GENERAL REMARKS

Although the two legal regimes are traditionally kept doctrinally separate for very good reasons to do with the need for international humanitarian law (IHL) to be universally and impartially applied equally by all parties to an armed conflict, there is a valid and interesting case to be made for the intersection of the jus ad bellum and the jus in bello when it comes to notions of humanitarian intervention and the protection of civilians. The latter has been one of the main objectives of IHL since the creation of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the adoption of the first Geneva Convention in 1864, whereas the former – in its most recent guise as the doctrine of the responsibility to protect (R2P) – has featured increasingly prominently in states’ debates on the use of force since at least 1999, when the then British Prime Minister Tony Blair intoned in his celebrated Chicago speech: ‘the principle of non-interference must be qualified in important respects. Acts of genocide can never be a purely internal matter. When oppression produces massive flows of refugees which unsettle neighbouring countries then they can properly be described as “threats to international peace and security”.’ If R2P interventions are oft en predicated upon the substantive violation of civilians’ protection in situations of armed conflict, which is the opposite of perceptions of the legality of actions within the context of an armed conflict (jus in bell o) being influenced by perceptions of the legality of the resort to force in the first place (jus ad bellum), is there – or should there be – a doctrinal link between the two? Although the answer to that question remains negative at the present time, it is at least arguable that a symbiosis in practice is emerging between these two different legal manifestations of humanitarian protection.

It is this symbiosis that is proposed and explored in the thoughtful chapters by Sophie Rondeau and Raphaël van Steenberghe that constitute this Part of the present volume.

Introduction

Of all the topics in international humanitarian law, arguably none is of more importance than securing compliance with the law's provisions and enforcing the law. Given that armed conflict by its very nature occasions violence, destruction and death, all too often to innocent people, there is little point in having an elaborate system of detailed rules for the conduct of hostilities and the protection of victims in war if there is no corresponding effective system for securing compliance and enforcing those rules. It is all very well having a doctrine of individual criminal responsibility for violations of humanitarian law but criminal proceedings by definition may be brought only after the crime has been committed and the damage done. While war crimes trials are undoubtedly considered more interesting and newsworthy by the media and the public at large, it cannot be doubted that adequate prevention – the task primarily of States, acting through military command hierarchies – is in many respects even more essential to a credible system of legal rules.

Thus, compliance with and enforcement of international humanitarian law at the State level of civil (as opposed to criminal) responsibility, obligations to disseminate the legal rules and incorporate them in domestic legal systems, and ensuring that armed forces are adequately instructed in their content, are crucial. By attaining these objectives, States can encourage the observance of the law in armed conflict and ensure that there is a workable system for obtaining enforcement.

The tables in the booklet complement the property tables in the appendices to Thermodynamics: Concepts and Applications and Thermal-Fluid Science: An Integrated Approach by Stephen R. Turns. In addition to duplicating the SI tables in these books in both SI and US Customary units, the present booklet contains property data for the refrigerant R-134a and properties of the atmosphere at high altitudes.