International Legal Regulation of the Laws and Customs of War. History of Development and Formation

The article is devoted to the study of the historical genesis of the international legal regulation of the laws and customs of war, from ancient times to the present. The history of international experience in resolving this issue, its evolution from customary law to universal international conventions is analyzed. For the first time the laws and customs of war are reflected as norms of customary law in ancient times in India, Babylon and Greece. In particular, there were unwritten restrictions on the prohibition of soldiers killing helpless and captive enemies, and for the first time banning the use of treacherous weapons (incendiary, jagged or poisoned) during hostilities. The epoch of numerous wars of ancient Rome can be described by Cicero's apt statement "when weapons speak, the laws are silent", because in wars with enemies the Romans did not observe any restrictions, the attitude towards the enemy was completely ruthless and treacherous. The defeated did not know mercy, they simply killed or sold into slavery. In the Middle Ages, the dominant idea of the wars of that time was the teaching of St. Augustine "On a just war", according to which the war started by the ruler has no sin, because it meets the wishes of the Lord. The enemy, based on this, is not just an enemy of the ruler, but an enemy of God himself. The Church fully recognized the right to kill captives, to turn captives into slaves, even children and women. The first attempt to codify the laws and customs of war began in the 17th century. The commanders of the opposing armies began to conclude special agreements between themselves - "cartels" and "capitulations", which established the basic rules of relations between the warriors, but with the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars, this practice ceased. The next qualitative stage in the genesis of international codification began in the second half of the 19th century, when the International Committee of the Red Cross was established after the Battle of Solferino (1859) and adopted the Geneva Convention on the Protection of the Wounded in Armed Conflicts. Codified normative act in the field of international humanitarian law. Finally, as international conventions, the laws and customs of war were codified in the twentieth century, after the adoption of the Hague (1907) and Geneva Conventions (1949)