis the clarification of the fate and whereabouts of missing persons and the response to the needs of their relatives. It also presents the role that the ICRC has played in this regard and highlights three challenges that may arise at the national level when working on legal and policy reforms.