By George H. Aldrich ^*

On December 11, 1977, the Swiss Government opened for signature two
Protocols ¹ to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 on the Protection of
War Victims. ² Forty-four governments signed either one or both Protocols
on that day, and, by September 1979, 62 governments had signed one or
both Protocols. ³ The Protocols entered into force on December 7, 1978, and
by October 1980, were in force for 15 states. ⁴ One of these Protocols de-
velops the law applicable in international armed conflicts, and the other
expands the protections currently accorded to the victims of noninterna-
tional armed conflicts by Article 3 common to the 1949 Conventions.
Together the Protocols represent many years of effort, first by the Inter-
national Committee of the Red Cross, and more recently by more than one
hundred governments assembled in conference. During more than 8
months of conference sessions over 4 years, these governments struggled to
correct the perceived deficiencies in the law and to develop and articulate
new rules to improve the protections available to the victims of armed con-
flicts. Each government drew on its own experiences, and the result may
reasonably be thought to be the composite reaction by the international
community to the perceived inhumanities of wars during the past quarter
century. Since we shall probably have to wait at least another quarter century
before new efforts are made to develop the law further, it would seem
appropriate to begin to analyze the two new Protocols and to draw some
conclusions about them. This article, written by an active participant in the
Geneva conference, attempts to contribute to this process by analyzing a few
of the more significant developments in the law contained in Protocol I,
that is, the Protocol dealing with international armed conflicts.

This Protocol is so substantial (102 articles, plus two annexes) that it
may reasonably be seen as a fifth Geneva Convention. However, it is not a

-764-