ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the development of international humanitarian law since the beginning of its codification in 1864, paying particular attention to developments after the Cold War. The period since the end of the Cold War in 1989 has witnessed a particularly intense and almost revolutionary development of humanitarian law. A further cause of violations can be seen in the fact that the expectation of reciprocity has lost its role in securing respect for humanitarian law. The law of war was the first branch of international law to be codified. Although drafted for a civil war, it comprised to a large extent general rules on the law of war. The Geneva Convention of 1864 did to a certain extent distinguish the Geneva law from the rest of the law of war. In the First World War, the Geneva Convention on the wounded and sick proved more effective than the Hague Conventions.
