From the moment it was founded in 1863, the ICRC immediately set about relieving the brutalities of war. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was instrumental in drafting the Geneva Conventions of 1949, and is its guarantor today. This term of honour is found again in the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, but with two important innovations: first, women are specifically indicated as being persons ‘to be protected’ second, rape makes a reappearance, being expressly mentioned as an example constituting an attack on the ‘honour’ of women. Perhaps out of a sense of modesty, legislators preferred to speak of an attack on the ‘honour of the family’, as in the Hague Peace Conventions. Although the act was still punishable, the word ‘rape’ disappeared from the texts. Thereafter, there was a semantic regression when it came to qualifying such abuses in law. Sexual assault was explicitly mentioned as a punishable act and rape prohibited on pain of death. One of the first attempts to codify the law of armed conflict took place during the American Civil War, with the publication of the Lieber Code in February 1863. Yet rape has been a serious breach of the rules of war since the mid-nineteenth century. Sexual violence in armed conflict: the historical limits of humanitarian action & ICRC in the 20thCįor far too long, sexual violence was considered an unfortunate result of war and often kept silent.
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