Whats the practical involvement of the ICRC in getting arms carriers to respect IHL?
Armed forces are obliged to respect international humanitarian law (IHL) at all times; they are supposed to include this in their training. The ICRC helps states meet these responsibilities by, among other things, making specialists available to give support to their training programmes on IHL, or the law of armed conflict, as they describe it. It extends this type of support to training for police services and other security forces, which are called on to intervene in situations that can put civilians at risk. Other target groups for these activities include organised armed groups in non-international armed conflicts, as they too are bound by IHL. The purpose of the ICRC’s intervention in this is very practical: to try to prevent abuses of the law, thus making civilians, the wounded and prisoners safer, and to improve safe access to victims by humanitarian organisations. The ICRC has been talking to PMCs/PSCs since 2004; what has been the aim? The ICRC wants to have a dialogue with al
