Government The Geneva Conventions. v1, 30 June 2008

[TedPark]

The full title and content is "The Geneva Conventions and Related Conventions and Agreements". This is the complete set of documents that are the core of International Law in regards War and associated Humanitarian issues. [Sometimes this whole collection is erroneously called "The Geneva Convention".]

Everybody needs to read these. Almost everyone thinks they know what is in here (i.e. they are pretty much harmless ideas where we recognize our evolved state, and general cultural sophistication, and agree to not act like barbarians), but they would be largely wrong. This body of work is the most incredible hodge podge of rules and agreements that ranges from the brilliant, to the ludicrous, and the best intentions gone awry, and odd anachronisms. Some of my "favorites" include: special treatment given to religious personnel, not anticipating that such people may actually be the leaders of the beligerents; the related failure to account for the fact that civilians may actually be combatants; it's allowance for killing people but not making them work for free, or too hard, or for too long; outlawing Ruse de Guerre, yet providing many more useful tools for same; agreement to use less effective bullets; the definition of mercenaries as essentially subhuman in regards humanitarian considerations; and preferential POW treatment for officers vs. the rank and file soldiers. And of course, the most obvious unindented consequence - seeming to turn the traditional mayhem of international strife into a structured game, complete with rule book, definitions of "sportsmanship", scoring, referees, and penalties. Finally, it is interesting to read in-order from beginning to end. It is hard to avoid the impression that a few good men trying to do good work evolved into a lot of bureaucrats trying to preserve or expand their power and scope of control. Particularly fascinating is the evolutioin of POW rules from not much more than "treat them humanely" to specifying a lot of details, such as what can and cannot be sold in the canteen.

Included in this document are:

1864
Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded on the Field of Battle

1899 Hague Peace Conference
Hague I - Pacific Settlement of International Disputes
Hague II - Laws and Customs of War on Land
Hague III - Adaptation to Maritime Warfare
Decl I - Launching of Projectiles and Explosives from Balloons
Decl II - Projectiles Diffusing of Deleterious Gases
Decl III - Bullets Which Expand or Flatten Easily

1907 Hague Peace Conference
Hague I - Pacific Settlement of International Disputes
Hague II - Limitation of Force for Recovery of Debts
Hague III - Opening of Hostilities
Hague IV - Laws and Customs of War on Land
Hague V - Rights/Duties of Neutral Powers in Land War
Hague VI - Status of Enemy Merchant Ships
Hague VII - Conversion of Merchant Ships into War Ships
Hague VIII - Laying of Automatic Submarine Contact Mines
Hague IX - Bombardment by Naval Forces in Time of War
Hague X - Adaptation to Maritime War of the Principles
Hague XI - Restrictions of the Right of Capture in Naval War
Hague XII - The Creation of an International Prize Court
Hague XIII - Rights/Duties of Neutral Powers in Naval War

1925 Geneva Convention
Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating Gas, and for Bacteriological Methods of Warfare

1929 Geneva Convention
Convention Between the United States of America and Other Powers, Relating to Prisoners of War

1949 Geneva Convention
Conv I - Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field
Conv II - Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded, Sick and Shipwrecked Members of Armed Forces at Sea
Conv III - The Treatment of Prisoners of War
Conv IV - The Protection of Civilian Persons
Protocol I - The Protection of Victims of International Conflicts
Annex I to Protocol I - Regulations concerning identification
Annex II to Protocol I - Identity Card for Journalists
Protocol II - Protection of Victims of Non-International Conflicts
Protocol III - Adoption of an Additional Distinctive Emblem

On another front entirely, I also did this as a test of the tools currently availabe to eBook creators. Rather than a novel with lots of standard paragraphs with an occaisional chapter break, this is a highly structured document in which it is as important to capture the hierarchy as the numerous small paragraphs. It also requires a multi-level TOC in order to be useful. What I found is that no tool known to me was very helpful. In fact, they generally turned out to be more of a burden than a help. In the end, this document was created by gathering dozens of separate text files from various online resources, pasting them into MS-WORD, a lot of hand manipulation and editing with Office Automation tools (including hand-marking the several levels of "chapters"), conversion to HTML, and a thorough hand-scrubbing of the HTML to remove all fluff and left-over artifacts. The final step was using Calibre html2lrf converter. Hopefully this will be an inspirational lesson to our tool builders.

And, finally, per my usual practice, I am providing a tested LRF file and a clean, de-fluffed, W3C validated HTML file to assist with creating other formats.

Statistics on this eBook include:

~ 150,000 words
~ 6,000 paragraphs
~ 550 pages as viewed via MS-Word or MS-IE.
~ 1,000 pages on the Sony Reader (small font)

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