Red Cross Rules of Engagement

American Journalism Center ^ | February 11, 2010 | Sheila Archambault

[bs9021]

Red Cross Rules of Engagement

Sheila Archambault, February 11, 2010

In international humanitarian law and the law of armed conflict, there has been a large change—law is no longer based on practice, or what fighting countries actually do in wars, but it’s now based on what someone said in a speech, a professor said at an event put on by the Endowment for Middle East Truth.

Before, law “followed customary practices of actual armies in the field” … now there is a thinking that law “is as much the work of by standing states as participants”—we have shifted from a law grounded in practice to a law grounded in talking, said Jeremy Rabkin, a law professor from George Mason University.

An example of this, Rabkin said, is that the International Red Cross produced a 3-volume work to explain customary international law through documentation of what international leaders said in speeches.

The Red Cross writes “such comical things as: you must never harm civilian objects, property belonging to civilians,” Rabkin said. The proof of this custom was that Saddam Hussein said this during the war between Iraq and Iran, he added.

It does not matter if anyone lived up to it. All that mattered is that someone said it in a speech, Rabkin said.

Historically the understanding of law was based on the interaction of states, but “now the law is told to us by the International Red Cross, by Amnesty International and by Human Rights Watch,” Rabkin said...

[a fool in paradise]

Whatever excuse Red Crescent needs to find to defend terrorist sympathizers and dictators.