ABSTRACT
The codification of international standards regarding wartime conduct in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries represented another key development in human rights thought. The First Geneva Convention in 1864, which set forth basic protections for soldiers and medical personnel, along with the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, which included treaties on the laws and customs of war as well as statements on war crimes, enunciated the specific rights that individuals—combatant and non-combatant alike—should have during times of war. 16 The signatory nations expanded and updated the Geneva and Hague Conventions multiple times during the twentieth century. The significance of this earlier history notwithstanding, World War II was an inflection point for global human rights. Congressional activism is another vital piece of the history of the human rights revival of the 1970s, as historians such as Barbara Keys and Sarah Snyder have revealed.
