Contemporary Development of International Humanitarian Laws with Special Reference to Refugees, Women and Prisoners

Armed conflicts have long required governments to balance secrecy and transparency. To take a few examples, they must decide whether and how to acknowledge: the existence of an armed conflict, the applicable legal rules, the evidence of possible violations, and the number of combatant and civilian casualties. But the long war on terror has heightened global civil society’s concerns about expansive government secrecy. Demands for enhanced public transparency span the range of IHL activities: the classification of conflicts, the sorting of combatants and civilians, the numbers of civilian casualties, the deployment of unlawful weapons, conditions of detention, the use of coercive interrogation, its facilitation via extraordinary rendition, and punishment for unlawful activities. While revelations about drone strikes and national surveillance programs have spurred a domestic transparency debate, more attention needs to be paid to the role of international transparency. Thus, this article looks abroad to map out various mechanisms for IHL related transparency and discusses the role of IHL itself in mandating public transparency. Violations of IHL include attacks against and ill-treatment of civilians, destruction of property, sexual violence and restricted access to health care and other essential services. IHL, as codified in the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977, contains important provisions to prevent the displacement of people and for the protection of people forced to flee. Many of these provisions are considered to have become international customary law. The Fourth Geneva Convention (GCIV) deals specifically with the protection of civilian people in times of war, including occupation. Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) are part of the civilian population and therefore are entitled to receive the same protections as other civilians against the consequences of war. Additional Protocol I (API) supplements these protections in times of international armed conflicts, and Additional Protocol II (APII) in times of non-international armed conflicts. States have the responsibility to implement these protections in their domestic legal framework.