Jean-Pictet Competition 2026 (50th edition)

International Humanitarian Law (IHL), also known as the law of armed conflict or jus in bello, is the body of rules that seeks to limit the effects of armed conflict by protecting persons who are not, or are no longer, participating in hostilities and by restricting the means and methods of warfare. Its modern foundations trace to 1864, when Henry Dunant's account of the Battle of Solferino prompted the adoption of the first Geneva Convention and the founding of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Successive treaties — the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 adopted in the aftermath of the Second World War, and their 1977 and 2005 Additional Protocols — built a comprehensive regime distinguishing combatants from civilians, prohibiting attacks on the wounded, sick, shipwrecked, prisoners of war, and protected civilians, and outlawing weapons causing superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering. The post-Cold War era expanded IHL's reach through customary law, ad hoc tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and the 1998 Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court, which criminalised grave breaches as war crimes. Specialised regimes followed, including the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, the 1997 Ottawa Treaty banning anti-personnel mines, the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, and the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Despite this dense legal architecture, the principles of distinction, proportionality, precaution, and humane treatment remain contested in practice, and non-international armed conflicts — which now constitute the majority of wars — are governed by a thinner treaty framework centred on Common Article 3 and Additional Protocol II. Contemporary debates focus on how IHL applies to urban warfare and siege tactics seen in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Yemen and Syria; to non-state armed groups; to autonomous weapons systems and military uses of artificial intelligence; to cyber operations; and to the protection of humanitarian and medical personnel, whose casualty figures have reached record highs. Recurring concerns include attacks on hospitals and schools, the weaponisation of starvation and access to water, conflict-related sexual violence, and the erosion of compliance amid claims of selective enforcement. As IHL marks decades since the Geneva Conventions, states, courts, and the ICRC continue to debate whether the existing rules need clarification, stronger implementation, or new instruments to remain fit for the conflicts of the twenty-first century.