Article

Peacekeeping and international humanitarian law : friends or foes?

Michael Bothe

• Journal of international peacekeeping vol. 3, 1996, p. 91-95

English

Peacekeeping and international humanitarian law should be friends, but as a matter of fact, their relationship seems to be a little problematic. An example is the recent report that SFOR soldiers used a trick involving a red cross in order to come close to a suspected war criminal they wanted to arrest, If the report is true, this would constitute an abuse of the emblem. During the 2nd UN peacekeeping operation, ONUC in the Congo, ICRC personnel wearing the emblem was killed by UN peacekeepers. In the meantime, there has been a lot of debate in theory, but also an actual practice, in particular between the ICRC and the UN, concerning the application of international humanitarian law by UN peacekeeping forces. This practical debate and these cases have been accompanied by many academic attempts to clarify the question. These lines offer yet another one of those.

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