ICRC Media Brief: August 2009

12 August: 60th Anniversary of the Geneva Conventions. This is an important milestone for the treaties, which place limits on how war is waged and form the cornerstone of international humanitarian law. In 1949, States met in Geneva to revise the three existing Conventions and add a fourth one dedicated to the protection of civilians. Since then, these treaties have been supplemented by three Additional Protocols. The Conventions and their Additional Protocols provide the most relevant existing framework for protecting civilians and people who are no longer taking part in armed conflicts. The ICRC gets its humanitarian mandate from the Conventions, which task it with visiting prisoners, organizing relief operations, reuniting separated families and other humanitarian activities during armed conflicts.

At a diplomatic event in Geneva on 12 August, the ICRC will outline is position on the challenges facing the Conventions today and highlight its ongoing efforts to ensure that they continue to be relevant. In addition, the organization will issue the new findings of an opinion poll conducted in eight war- and violence-affected countries. The people surveyed in the poll were asked what they consider to be acceptable behaviour in warfare and whether they think the Geneva Conventions are effective in limiting the suffering of civilians.

A press conference with the ICRC's director for international law and deputy director of communication will be held at the ICRC's headquarters in Geneva on 11 August at 14:00.

An embargoed press pack is available to journalists, including the survey results, free-of-rights photos of the 1949 signing and other historical and contemporary images, as well as the news release and interviews with ICRC experts.

TV news footage will also be available, including fresh images from Georgia/South Ossetia, which was involved in an international armed conflict with Russia in August last year.

Georgia/South Ossetia: One year after hostilities broke out in Georgia and South Ossetia, the population remains vulnerable and humanitarian needs are still considerable. To mark this anniversary, the ICRC will publish on its homepage on 5 August an interview of Pascale Meige Wagner, head of operations for Eastern Europe, features, and an operational update on this issue. A selection of photos taken by world-famous VII war photographer Antonin Kratochvil is also available.

31 August: International Day of the Disappeared – Hundreds of thousands of people went missing in the Iran-Iraq war and in Iraq's successive conflicts over past decades. The ICRC will report on the plight of families who continue to search for information about what happened to their relatives – doing the rounds of hospitals, police stations, morgues, institutes of forensic medicine, and humanitarian organizations. A news release, features and new video footage will be released on that occasion.

Democratic Republic of the Congo: At the end of Augustthe ICRC plans to issue a new film in the series "from the field" on restoring family links and reuniting children with their families in the eastern DRC.