ADIF
Association for the defence of International Humanitarian Law, France
The main aim of the ADIF is to contribute to informing the public and to a collective reflection on the problems relating to International Humanitarian Law. In this regard, it organises conferences at national and international level; in 2005, our international conference on the subject “International Justice and impunity, the Case of the United States” was followed by the publication of books in French (Harmattan, 2007) and in English in the United States (Clarity Press, 2008). More recently, our conferences have treated subjects such as Universal Competence, International Justice and the Impunity of Powerful States. A new International conference on the subject of “War Crimes, Terrorism...: Powerful States and Movements of Resistance” is planned for 2009.
The ADIF was created in 2003, following a session organised by the Human Rights Division of UNESCO in the context of an International Science Conference. According to modern terminology, International Humanitarian Law applies first to armed conflicts. It seeks to protect persons not participating, or no longer participating in such conflicts, to limit or prohibit the use of certain means and arms of warfare, and to introduce legal means of ensuring that those responsible for the most serious of crimes do not remain unpunished: the “universal competence” of national and international jurisdictions. It also applies by extension to crimes against humanity and to genocide, including in “times of peace”.
The ADIF has no means of action on the ground but seeks, through conferences, publications and other initiatives, to contribute alongside (and in liaison with) other organisations:
- - further the understanding of this law, in particular its fundamental texts such as the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which prohibit torture, inhuman treatment, or illegal detention, and their Additional Protocol I of 1977. This Protocol, less well known than the Conventions of 1949, is nevertheless a major advance for the protection of civilian populations and for the recognition of movements of resistance against occupation and for national liberation. With attacks targeting civilians in their own right, attacks and bombings instigated in the knowledge that such will cause great loss of civilian life are also war crimes. All of the abovementioned acts, inscribed in the Conventions of 1949 and the first Additional Protocol, are subject to universal competence: persons having committed or ordered the commission of such acts must, according to these Treaties, be prosecuted in all the adhering States. Ratified by 167 countries, the Protocol I of 1977 has not been ratified by the United States, India, Pakistan or Israel.
- - a critical analysis of the evolution and of the present situation of this law, in complete independence of official institutions.
- - the gathering of humanitarian organisations and personalities concerned in order to debate all the different points of view and proposals, with a view to ensuring the respect and the improvement of humanitarian law.
The ADIF intervenes in particular in the fields in which it may be able to have a useful contribution to a collective reflection. The main themes treated to date are the following:
- - science in service to war and the responsibility of scientists,
- - developments of international justice: its advances since the 1990s (International Tribunals for Ex-Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, the International Criminal Court (ICC)), but also its limitations and fundamental problems, in particular with the instauration of an international justice at two speeds, and the impunity of powerful States. Massacres, rapes, forced enrolment of children are rightfully prosecuted by the ICC in numerous countries in Africa. Is killing and destroying with the aid of planes, missiles and other sophisticated arms, a subject on which the Statute of the ICC is less advanced than the Protocol of 1977, more acceptable?
The ADIF supports both efforts aiming to ensure the effective enforcement of the principle of universal competence in all cases in which other forms of international justice have failed, and those aiming to develop a renewed ICC – independent and with the will and the capacity to prosecute all those responsible for the most serious war crimes.
It asks in particular of the French Government that France respect its international obligations in relation to its ratification of Treaties such as the Geneva Conventions and Protocol I, and the Statute of the ICC: France must modify its national legislation to be in conformity with these Treaties, something it has not to date done. It also asks for a large abrogation of the reserves that have been made by France to its ratification of the 1977 Protocol I, which serve to diminish its reach.