The Law Book by DK

Author:DK
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dorling Kindersley Ltd
Published: 2020-07-24T16:00:00+00:00

The Battle of Fort Wagner was one of many bloody episodes in the American Civil War. It was fought in 1863, the same year that President Lincoln issued the Lieber Code.

Multilateral agreement

As the arms race accelerated, particularly between Britain and Germany towards the end of the 19th century, so peace movements gained wider support. In 1891, the International Peace Bureau was formed. Based in Berne, Switzerland, it campaigned for world peace and promoted arbitration and disarmament. The development of modern, more deadly weaponry had changed the nature of conflict, and peace campaigners and even some heads of state believed that limits should be placed on the most destructive weapons.

It was against this backdrop that the first Hague Conference was proposed by Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. Convened in The Hague in 1899, it was attended by delegates from 26 nations. The main aims of the conference were to control the arms race and negotiate disarmament, codify the rules of war, and find a way to peacefully resolve international disputes without resorting to war.

Although it failed to agree a programme for disarmament, the conference ratified three treaties and some additional declarations – together, these formed the first of the Hague Conventions. They included important rules on the conduct of war, forbidding the execution of surrendered enemy combatants; the use of projectiles containing poison gas; the launch of explosives from balloons; the use of bullets that expand in the body (dumdums); and attacks on undefended towns or villages.

The conference also agreed to create the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. This was the first international institution to provide legal solutions for disputes between states. More than 50 nations ratified the first Hague Convention and, alongside the Geneva Conventions, it served as the foundation of international humanitarian law.

A further conference was called by US president Theodore Roosevelt in 1904, but it had to be delayed due to the war between Russia and Japan. It was finally convened in 1907, when 43 states met. No major changes were made to the provisions of the 1899 Convention, but they were improved to incorporate warfare at sea, for example. The British attempted to secure a limitation on naval armaments, but Germany rejected this proposal. Although the Hague Conventions were the first multilateral treaties to clarify the rules of war, they were seriously flawed. In particular, neither of them laid out specific penalties for states that violated them. Until the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague in 2002, it was up to individual states to prosecute for breaches of the Conventions, but states might be unable or unwilling to prosecute.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.