PERIODS OF DEVELOPMEMT OF INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAW

Abstract

This scientific article is devoted to the current problems of researching the origins and development of international humanitarian law, analyzing the role and nature of the influence on this process of political, cultural and religious factors within the subjects of this law – states and state entities. It was determined that the emergence and formation of states contributed to the complex and long process of international rulemaking regarding the creation of established norms of law, the content of which are the rules of behavior during armed conflicts. Separate periods of the development of the law of war have been studied. It was revealed that although in ancient times these norms were not fixed at the legislative level, they depended on the agreements between the parties to the conflict, and had an episodic nature – they became the basis of customary norms, and then of international treaties. Further legal consolidation of these rules was a complex and ambiguous process, as a result of which modern international humanitarian law (hereinafter – IHL) was formed as a set of internationally recognized norms, including the obligation of states to comply with them. Emphasized, IHL is a compromise between two opposite principles: humanity and military necessity, the emphasis of which shifted in different periods of human history under the influence of political, security, cultural and religious factors. If military necessity allows the use of force to resolve the conflict, then the principle of humanity limits the use of this force and denies the task of excessive suffering and harm in achieving the legitimate goal of an armed conflict – weakening the enemy. Attention is focused on the fact that the norms of IHL combine practical experience, religious and moral and ethical norms and are designed to «humanize» such an essentially inhumane phenomenon as war, to ensure the protection of the most vulnerable categories of persons: children, women, wounded and sick, prisoners of war, etc.. This right to protection of not only legal, but also moral nature is a sign of the maturing society. The possible ways of development of IHL are determined: the spread of knowledge among its bearers, changes in the state and educational policy of states – subjects of international law.