This article examines the links between the concept of peace and international humanitarian law (IHL). It takes a closer look at how the originator of IHL, the International Committee of the Red Cross, justified the existence of this body of law, which was supposed to regulate war, in the face of those who wanted to see war abolished once and for all. The article also questions the attitude of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, which, while wanting a peaceful society, did not give itself the means to achieve one.

How can humanitarians carry out their work during a genocide? Between April and June of 1994, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) faced that very question. After bloodshed broke out in Rwanda, the ICRC was the only remaining humanitarian organization in the country and continued its aid work while surrounded by brutal violence. Based on previously published materials,1 this article examines the strategies that enabled the ICRC to pursue its humanitarian mission in the face of the most basic inhumanity. In particular, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement's Fundamental Principles of neutrality and impartiality were critical to establishing contact with all involved parties: dialogue, including with those perpetrating genocide, was key to ensuring the safety of ICRC staff, and to facilitating the organization's work on behalf of those affected by the violence. Additionally, the ICRC spoke out frequently as the violence was unfolding in Rwanda, and this article addresses the question of public communications, in both principle and practice, during a genocide.

The International Review of the Red Cross (formerly the Bulletin Internationale des Sociétés de Secours aux Militaires Blessés) is celebrating its 150th anniversary in 2019, making it the oldest of the general publications produced by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Originally created as a communication tool for the entire International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the Review rapidly changed its course to become first the primary mouthpiece of the ICRC for many years, and finally an academic journal. This article will retrace the history of this evolution, during which, under cover of humanitarianism, political factors played a significant role.

To understand how war is perceived and how it has evolved over time, we must first choose the right agent to study: one that is at once involved in the bellicosity, and yet keeps its distance. Such an agent will be better placed to maintain an objective and rational view of developments. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) would seem to fit the bill. As a humanitarian organization that has been working with the victims of armed conflict for more than 153 years, the ICRC has plenty of experience of war, yet it preserves its ability to interpret critically in its capacity as non-belligerent. It is therefore in a position to grasp the evolution of mankind's oldest activity over one and a half centuries – a period during which warfare has undergone incredible and deadly transformations in conjunction with technological breakthroughs and the rise of extremist political ideologies. On top of this, the ICRC was itself, in its early days, made up of people who had experienced war in one way or another. Of the five members who decided to found the organization in February 1863, three had personally experienced armed violence to varying degrees. This fact also made the nascent organization uniquely entitled to voice its views on a subject of which it had empirical experience.

This article seeks to explain how the ICRC – the oldest international humanitarian organization still in activity – has managed to pass through 150 years of existence. By analysing some key moments in ICRC history and by examining both its inner workings and their interaction with the context within which the organization has functioned over time, this article finds two characteristics that may help explain the ICRC's continuity: its unique specificity and its innovative capacity.

This article examines the violence of war from a temporal point of view, looking at various contemporary conflicts from a long-term perspective involving three kinds of time: “historical” time, “traditional” time and “mythical” time. It thus provides some elements that help explain the length of these conflicts, but also their deeper nature. In particular, it casts douht on the appropriateness of the term “ethnic war”, which has been used to characterize some of them. The hypothetical model presented here focuses on Africa, but it could also he applied to conflict zones in other parts of the world.

Today's wars are commonly called “new conflicts”. They seem new because they are unstructured, because their victims are mainly civilians and because they are waged with unconventional weapons and methods, including terrorism. A brief look at history shows that such techniques have been used in Europe since Antiquity. It is true that the Treaties of Westphalia (1648) changed the nature of warfare by ushering in the era of nation-States, which made efforts to spare unarmed civilians while steadily perfecting their weapons. Quickly, however, this model degenerated, unleashing an undreamt of destructive potential that, since 1945, has checked traditional conflicts by making wars between developed States so dangerous that they could annihilate mankind. As a result, we have seen a return to more ancient forms of warfare, of which the new conflicts typical of today's “post-bipolar” world are the most recent example. The name given to these conflicts simply reflects the fact that, after two generations of relative peace, people in the West have forgotten what war is: for them, all conflicts seem new.

Despite the recurrence of hostage-taking through the ages, the subject of hostages themselves has thus far received little analysis. Classically, there are two distinct types of hostages: voluntary hostages, as was common practice during the Ancien Régime of pre-Revolution France, when high-ranking individuals handed themselves over to benevolent jailers as guarantors for the proper execution of treaties; and involuntary hostages, whose seizure is a typical procedure in all-out war where individuals are held indiscriminately and without consideration, like living pawns, to gain a decisive military upper hand. Today the status of “hostage” is a combination of both categories taken to extremes. Though chosen for pecuniary, symbolic or political reasons, hostages are generally mistreated. They are in fact both the reflection and the favoured instrument of a major moral dichotomy: that of the increasing globalization of European and American principles and the resultant opposition to it — an opposition that plays precisely on the western adherence to human and democratic values. In the eyes of his countrymen, the hostage thus becomes the very personification of the innocent victim, a troubling and haunting image.

Today, war is still perceived as being the prerogative of men only. Women are generally excluded from the debate on belligerence, except as passive victims of the brutality inflicted on them by their masculine contemporaries. Yet history shows that through the ages, women have also played a role in armed hostilities, and have sometimes even been the main protagonists. In the present article, the long history and the multiple facets of women's involvement in war are recounted from two angles: women at war (participating in war) and women in war (affected by war). The merit of a gender-based division of roles in war is then examined with reference to the ancestral practice of armed violence.

For almost 60 years, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has been doing its best to provide humanitarian assistance to those groups in Iraq that need it most. This article describes the humanitarian operations of the ICRC in Iraq from 1950 to the present day, in particular the support it has given to different minorities in the country and its humanitarian responses to the various armed conflicts. It shows that the legal framework that provides the basis for the ICRC's humanitarian activities also limits its ability to take action in situations beyond the scope of its mandate. In armed conflicts the ICRC faces the risk of being used by governments for their own ends. The challenge for the ICRC is to strike a balance between meeting its treaty-based obligations and exercising its right of humanitarian initiative, and to avoid selecting the recipients of its aid on the sole basis of opportunities made available by governments.

“What is an ICRC delegate?” Here, in a sentence, is the focus of this article. Going through the in-house perception, which highlights the extraordinary and singular nature of this humanitarian player, and through the view of the public, which oscillates between the missionary of humanity and the mere holder of a temporary job, the authors attempt to give the reader the key to unveil and discover this peculiar profession.