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The year 1977 may be considered a turning point for the dissemination of knowledge of international humanitarian law and the Principles and the ideals of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. If we briefly review events of that year, we see that from 21 to 30 March 1977 the first European Red Cross Seminar on the Dissemination of the Geneva Conventions, organized by the Polish Red Cross and the ICRC, was held in Warsaw. Representatives of European and North American National Societies and of the ICRC and the League attended the seminar which adopted the following principles:«Although dissemination of knowledge of international humanitarian law is a responsibility of governments, it should be a direct concern of the Red Cross in general and particularly of each National Society in its own country.

The Review Conference of the 1980 United Nations Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons which May be Deemed to be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects will be held in Vienna from 25 September to 13 October 1995.This Conference offers a unique opportunity for a thorough analysis of the problems caused by the use of certain weapons, with landmines heading the list. It should also specify measures to be taken to prevent the manufacture and use of new weapons from creating serious problems in future.

In its November-December 1989 issue the International Review of the Red Cross inaugurated a series of articles on the Fundamental Principles of the Movement. By inviting eminent theoreticians and active members of the National Societies and the League to give their views, and by publishing planned ICRC studies on the subject, the Review intends to contribute to the broad reflection which the Movement has been carrying out for the past three years and to the collection of treatises and case studies on various means of implementing the Principles.

It is true that the Twenty-fifth International Conference of the Red Cross (October 1986), the work of which was extensively reported by the International Review of the Red Cross in its special November-December 1986 issue, was marked by the suspension of the South African government delegation.

In its recent issues the International Review of the Red Cross announced the publication of a work entitled Le Comité international de la Croix-Rouge et la protection des victimes de la guerre by François Bugnion, Deputy Director of the ICRC Department of Principles, Law and Relations with the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.The book has already become the reference work par excellence on the International Committee of the Red Cross in that it analyses, in a combined historical and legal approach, the process whereby the international community came to entrust the Committee with tasks and areas of competence relating to the protection of war victims. It also highlights the interaction between the development of ICRC practice and that of international humanitarian law.