We had a very stimulating but also I think disturbing afternoon. We were talking about people who have been tortured, we were talking about hundreds of thousands of prisoners in the world, about people the ICRC knows about and about the many others whom they don't. We were looking at our world in which some states think the rules of war are outmoded, as do certain self-appointed liberation movements who think that right is on their side. But I think nothing should detract us from the point which was clearly made today, that is we are talking about people who are in captivity, people who are in fear, people whose families are in fear, people who suffer from bad health from months and years living in confined circumstances. That puts an urgency on the issues discussed this afternoon.
Yet many states in the world and others who play a political role in the world come out with bogus arguments as to why these laws are outmoded or no longer necessary. They make fun of the provisions on tobacco in the Geneva Conventions of 1949. It is as if when people are tortured they do not feel pain, as if when people are killed they are not dead, as if captivity is not a threat to human integrity.
What we have heard today contains very important lessons. They are simple lessons but they are absolutely fundamental. Number one concerns the alternative to the laws of war and to the co-operation through international criminal law, that converts international humanitarian law into international practice. The alternative is barbarism. It is the law of the jungle that we see so much of in the world today. This is too easily forgotten in modish talk about the inadequacy of human rights and humanitarian law conventions.
If our age is an age of terror, a terror measured either in terms of victims or in terms of the numbers of those who intend to perpetrate acts of terror, one must remember that it has been an age of terror for some time already. And it will continue to be so. Which is why law matters. As we heard today, there is a body, a substantial body of law, of practises, of Conventions, of norms and of expertise. In addition there is the raw human commitment of the ICRC and Human Rights colleagues who spend months on end in dreadful and dangerous situations in Tadjikistan, in Nagarno Karabakh, in Bosnia, in Kosovo, in Burundi, in Colombia. All this, the laws and the committed people are absolutely essential to offsetting some of this terror.
I want to mention three issues which I think are particularly relevant. There is the issue of treaties being outdated or outmoded. It is perfectly proper to say of any law or any treaty it was produced at a particular time. That norms change, technologies change, politics change. But often when this question of "outdatedness" is raised, it is not raised in a positive, creative way. It is raised generally by people who really want to kill the treaty. All treaties can quite properly be looked at again. The UN charter can be looked at again, the US Constitution can be looked at again, the British Unwritten Constitution can be looked at again. But the spirit and the issues that are raised in regard to these so called outdated treaties need to be looked at very carefully. We must preserve the spirit with which they were conceived.

Secondly we have heard much about the role of the non-State actors. We will not be able to take part in the discussion if we don't get in there and try to address some of the issues involved in this. Non-state actors have a right to revolt, under certain conditions. Like states they are bounded by two sets of principles, involving the general right to use violence, and the means employed. This distinction is found in all cultures and in all religions and legal systems. They distinguish between the authority to go to war, who is entitled to use violence, and the forms of violence used or means of violence. That distinction is logical and helpful. And we have to ask the non-States actors by what right they attack States, by what right they attack civilians, who gave them the authority. Most of us have rough and ready criteria. Most people would accept that the ANC had the authority to fight the South-African government. Whether we would accept the right of self-appointed liberation movement in places such as Corsica, the Basque country and Northern Ireland to do so is quite another matter. This of course also applies to organisations that thrive in the Muslim world.

The issue of just authority and just means is too easily confused. If you want to discredit an authority or a group in the public mind, you simply say that these people commit crimes. Likewise, if you want to defend your right to do whatever you are doing, whether you want liberation for the Palestinians or to keep the occupation of the West Bank for Israelis you have to deny that you ever committed a violation. Right outside this LSE building stands the statue of a controversial figure, Air Marshall Harris, the man who ordered the bombing of Dresden in February 1945 in which 200,000civilians were killed in one night. His supporters and those who erected the statue will say he is not a war criminal. And they will say that above all because they don't want to detract from the overall cause of fighting the war: no distinction between just cause and unjust means is permitted. So the whole issue of the right of people to protection in war is mixed up with a very confused public debate on the right to go to war itself, by states and their opponents.
This brings me back by way of conclusion to what we have called here for want of a better term "politics". It is absolutely right to say that the prime responsibility for the upholding of International Humanitarian Law belongs to the States. But when their own States aren't going to do the job, and when non-state groups are also violating the rulers of war, that's why we need the ICRC, that's why we need the Human Rights Groups. That's why we need to engage with the press since much of the confusion that we have seen on these issues, notably the sensationalism of issues, the confusion of the right to go to war with the issue of means, is the responsibility of the media as well as of politicians. It is the role of the press to sustain an informative discussion of these things and to highlight the abuses that occur. But it is also the role of human rights centers in universities. Our job is precisely to have meetings of this kind. If we haven't got an understanding of the ethics of terrorism, or a definition of terrorism, it is our job to debate that issue. If we haven't got an understanding of what covers the detention of non-state combatants in Afghanistan, let's have this discussion here. We in universities can also play a role in quiet diplomacy. That sort of politics has got to go from the international organizations and the States down to the grass roots, down to all of us. We must leave here with a sense of commitment but also with a feeling of rage at the violations of these laws and the need to do something about it. 

LSE Debate May 16, 2002: The Law of War in the Age of Terror   http://www.icrc.org/Web/eng