Armed conflicts and international humanitarian law: hopes have not yet been justified

Since the 19th century, the human community, frightened by the terrible negative consequences of armed conflicts of various scales (the maximum scale is wars), has been concerned about the need to take measures to contain such conflicts, reduce casualties, protect civilians who find themselves in the war zone, mitigate the fate of prisoners of war, etc. Thus began the development of international humanitarian law as a component of general international law. Various declarations, treaties, conventions began to appear, among which the most important are the Hague and Geneva Conventions adopted at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, and there were no countries that refused to sign such acts. However, this did not prevent the outbreak of the First World War, after which international humanitarian law received a strong impetus in its development, including the international condemnation of Germany as the initiator of military actions. But the adopted acts again did not become an obstacle to the outbreak of the Second World War, after which very serious acts of international humanitarian law were adopted, including the Geneva Conventions of 1949. Several decades have passed since then, there are no new world wars, and it would seem that humanity has found the necessary means to prevent them. However, smaller-scale armed conflicts continue, and the emergence of nuclear weapons poses new challenges to humanity, and here the role of international humanitarian law raises questions, in particular, that international legal regulation of the rules of conduct of hostilities during armed conflicts is not enough. The article examines the features of these processes, substantiates proposals on the need for additional measures to effectively prevent armed conflicts.