We went to Geneva at the invitation of the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights to make a podcast about the Geneva Conventions. Yes, we did the thing – we put the Geneva Conventions on trial.

We sat in Gustave Moynier’s old office in Parc Moynier next to the lake, and mused about the ghosts of international humanitarian law past.

Here’s a photo of Henri Dunant to prove we were there.

What are the Geneva Conventions? They are – as Stephanie explains in her Reuters stories – the internationally accepted rules of armed conflict which first emerged from the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which have been ratified by all United Nations member states and by rulings at international war crimes tribunals. We might add also supplemented by treaties and customary international law standards and the International Criminal Court’s founding document, the Rome Statute.

We were joined by Andrew Clapham Professor of International Law at the Graduate Institute and Gloria Gaggioli, Associate Professor and Vice-Dean of the Law Faculty of the University of Geneva.

The format wasn’t the most serious…

But the subject matter is. It’s one of the major debates that is going on in the world at large – that whatever guidelines the international community thought it was setting up 75 years ago – they aren’t working now, when we consider Sudan, Israel, Palestine, and Ukraine. The world is on fire and the Geneva Conventions are failing to put out the flames.

For books etc we had an eclectic mix: Why War by Richard Overy; Siege Tactics report from the Geneva Academy; and Hawaii Five-O.