In the evening of November 19th, Mr. Guo Yang, Legal Officer of the International Committee of the International Committee of the Red Cross, gave a lecture entitled “The Status and Challenges of International Humanitarian Law” at Law School 323. Mr. Guo Yang first introduced to the students the matters concerning the institutional setup, work areas and external cooperation of the representative office, so that everyone had a preliminary understanding of the nature of the work of the representative office. Then the lecture was divided into two parts. The first part is about the basics of the origin, development and basic principles of international humanitarian law. First of all, Professor Guo Yang has identified two basic concepts, namely the War Law and International Humanitarian Law. He gave the ICRC's definition of “international humanitarian law”, which was established by treaties or customs to address humanitarian issues directly caused by international or non-international armed conflicts and is humane. The reason is to limit the means and methods of the parties to the conflict and to protect the international rules of persons and property that are affected by armed conflict or that may be affected by armed conflict. This definition implies the Hague system and the Geneva system, which can be said to have universal significance.

Secondly, it briefly introduced the legal sources of international humanitarian law, including customary laws and treaties, and focused on the 1925 Geneva Gas Protocol, the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions, the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the 1977 Geneva Convention Additional Protocols and 1998. The main international humanitarian law documents such as the Statute of the International Criminal Court have been clearly and thoroughly explained. It is also interesting to call the Geneva Conventions the first spring of international humanitarian law, and the Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions is the second spring. Thirdly, it detailed the three major systems of international humanitarian law, namely the characteristics of the Hague System, the Geneva System and the New York System, the main legal documents and the basic principles established, and the confluence of the three major systems in 1977 and beyond. Development has been further elaborated.

Finally, a brief overview of the basic principles, implementation and sanctions of international humanitarian law was provided. It was worth noting that Mr. Guo Yang has repeatedly emphasized that international humanitarian law seeked a balance between military necessity and humanitarian considerations through the principle of appropriateness. The second part of the lecture was devoted to international humanitarian law and terrorism or terrorist acts. Terrorism is often controversial as a very sensitive political topic today. In this section, Mr. Guo Yang made a profound analysis of the history of terrorism and clearly defined how to define terrorism, the regulation of terrorism by international humanitarian law, and the provisions of terrorism in international and internal armed conflicts. And he stressed that terrorist acts could not be used as a means of warfare. After Mr. Guo Yang’s speech, the students enthusiastically asked questions, and Mr. Guo gave detailed answers to the questions of the students.

In particular, the concepts that are vaguely vague, such as the relationship between non-international armed conflicts and internal armed conflicts, the relationship between the Red Cross and Red Crescent, the legal status and authority of the ICRC, have been satisfactorily answered. Finally, Associate Professor Huang Zhixiong of the Institute of International Law, as the lecture host, summarized and analyzed the main contents of this lecture, and took the opportunity to introduce the attitude and methods of Guo Yang’s learning. Guo Yang also did not hesitate to contact us. He shared his valuable experience and presented us with very pertinent comments and suggestions. It can be said that this lecture not only gave us a deeper understanding of international humanitarian law, but also benefited us in how we can grasp the direction of academic research in the future.