How to make international humanitarian law work?

The International Humanitarian Law in the Dimension of Contemporary Challenges conference was organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine and was held on August 12, 2025, in Kyiv, in the building of the Diplomatic Academy.

The conference was held on the day of the signing of the Geneva Conventions in 1949. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Andriy Sygiba spoke at the conference, announcing the creation of the Platform for the Progressive Development of International Humanitarian Law. The participants of the event were welcomed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic Jan Lipavsky. He emphasized the relevance of the idea of ​​improving the effectiveness of IHL.

The conference program included discussions of the following topics: the rights of prisoners of war; the rights of the civilian population; the role of the International Committee of the Red Cross in protecting victims of armed conflicts; the rights of forcibly displaced children; ecocide and cultural genocide; modern weapons as an instrument for committing war crimes; the role of UN bodies in the implementation of international humanitarian law.

An expert of the Center for Civil Liberties, Mykhailo Savva, spoke at one of the panel discussions of the conference.

Mykhailo Savva:

"I am an expert at the Center for Civil Liberties, a doctor of political sciences, and a professor.

I have 5 minutes to speak, and I want to devote them to the most important thing. In my opinion, today Ukraine has taken an important step - a statement within the country about the need to change IHL. Perhaps the second step will be a call for IHL reform at the international level. For example, at the United Nations. In order for this call to be heard, we ourselves need to understand what we want and how to achieve it.

To answer these questions, the Ukrainian history of the idea of ​​reforming IHL is important. Since February 2022, Ukrainian human rights organizations have been documenting war crimes. Only members of the human rights coalition "Tribunal for Putin" have recorded several tens of thousands of episodes that, as a result of the investigation, may become war crimes. We do this in different formats. Currently, the CCL documents crimes against civilians and prisoners of war, whom the Russian regime does not distinguish. We not only recorded such episodes, we analyzed them, tried to answer the questions: Which norms of IHL were violated? Why was this violation possible?

Quite quickly, we concluded that the problem is not only that the Russian Federation violates the norms of IHL. It is also that international humanitarian law allows such violations. The Russian regime violates IHL systematically, it has made war crimes a method of waging war.

In November 2022, I moderated two international discussions of human rights defenders from the OSCE region. We have a Solidarity Talks format, in which human rights defenders discuss acute problems of rights violations and formulate proposals for their solution. We discussed why IHL does not work during military aggression and how this can be influenced. Based on the results of these discussions, I can confidently say that the idea of ​​reforming IHL has a strong ally - the international human rights community. We created an international working group and began to summarize the problems. We managed to identify several groups of problems in modern IHL.

The first is the lack of mechanisms for enforcing the norms of IHL. The Geneva Conventions are soft, they do not provide for effective enforcement. These conventions were written by gentlemen for gentlemen. But the Putin regime is not a gentleman, to put it mildly. And they can afford not to comply with IHL.

The second is the weakness of the mechanisms for monitoring compliance with IHL norms. This is not even control, but rather recording violations. But in this format, this mechanism is not effective.

The third is the incomplete description of procedures. Formally, many procedures are in the Geneva Conventions, but they are described in such a way that they can be ignored if desired. For example, to this day, the patron countries in Russia's war against Ukraine have not been determined, and one of the reasons is the uncertainty of the procedure.

The fourth is the inaccuracy of the wording. For example, how, on the basis of what criteria, can legitimate military targets be clearly distinguished from dual-use objects?

And finally, I call the fifth problem "the lack of modernity in IHL." In 1949, when the Geneva Conventions were signed, as you know, there was no Internet. This allows the Russian regime to prevent Ukrainian prisoners of war and illegally detained civilians from using electronic means of communication to communicate with their families. The Geneva Conventions allow telegrams to be sent, but the telegraph has long been gone.

The work of human rights activists from the OSCE region has made it possible to formulate several ideas for reforming IHL. I will list them under numbers:

The first concerns the format of changes. The optimal format at present is a new protocol to the Geneva Conventions or amendments to the First Protocol. This idea was formed, among other things, as a result of communication with representatives of the depository of the Geneva Conventions, that is, the Swiss authorities. In our case, the depository is the body on which a great deal depends in launching reforms. Any proposals are submitted to the depository, and then, based on the results of consultations with the International Committee of the Red Cross, it decides whether to convene an international diplomatic conference. Changes to IHL require a decision by a diplomatic conference of countries of the world. Most of the participants in such a conference are representatives of states that do not respect human rights and are not even democracies. They want to preserve for themselves the ability to wage aggressive wars and commit war crimes. As a result of the revision of the Geneva Conventions, we can get documents of worse quality than we have now. In case of adoption of a new protocol or amendments to the First Protocol, there are fewer risks, because the basic documents of IHL are not affected.

The second determines the content of the first wave of changes. Systemic reform of IHL may not be supported by the majority of countries in the world. But we have a chance to convince this majority that IHL should take into account modern realities, namely digitalization. The Digital Protocol to the Geneva Conventions is an objective need that does not require additional complex explanations. The reform should not end with the recognition of digitalization. But the Digital Protocol can become a flag, that is, the main slogan of changes in IHL.

The third is that most of our potential international partners do not perceive the word "reform" in relation to IHL. This word seems too radical to them. They prefer to talk about improving international humanitarian law. I do not care at all what it will be called, if we achieve a result.

The fourth takes into account the size of the problems that need to be solved to change IHL. This is a huge volume. This task is not only the task of the Ukrainian authorities. This is the task of Ukraine, that is, also of civil society, the scientific community and all interested people and organizations. Thank you for your attention."