Red Cross President Mirjana Spoljaric has issued a direct and urgent call for all countries involved in armed conflicts to respect international humanitarian law, commonly known as the rules of war. Her statement, delivered in early 2026 amid escalating global conflicts in Ukraine, Sudan, Gaza, and Myanmar, comes at a moment when civilian casualties have reached levels not seen in decades and when political leaders — including those in the United States — are openly questioning the relevance of international institutions designed to protect human life during wartime. The plea is not abstract: it is a response to documented violations including attacks on hospitals, obstruction of humanitarian aid convoys, and the use of starvation as a weapon of war. This call carries particular weight in the current political climate.
The Trump administration has signaled skepticism toward multilateral agreements and international oversight bodies, pulling back from commitments that previous administrations maintained. The Geneva Conventions, ratified by 196 countries including the United States, are not optional guidelines — they are binding treaty obligations. Yet enforcement remains the persistent weak spot, and Spoljaric’s statement is as much an indictment of that enforcement gap as it is a reminder of the rules themselves. This article examines what the Red Cross president’s call actually means, what the rules of war require, where violations are happening, and what accountability mechanisms exist or fail to exist.
Table of Contents
- What Are the Rules of War the Red Cross President Wants Countries to Respect?
- Where Are the Rules of War Being Violated Right Now?
- How Does the Trump Administration’s Foreign Policy Affect Compliance With International Humanitarian Law?
- What Accountability Mechanisms Exist for War Crimes and Do They Work?
- Why Humanitarian Aid Access Has Become a Battleground
- The Role of Technology and Social Media in Documenting Violations
- What Comes Next for International Humanitarian Law?
- Conclusion
- Frequently Asked Questions
What Are the Rules of War the Red Cross President Wants Countries to Respect?
The “rules of war” refer primarily to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols, which together form the backbone of international humanitarian law. These rules establish baseline protections for people who are not participating in hostilities — civilians, medical personnel, aid workers, and prisoners of war. They prohibit targeting civilian infrastructure, mandate humane treatment of detainees, require parties to allow humanitarian access, and ban weapons that cause unnecessary suffering. Every recognized nation on earth has ratified the Geneva Conventions, making them among the most universally accepted legal instruments in history. The International Committee of the Red Cross serves as the custodian of these conventions. Unlike the United Nations, the ICRC is not a governmental body — it is a private organization granted a unique mandate under international law to visit prisoners, facilitate humanitarian aid, and remind warring parties of their obligations. When the Red Cross president speaks on these issues, it is not a political opinion but a formal exercise of that mandate.
Spoljaric specifically referenced the principle of distinction, which requires combatants to differentiate between military targets and civilian objects at all times. In the current conflict in Gaza, for instance, the destruction of entire residential neighborhoods and hospitals has raised serious questions about whether this principle is being observed by any party. The rules also include obligations that many people overlook. Parties to a conflict must allow the rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief. They must take constant care to spare civilians during military operations. They must investigate credible allegations of violations committed by their own forces. These are not aspirational goals — they are legal requirements, and violating them constitutes a war crime under the Rome Statute and customary international law.
Where Are the Rules of War Being Violated Right Now?
The list of active conflicts where documented violations are occurring is long and growing. In Ukraine, both Russian forces and, to a lesser extent, Ukrainian forces have been accused of violations. Russian attacks on civilian energy infrastructure during winter months have been described by legal scholars as using cold weather as a weapon against the civilian population. The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has documented summary executions of prisoners of war, forced deportations of children, and systematic attacks on clearly marked medical facilities. In Sudan, the civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces has produced what the UN has called one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.
Both sides have blockaded aid deliveries to starving populations, attacked displacement camps, and engaged in ethnically targeted violence in Darfur that echoes the genocide of the early 2000s. However, if observers expect the international community to respond with the same urgency it showed in other crises, they will be disappointed — Sudan has received a fraction of the diplomatic attention and humanitarian funding directed at conflicts in Europe or the middle East. The situation in Myanmar has deteriorated further since the 2021 military coup, with the junta conducting airstrikes on villages and burning entire communities. In Gaza, the scale of civilian infrastructure destruction has surpassed anything seen in recent decades, with hospitals, schools designated as shelters, and water treatment facilities damaged or destroyed. The common thread across all these conflicts is that the rules designed to limit suffering are being treated as inconveniences rather than obligations.
How Does the Trump Administration’s Foreign Policy Affect Compliance With International Humanitarian Law?
The trump administration’s approach to international institutions has direct consequences for the enforcement of humanitarian law. The administration has reduced funding to the United Nations and signaled hostility toward the International Criminal Court, which serves as the primary mechanism for prosecuting war crimes when national courts fail to act. By withdrawing political support from these institutions, the United States — historically the most influential advocate for a rules-based international order — has created a permissive environment for violators. This is not merely theoretical. When the ICC issued arrest warrants related to the conflict in Gaza, the Trump administration threatened sanctions against ICC personnel rather than engaging with the legal process. This follows a pattern from Trump’s first term, when the administration sanctioned ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda for investigating allegations of war crimes by American forces in Afghanistan.
The message sent to other governments is clear: international accountability mechanisms will not be supported and may be actively punished. U.S. arms transfers also implicate humanitarian law obligations. Under the Leahy Law, the United States is prohibited from providing military assistance to foreign security forces that commit gross violations of human rights. Enforcement of this law has been inconsistent across administrations, but the current approach has drawn particular scrutiny. Several members of Congress have raised concerns that weapons transfers to certain partners are proceeding without adequate vetting for compliance with humanitarian law, effectively making the United States complicit in violations.
What Accountability Mechanisms Exist for War Crimes and Do They Work?
Accountability for violations of the rules of war operates at multiple levels, each with significant limitations. The International Criminal Court can prosecute individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, but it has no police force and depends entirely on state cooperation to arrest suspects. Its track record is mixed — it has secured convictions against militia leaders and warlords, primarily from African countries, but has struggled to hold powerful state actors accountable. Russia’s Vladimir Putin has an outstanding ICC arrest warrant but has traveled to several countries without being detained. National courts offer another avenue. Under the principle of universal jurisdiction, some countries allow their courts to prosecute war crimes regardless of where they occurred.
Germany has been a leader in this area, convicting former Syrian intelligence officers for torture and a former member of the Rwandan genocide’s leadership. However, universal jurisdiction cases are resource-intensive, require witnesses willing to testify, and depend on suspects being present in or extraditable to the prosecuting country. The tradeoff between justice and peace is real and frequently exploited. Some argue that the threat of prosecution discourages combatants from negotiating an end to conflicts — why surrender if you face a prison cell? Others counter that impunity guarantees future violations. The Red Cross itself does not take a position on criminal accountability, focusing instead on persuading parties to comply with the law in real time. But Spoljaric’s statement implicitly acknowledges that persuasion alone is failing.
Why Humanitarian Aid Access Has Become a Battleground
One of the most alarming trends in modern conflicts is the deliberate obstruction of humanitarian aid, which violates multiple provisions of the Geneva Conventions. In Sudan, aid convoys have been looted, diverted, or simply blocked at checkpoints controlled by both warring parties. In Gaza, the flow of food, water, and medical supplies has been restricted to levels that international organizations describe as catastrophic. The weaponization of aid — using access to food and medicine as leverage — is one of the oldest violations of the rules of war, and it is experiencing a resurgence. The Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations face an additional challenge: their own safety. Attacks on aid workers reached record levels in 2024 and have continued into 2026.
The deconfliction mechanisms that are supposed to protect humanitarian operations — where organizations share their coordinates with warring parties to avoid being targeted — have repeatedly failed. In several documented cases, facilities whose coordinates were shared were subsequently struck. This has created a crisis of trust that makes humanitarian operations more dangerous and less effective. There is a critical limitation the public often misunderstands: the Red Cross operates on the principle of neutrality and confidentiality. It does not publicly name and shame violators because doing so would jeopardize its access to conflict zones and its ability to visit prisoners. This approach frustrates advocates who want the ICRC to be more vocal, but the organization argues that quiet diplomacy saves more lives than public denunciations. Spoljaric’s public statement is therefore notable precisely because it departs from the ICRC’s usual discretion, signaling that the situation has become dire enough to warrant breaking from convention.
The Role of Technology and Social Media in Documenting Violations
Open-source intelligence and social media documentation have transformed how violations of the rules of war are identified and recorded. Organizations like Bellingcat and the Syrian Archive have used satellite imagery, geolocated videos, and metadata analysis to build evidence of attacks on civilian infrastructure that would previously have gone unrecorded. This digital evidence has been admitted in court proceedings, including at the ICC and in German universal jurisdiction cases.
However, this same technology creates new challenges. Deepfakes and AI-generated content can be used to fabricate evidence of violations or to cast doubt on genuine documentation. The sheer volume of content from conflict zones makes verification difficult, and platforms frequently remove graphic content under their terms of service, inadvertently destroying potential evidence. The Red Cross has called for better preservation of digital evidence and for international standards on its admissibility, recognizing that accountability in the modern era depends on the integrity of the digital record.
What Comes Next for International Humanitarian Law?
The Red Cross president’s call is unlikely to produce immediate results, but it serves an important function: maintaining the normative framework that makes accountability possible in the long term. History shows that even when the rules of war are widely violated during a conflict, the legal infrastructure built around those rules enables post-conflict justice. The Nuremberg Trials, the Yugoslavia and Rwanda tribunals, and ongoing ICC proceedings all demonstrate that violations, once documented, can eventually be prosecuted — sometimes decades later.
The more pressing question is whether the current erosion of international norms represents a temporary cycle or a structural shift. If major powers like the United States, Russia, and China continue to reject or undermine international accountability mechanisms, the rules of war risk becoming purely aspirational. Spoljaric’s statement is a bet that norms still matter, that reminding the world of its legal obligations has value even when compliance is low. Whether that bet pays off depends less on the Red Cross and more on whether citizens and governments in democratic countries demand that their leaders take these obligations seriously.
Conclusion
The Red Cross president’s call for all countries to respect the rules of war is both a legal reminder and a moral indictment. The Geneva Conventions are not suggestions — they are binding obligations that every nation has agreed to uphold. Yet in conflicts from Ukraine to Sudan to Gaza to Myanmar, these rules are being violated on a scale that has overwhelmed the capacity of humanitarian organizations and accountability mechanisms to respond. The Trump administration’s skepticism toward international institutions has compounded the problem by signaling that the world’s most powerful country is disengaged from enforcement. For American citizens concerned about government accountability, this issue is not distant or abstract. U.S.
tax dollars fund weapons transfers that may be used in violation of humanitarian law. U.S. diplomatic decisions shape whether accountability mechanisms function or wither. Understanding the rules of war and demanding compliance is not a matter of foreign policy idealism — it is a basic expectation of a government that claims to act in its citizens’ names. The Red Cross has issued its call. The question is who will answer it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the Geneva Conventions?
The Geneva Conventions are four international treaties adopted in 1949 that establish legal standards for the humanitarian treatment of people during war. They protect wounded soldiers, prisoners of war, and civilians, and have been ratified by every recognized nation. Their Additional Protocols, adopted in 1977 and 2005, expand these protections.
Can the Red Cross enforce the rules of war?
No. The International Committee of the Red Cross has no enforcement power. Its role is to monitor compliance, visit detainees, facilitate humanitarian aid, and remind parties of their obligations through confidential dialogue. Enforcement depends on national courts, the International Criminal Court, and political will from governments.
Has the United States ever been accused of violating the rules of war?
Yes. Allegations have included the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, drone strikes that killed civilians, and the use of depleted uranium munitions. Some of these have been investigated domestically, though critics argue that accountability has been insufficient.
What happens if a country violates the Geneva Conventions?
Violations can be prosecuted as war crimes by national courts, the ICC, or tribunals established by the UN Security Council. In practice, prosecution depends on political dynamics and the willingness of states to cooperate with international courts. Many violations go unpunished for years or decades.
Does the United States support the International Criminal Court?
The United States signed but never ratified the Rome Statute that established the ICC. The Trump administration has been openly hostile to the court, including threatening sanctions against its personnel. This limits the ICC’s ability to operate in conflicts involving U.S. allies or interests.