International humanitarian order

The right of the crews of hospital ships to carry arms and use them, if necessary, for the maintenance of order, for their own defence or that of the sick and wounded is well-established. It has been recognized since 1907, and it has been reaffirmed by Article 35(1) Geneva Convention II (1949). According to Article 35(3) the same holds true for portable arms and ammunition taken from the wounded, sick and shipwrecked and not yet handed to the proper service . At the same time, the equipment of hospital ships with heavy arms, i.e. in excess of those permitted by Article 35(1) and (2), has been generally considered as depriving them of their special protection under international humanitarian law. 

Other scholars have written on the role of the great powers and their influence in Kosovo. Professor Christine Chinkin has argued that the Kosovo intervention shows that the West continues to script international law, even while it ignores the constitutional safeguards of the international legal order. Moreover, Professor Chinkin wrote that instances of humanitarian intervention since 1990 have all involved a use of force by the West against a non-Western... 

This chapter examines the intertwined history of the international refugee regime and the intematiDnal humanitarian order. Both are responses to the inhumane consequences of a world organized around sovereignty. The major blood-soaked events of the last century are milestones for both the First World War, Second World War, Biafra, Cambodia,... 

Edward McWhinney, The United Nations and a New World Order for a New Millenium Sef-determination, State Succession and Humanitarian Intervention (Boston Kluwer Law International, 2000). 

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