Launch of the Chinese Version of the Customary International Humanitarian Law Study

This landmark study is the result of over eight years of world-wide research and legal consultation, led by the ICRC and conducted by six international and some fifty national research teams. They collected and analysed state practice as expressed, for example in military manuals, national legislation and official statements whereas the ICRC focused on examining state practice through its archives, looking at some thirty recent armed conflicts.

Professor Louise Doswald-Beck, Director of the University Centre for Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, delivering her presentation of the Customary IHL Study in Beijing on12 October 2007

Commissioned by the States party to the Geneva Conventions and National Societies during the 26th International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement in 1995, the study was originally published in English in 2005. From over 5000 pages of material, the study singles out 161 rules which are widely and constantly applied by states during wars. They are thus considered part of customary international law and therefore binding to all states. These customary obligations should further strengthen the legal protection of victims of war.

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Professor Zhou Zhonghai, Vice-President of the Chinese Society of International Law delivering his welcome remarks at the launching ceremony of the Chinese version of Customary IHL Study in Beijing on 12 October 2007

The Chinese version of the 600 page Volume I of the study was translated by a team of legal experts from Tsinghua University, China University of Political Science and Law, Renmin University, Chinese Academy of Social Science and Xi’an Political Academy of the Peoples’s Liberation Army.

Professor Zhou Zhonghai, Vice-President of the Chinese Society of International Law and Mr. Denis Allistone, Head of the ICRC Delegation for East-Asia opened the ceremony which was attended by some 50 persons representing the authorities, armed forces, diplomatic missions and academia. The study’s co-editor Professor Louise Doswald-Beck, one of the directors of the University Centre for Humanitarian Law and Human Rights at the University of Geneva provided an overview of the creation and content of the study whereas Professor Ling Yan of China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing addressed the gathering with the Chinese perspectives on the study.

For further information, please contact:

HU Xiangqun, Media Officer, ICRC Beijing, tel. 86 13911720733