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Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907

The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 are a series of international treaties and declarations negotiated at two international peace conferences at The Hague in the Netherlands. Along with the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions were among the first formal statements of the laws of war and war crimes in the body of secular international law. A third conference was planned for 1914 and later rescheduled for 1915, but it did not take place because of the start of World War I.[1]

History[edit]

The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 were the first multilateral treaties that addressed the conduct of warfare and were largely based on the Lieber Code, which was signed and issued by US President Abraham Lincoln to the Union Forces of the United States on 24 April 1863, during the American Civil War. The Lieber Code was the first official comprehensive codified law that set out regulations for behavior in times of martial law; protection of civilians and civilian property and punishment of transgression; deserters, prisoners of war, hostages, and pillaging; partisans; spies; truces and prisoner exchange; parole of former rebel troops; the conditions of any armistice, and respect for human life; assassination and murder of soldiers or citizens in hostile territory; and the status of individuals engaged in a state of civil war against the government.


As such, the code was widely regarded as the best summary of the first customary laws and customs of war in the 19th century. It was welcomed and adopted by military establishments of other nations. The 1874 Brussels Declaration, which was never adopted by all major nations, listed 56 articles that drew inspiration from the Lieber Code.[2] Much of the regulations in the Hague Conventions borrowed heavily from the Lieber Code.[3][4][5][6][7]

Subject matter[edit]

Both conferences included negotiations concerning disarmament, the laws of war and war crimes. A major effort in both conferences was the creation of a binding international court for compulsory arbitration to settle international disputes, which was considered necessary to replace the institution of war.


This effort failed at both conferences. Instead, a voluntary forum for arbitration, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, was established. Most of the countries present, including the United States, Great Britain, Russia, France, China and Persia, favoured a process for binding international arbitration, but the provision was vetoed by a few countries, led by Germany.

: Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes[9]

(I)

The First Hague Conference came from a proposal on 24 August 1898 by Russian Tsar Nicholas II.[8] Nicholas and Count Mikhail Nikolayevich Muravyov, his foreign minister, were instrumental in initiating the conference. The conference opened on 18 May 1899, the Tsar's birthday. The treaties, declarations, and final act of the conference were signed on 29 July of that year, and they entered into force on 4 September 1900. What is referred to as the Hague Convention of 1899 consisted of three main treaties and three additional declarations:


This convention included the creation of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, which exists to this day. The section was ratified by all major powers and many smaller powers – 26 signatories in all, including Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Bulgaria, China, Denmark, Germany, France, Greece, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, Montenegro, the Netherlands, the Ottoman Empire, Persia, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Siam, Spain, Sweden and Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.[10]


This voluminous convention contains the laws to be used in all wars on land between signatories. It specifies the treatment of prisoners of war, includes the provisions of the Geneva Convention of 1864 for the treatment of the wounded, and forbids the use of poisons, the killing of enemy combatants who have surrendered, looting of a town or place, and the attack or bombardment of undefended towns or habitations. Inhabitants of occupied territories may not be forced into military service against their own country and collective punishment is forbidden. The section was signed by all major powers listed above except China.[11]


This convention provides for the protection of marked hospital ships and requires them to treat the wounded and shipwrecked sailors of all belligerent parties. It too was ratified by all major powers.[12]


This declaration provides that, for a period of five years, in any war between signatory powers, no projectiles or explosives would be launched from balloons, "or by other new methods of a similar nature". The declaration was ratified by all the major powers mentioned above, except the United Kingdom and the United States.[13]


This declaration states that, in any war between signatory powers, the parties will abstain from using projectiles "the sole object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases". Ratified by all major powers, except the United States.[14]


This declaration states that, in any war between signatory powers, the parties will abstain from using "bullets which expand or flatten easily in the human body". This directly banned soft-point bullets (which had a partial metal jacket and an exposed tip) and "cross-tipped" bullets (which had a cross-shaped incision in their tip to aid in expansion, nicknamed "dum dums" from the Dum Dum Arsenal in India). It was ratified by all major powers, except the United States.[15]

(I): Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes[21]
This convention confirms and expands on Convention (I) of 1899. As of February 2017, this convention is in force for 102 states,[22] and 116 states have ratified one or both of the 1907 Convention (I) and the 1899 Convention (I), which together are the founding documents of the Permanent Court of Arbitration.[23]

[20]

(II): Convention respecting the Limitation of the Employment of Force for Recovery of Contract Debts[25]

[24]

(III): Convention relative to the Opening of Hostilities[27]
This convention sets out the accepted procedure for a state making a declaration of war. It provides the basis on which, in international law, war reparations may be demanded.[28]

[26]

List of parties to the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907

American Peace Society

Antimilitarism

Command responsibility

Hague Secret Emissary Affair

Martens Clause

Militarism

Rule of Law in Armed Conflicts Project

(Declaration Renouncing the Use, in Time of War, of Explosive Projectiles Under 400 Grammes Weight)

Saint Petersburg Declaration of 1868

World Federation

Baker, Betsy. "Hague Peace Conferences (1899 and 1907)." The Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, 4.2 (2009): 689–698.

online

Barcroft, Stephen. "The Hague Peace Conference of 1899". Irish Studies in International Affairs 1989, Vol. 3 Issue 1, pp 55–68.

online

Best, Geoffrey. "Peace conferences and the century of total war: the 1899 Hague Conference and what came after." International Affairs 75.3 (1999): 619–634.

online

Bettez, David J. "Unfulfilled Initiative: Disarmament Negotiations and the Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907". RUSI Journal: Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies, (1988) 133#3 pp 57–62.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03071848808445312

Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs (official depositary)

Hague Peace Conventions 1899

Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs (official depositary)

Hague Peace Conventions 1907