INTERNATIONAL LAW OF WAR OR HUMANITARIAN LAW

Abstract

In the paper works of many authors dealing with the rules which regulate the relationships between the confronted sides in armed conflicts, there are often used the following names referring to these rules: international war law and international humanitarian law, not rarely there is used the name of international war and humanitarian law, and, recently, there has been used the name of international humanitarian law of armed conflicts. Certain authors divide these rules into two groups according to the time of their beginnings, so they call them “the Hague law” and “the Geneva law”. The Hague law refers to the rules of organizing military actions (the warring rules), and the Geneva law refers to the rules of protecting the endangered categories of individuals in armed conflicts. Since this division concerning the names is getting less and less significant both in practical and theoretical sense, the author has tried to represent the developing way of the names of this branch of international public law as well as to point at those basic changes thi branch of law has been endured going over the way from warring to humanitarian rules.