Origin of Geneva Convention.
§ 118. Although[246] since the seventeenth century several hundreds of special treaties have been concluded between different States regarding the tending of each other's wounded and the exemption of army surgeons from captivity, no general rule of the Law of Nations on these points was in existence until the second half of the nineteenth century other than one prohibiting the killing, mutilation, or ill-treatment of the wounded. A change for the better was initiated by Jean Henry Dunant, a Swiss citizen from Geneva, who was an eye-witness of the battle of Solferino in 1859, where many thousands of wounded died who could, under more favourable circumstances, have been saved. When he published, in 1861 and 1863, his pamphlet, Un Souvenir de Solférino, the Geneva Société d'utilité publique, under the presidency of Gustave Moynier, created an agitation in favour of better arrangements for the tending of the wounded on the battlefield, and convoked an international congress at Geneva in 1863, where thirty-six representatives of nearly all the European States met and discussed the matter. In 1864 the Bundesrath, the Government of the Federal State of Switzerland, took the matter in hand officially, and invited all European and several American States to send official representatives to a Congress at Geneva for the purpose of discussing and concluding an international treaty regarding the wounded. This Congress met in 1864, and sixteen States were represented. Its result was the international "Convention[247] for the Amelioration of the Condition of Soldiers wounded in Armies in the Field," commonly called "Geneva Convention," signed on August 22, 1864. By-and-by States other than the original signatories joined the Convention, and finally the whole body of the civilised States of the world, with the exception of Costa Rica, Monaco, and Lichtenstein, became parties. That the rules of the Convention were in no wise perfect, and needed to be supplemented regarding many points, soon became apparent. A second International Congress met at the invitation of Switzerland in 1868 at Geneva, where additional articles[248] to the original Convention were discussed and signed. These additional articles have, however, never been ratified. The First Hague Peace Conference in 1899 unanimously formulated the wish that Switzerland should shortly take steps for the assemblage of another international congress in order to revise the Geneva Convention. This Congress assembled in June 1906, thirty-five States having sent representatives, and on July 6, 1906, a new Geneva Convention[249] was signed by Great Britain, Germany, Argentina, Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Bulgaria, Chili, China, Congo Free State, Korea, Denmark, Spain, the United States of America, Brazil, Mexico, France, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, Japan, Luxemburg, Montenegro, Norway, Holland, Peru, Persia, Portugal, Roumania, Russia, Servia, Siam, Sweden, Switzerland, and Uruguay. Most of these States have already ratified, and Colombia, Costa-Rica, Cuba, Nicaragua, Salvador, Turkey, and Venezuela, which were not represented at the Congress, acceded later. There is no doubt that in time all the civilised Powers will become parties.
[246] See Macpherson, loc. cit. p. 254.
[247] See Martens, N.R.G. XVIII. p. 607, and above, [vol. I. § 560].
[248] See Martens, N.R.G. XVIII. p. 61.
[249] See Martens, N.R.G. 3rd. Ser. II. (1910), p. 620, and Treaty Series, 1907, No. 15.
The new Convention consists of thirty-three articles instead of the ten articles of the old Convention, and provides rules for the treatment of the wounded and the dead; further rules concerning military hospitals and mobile medical units; the personnel engaged in the interest of the wounded including army chaplains; the material belonging to mobile medical units, military hospitals, and voluntary aid societies; the convoys of evacuation; the distinctive emblem; the carrying out of the Convention; and the prevention of abuses and infractions.
In the final protocol the Conference expresses the desire that, in order to arrive at a unanimous interpretation of the Convention, the parties should, so far as the cases and the circumstances permit, submit to Hague Court Arbitration any differences which in time of peace might arise between them concerning the interpretation of the Convention, but Great Britain and Japan refused to become parties to this.
The Wounded and the Sick.
§ 119. According to articles 1-5 of the Geneva Convention,[250] the sick and wounded persons belonging, or officially attached, to armies must be respected and taken care of, without distinction of nationality, by the belligerent in whose power they may be. Should, however, a belligerent necessarily be compelled to abandon such sick and wounded persons to the enemy, he must, so far as military exigencies permit, leave behind with them a portion of his medical personnel to take care of them, and the necessary material. The sick and wounded who have fallen into the hands of the enemy are prisoners of war, but belligerents may exchange or release them, or even hand them over to a neutral State which has to intern them until after the conclusion of peace. After each engagement the commander in possession of the field must have search made for the wounded and must take measures to protect them against pillage and maltreatment. A nominal roll of all wounded and sick who have been collected must be sent as early as possible to the authorities of the country or army to which they belong, and the belligerents must keep each other mutually informed of any internments and changes as well as of admissions into hospital. It is specially stipulated by article 5 that, if a military authority finds it necessary to appeal to the charitable zeal of the inhabitants to collect and take care of, under his direction, the wounded and sick of armies, he can grant to those who have responded to his appeal special protection and certain immunities.