Too difficult to protect: a history of the 1934 Monaco Draft and the problem of territory for international humanitarian law

Abstract

Blurry', 'indeterminate', and 'elastic' are terms used to describe the spatial, legal, and categorical ambiguities that have characterized the war-law-space nexus since September 11th. I argue here that these same qualities were central to the lawmaking process eighty years ago in the case of the Monaco Draft, a draft convention that proposed rules to establish hospital and safety towns, zones, and localities in order to strengthen international humanitarian law. This paper reviews the Monaco Draft's spatial proposals from their conception in 1934 and their discussion at three expert consultations during the 1930s to their incorporation into the 1949 Geneva Conventions as nonbinding recommendations. An analysis of the conversations among experts charged with examining the proposed rules reveals how the interplay of territorial ideology with the more contingent realities of the battlefield produced uncertainties that conditioned the law. This was further complicated by the law's customary basis, which makes untested legal measures especially risky. The broader significance of this research is that it presents a historical case showing the problematic nature of territory, uncertainty, and materializing norms as a continuing feature of humanitarian law.

Safe areas for the protection of civilians. An overview of existing research and scholarship

“…provides a good overview of the legal developments of safe areas between 1870 and 1949/1977. This includes the 1930 French parliamentary debate about so-called "Geneva Places", the following 1934 "Monaco draft" (that among other things pushed the definition of non-military hospital towns, see also Kleinfeld 2015) as well as the 1936/1938 ICRC Commission of Experts that debated and prepared the possible options that resulted in the 1949/1977 Geneva Conventions framework. Sandoz (1995, p. 904 ff.)…”

Legal geography III

“…Margo Kleinfeld's (2015) contribution to that special issue offers a very rich analysis of the mid-20th century debates among delegates of the International Commission of Military Medicine and Pharmacy to revise the Geneva Convention by establishing 'localities and zones immune from attack' (p. 592). Much of the debates centered on whether such 'safe spaces' should be limited to hospitals or be more extensive, on how the legal distinction between 'civilians' and 'military non-combatants' affects the rules that constitute these imagined spaces, and on how the spatial scope of protection would affect the likelihood, or not, of compliance.…”