The Review Conference of the 1980 United Nations Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons which May be Deemed to be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects will be held in Vienna from 25 September to 13 October 1995.

This Conference offers a unique opportunity for a thorough analysis of the problems caused by the use of certain weapons, with landmines heading the list. It should also specify measures to be taken to prevent the manufacture and use of new weapons from creating serious problems in future.

The United Nations General Assembly welcomed, in its resolution 48/79 of 16 December 1993, the request made to the organization's Secretary-General by a State party to the 1980 Weapons Convention (France) to convene a conference to review, in accordance with Article 8(3), the provisions of that Convention. In paragraph 6 of the same resolution, the General Assembly encouraged the States party to ask the Secretary-General to set up a group of government experts to prepare such a conference. The States did so and the group of experts that was subsequently brought together held three meetings in 1994 and one in 1995. Pursuant to a decision by the group, the Review Conference is to be held in Vienna from 25 September to 13 October 1995.

Concern about the effects of certain conventional weapons, particularly landmines, is not new. Had that concern been lacking, the 1980 Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) would not have been formulated. Nor would some of the earlier studies on the issue by UN bodies have been written. What is new is a heightened interest in the problems caused by landmines, particularly in post-conflict settings. Several factors have contributed to the increased recognition that even though the CCW is in place, it has not addressed the ever-worsening situation on the ground. (The United States army estimates that 400 million landmines have been sown since the beginning of the Second World War, including at least 65 million in the last 15 years.)

The use of arms, projectiles, or material calculated to cause unnecessary suffering, and more especially of poisoned weapons (chemical and biological weapons), was banned under the conceptual framework of both the 1907 Hague Convention (IV) and the 1925 Geneva Protocol. In the discussions leading to a ban on the use of chemical weapons, diplomats from around the world referred to their use as “barbaric and dishonourable” because of their effect on soldiers or the likely indiscriminate impact on civilians. It is a universal achievement that it is now impossible to conceive of a world that does not show concern for civilians caught up in war. As international attention to the protection of civilians in internal armed conflicts grows, it is accompanied by renewed debate regarding regulation of warring parties' conduct through humanitarian and human rights law.

In August 1994, at the third session of the group of governmental experts to prepare the 1995 Review Conference of the 1980 United Nations Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons which May be Deemed to be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects, Switzerland introduced a proposal for a new protocol to the Convention. The Swiss draft Protocol on Small-Calibre Weapon Systems would prohibit the use of small-calibre arms and ammunition which, at ranges of 25 metres or more, transfer more than 20 Joules of energy per centimetre to the human tissues during the first 15 centimetres of passage in the body.

In its recent issues the International Review of the Red Cross announced the publication of a work entitled Le Comité international de la Croix-Rouge et la protection des victimes de la guerre by François Bugnion, Deputy Director of the ICRC Department of Principles, Law and Relations with the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.

The book has already become the reference work par excellence on the International Committee of the Red Cross in that it analyses, in a combined historical and legal approach, the process whereby the international community came to entrust the Committee with tasks and areas of competence relating to the protection of war victims. It also highlights the interaction between the development of ICRC practice and that of international humanitarian law.

“I Know of no part of jurisprudence or of the humanities to which the institution calling itself the Geneva Committee can be connected”, declared the renowned Russian jurist Fiodor Fiodorovitch de Martens, legal adviser to the Imperial Russian Government, at the Fourth International Conference of Red Cross Societies held in Karlsruhe in September 1887.

No wonder he was puzzled, for although the International Committee is an international institution by reason of its activities and duties, its composition is still that of a private association under Swiss law.

Activities to protect and assist the victims of armed conflict and the development and implementation of international humanitarian law have been important topics for the Review since it first appeared. This is only natural, bearing in mind the mandate of the ICRC, of which the Review is the official publication.