The ICRC Customary International Humanitarian Law Study

• Author: Yoram Dinstein
• Position: Professor of Human Rights and Pro-President, Tel Aviv University (Israel)
• Pages: 99-112

IV

The ICRC Customary International

Humanitarian Law Study

Yoram Dinstein*

The Study x

The publication in 2005 of an impressive Study of Customary International

Humanitarian Law (IHL) by the International Committee of the Red Cross

(ICRC) (hereinafter the Study) 1is undoubtedly an important landmark. The

Study—done in two parts (Rules and Practice)—is bound to be scrutinized, cited

and debated for along time to come. It will leave its imprints in the future both in

the case law and in the legal literature, and, whatever one's view is of the overall

success of the enterprise, no scholar or practitioner can afford to ignore it.

The mandate for the preparation of the Study came exactly ten years prior to its

publication (1995), from the 26th International Conference of the Red Cross and

Red Crescent. For an entire decade, the ICRC spared no effort to put the Study to-

gether. The project was based, inter alia> on extensive consultations with academic

and government experts; nearly fifty reports of individual States' practice, submitted

by national research teams; research on the practice of international organizations

produced by several additional teams; and further archival research pursued by the

ICRC itself. The resulting two volumes (for reasons of sheer size, Volume II (Prac-

tice) is published in two separately bound parts) comprise more than 5,000 printed

*Yanowicz Professor of Human Rights and Pro-President, Tel Aviv University (Israel). This

article was first published in volume 36 of the Israel Yearbook on Human Rights (2006) and is

reprinted with permission. ©2006 by Yoram Dinstein.