About the international humanitarian law database
The database of international humanitarian law treaties and documents has been created by the International Committee of the Red Cross. It contains about 100 IHL instruments, dating from 1856 to the present.
Treaties database: http://www.icrc.org/ihl
Treaties and documents are grouped into current and historical. We have included outdated texts such as the Geneva Convention of 1864, as these are still of interest to people studying IHL.
You can view each text in full (PDF on the right-hand column) or by article.
We have arranged the documents by topic and by date.
- Methods and means of warfare
- Naval and air warfare
- Cultural property
- Criminal repression
- Other treaties relating to IHL
Commentaries on the 1949 Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols of 1977
The ICRC has published commentaries on the 1949 Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols of 1977. The commentaries appear next to the corresponding articles.
The database also lists the States party and signatory to each treaty, along with any relevant reservations or declarations.
We also have a list of the treaties each State has ratified, and any reservations or declarations the State may have made.
We update the database regularly to reflect the latest signatures and ratifications.
There is a search option in the right-hand of the navigation bar.
Your search results will appear in chronological order by treaty. You can refine your search results by specifying a document category, such as article, commentary or notification. ("Refine by category" )
We have done all we can to replicate the official documents correctly. We make all these texts freely available; they are for information only. The official texts as lodged with their respective depositories are the sole authoritative documents.