The Hague Convention of 1899 was the product of the First Hague Peace Conference, convened at The Hague from 18 May to 29 July 1899 at the initiative of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. Twenty-six states participated, including the major European powers, the United States, Mexico, Japan, China, Siam, Persia, and the Ottoman Empire. It was one of the earliest multilateral efforts to constrain the conduct of warfare and to institutionalize arbitration as an alternative to armed conflict.
The conference produced three principal conventions and three declarations:
- Convention I: Pacific Settlement of International Disputes, which established the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague.
- Convention II: Laws and Customs of War on Land, which annexed regulations binding belligerents on matters such as treatment of prisoners of war, conduct of hostilities, and protection of civilians and property in occupied territory.
- Convention III: Adaptation to maritime warfare of the principles of the 1864 Geneva Convention.
- Declarations prohibiting the launching of projectiles from balloons, the use of projectiles diffusing asphyxiating gases, and the use of expanding ("dum-dum") bullets.
Convention II incorporated the Martens Clause, drafted by Russian jurist Fyodor Martens, which provides that in cases not covered by treaty rules, civilians and combatants remain under the protection of "the principles of the law of nations, derived from the usages established among civilized peoples, from the laws of humanity, and the dictates of the public conscience." This clause remains influential in modern international humanitarian law.
The 1899 instruments were revised and expanded at the Second Hague Peace Conference in 1907, which produced thirteen conventions. Much of the 1899/1907 framework on land warfare was later affirmed as customary international law by the Nuremberg Tribunal (1946) and continues to inform the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols.
Example
In 1902, the United States and Mexico submitted the Pious Fund of the Californias case to the newly created Permanent Court of Arbitration, the first dispute decided under the 1899 Hague Convention's arbitration framework.