The Penal Responsibility And Sanctions For Violations Of International Humanitarian Law

CHAPTER ONE
1.1              Introduction
During this century, millions of children, women and men have been victims of unimaginable atrocities in the theatre of wars that deeply shook the conscience of humanity. For instance, the war in Iraq which was a protracted armed conflict that began in 2003 with the invasion of Iraq by a United States-led coalition that toppled the government of Saddam Hussein, also the Libyan Crisis, an ongoing conflict in Libya, beginning with the Arab Spring protests of 2011, which led to the First Libyan Civil War, foreign military intervention, and the ousting and death of Muammar Gaddafi. The civil war’s aftermath and proliferation of armed groups led to violence and instability across the country, which erupted into renewed civil war in 2014.
Another instance, is the Nigerian civil war, popularly known all over the world as the “Biafran War” which broke out from 2 July 1967 to 15 January 1970. The war was between the then Eastern Region of Nigeria and the rest of the country. Also the ongoing Syrian Civil War, a multi-sided armed conflict in Syria fought primarily between the government of President Bashar al-Assad, along with its allies, and various forces opposing the government.
 It is against this background that an analysis of the penal responsibility and sanctions for violations of International Humanitarian Law becomes necessary. This chapter highlights the general issues relevant to the study, purpose of the study and the significance of the study.
1.2              Background Statement
The history of mankind is the story of power struggles, confrontations and armed conflicts between nations, people and individuals. From the earliest times, men have been preoccupied with the problem of how to control the effect of violence and its attendant human sufferings with varying degrees of success.
Prior to the middle of the 19th Century, agreements to protect victims of wars were of mere transient character, binding only upon the contracting parties thereto, and based upon strict reciprocity.
In reality, they were purely military agreements usually effective only for the duration of a particular period of hostility. This state of affairs was changed by the birth of modern humanitarian law which is associated with the emergence of the Red Cross Movement in 1863. This development makes states bound by universal treaty applicable at all times and in all circumstances.
It would therefore be misleading to claim that the founding of the Red Cross in 1863, or the adoption of the first Geneva Convention in 1864, marked the beginning of international humanitarian law as we know it today. Just as there is no society of any sort that does not have its own set of rules, there has never been a war that did not have some vague or precise rules covering the outbreak, end of hostilities, and how they are conducted. As Quincy Wright rightly observed “Taken as a whole, the war practices of primitive people illustrate various types of international rules of war known at the present time; rules determining the circumstance formalities and authority for beginning and ending war; rules describing limitation of persons, time, place and methods of it conducts, and even rules outlawing war altogether .
The first laws of wars were proclaimed by major civilization several millennia before our era: “I establish these law to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak”.
Many ancient texts such as Mahabharata, the Bible and the Koran contain rules advocating respect for the adversary. For instance, the Viqayet, a text written toward the end of the 13th century at the height of the period in which the Arabs ruled Spain, contains a veritable code for warfare. The 1864 convention, in the form of a multilateral treaty, therefore codified and strengthened ancient, fragmentary and scattered law and customs of war protecting the wounded and those caring for them. In the 17th century, the Dutch legal scholar and diplomat, Grotius wrote his ‘De jure belli ac pacis’ in which he listed rules that are among the firmest foundation of the law of war.
From the beginning of warfare to the advent of contemporary humanitarian law, over 500 cartels, codes of conduct, covenants and other texts designed to regulate hostilities have been recorded. They include the Lieber Code, which came into force in April 1863 and it is important in that it marked the first attempt to codify the existing laws and customs of war.
Unlike the first Geneva Convention adopted a year later the Lieber code however did not have the status of a treaty as it was intended solely for union soldiers fighting in the American civil war.