The Conventions and Their Agreements
The Geneva Conventions are rules that apply in times of armed conflict and seek to protect people who are not or are no longer taking part in hostilities, these include the sick and wounded of armed forces on the field, wounded, sick, and shipwrecked members of armed forces at sea, prisoners of war, and civilians.The first convention dealt with the treatment of wounded and sick and occurred largely because of the motivations of Henri Dunant, after he saw and published a book about the inadequate treatment of wounded and sick men at the battlefield of Solferino. The second convention was proposed to add aid to sick, wounded, and shipwrecked members of armed forces at sea. The third convention dealt with the treatment of prisoners of war during times of conflict; the conflict in Vietnam greatly contributed to this revision of the Geneva Convention. The fourth Geneva convention dealt with the treatment of civilians and their protection during wartime.
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Famous quotes containing the words conventions and/or agreements:
“Art, it seems to me, should simplify. That, indeed, is very nearly the whole of the higher artistic process; finding what conventions of form and what detail one can do without and yet preserve the spirit of the whole—so that all that one has suppressed and cut away is there to the reader’s consciousness as much as if it were in type on the page.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“The Federal Constitution has stood the test of more than a hundred years in supplying the powers that have been needed to make the Central Government as strong as it ought to be, and with this movement toward uniform legislation and agreements between the States I do not see why the Constitution may not serve our people always.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)