Customary international law is made up of rules that come from “a general practice accepted as law” and that exist independent of treaty law. Customary international humanitarian law (IHL) is of crucial importance in today’s armed conflicts because it fills gaps left by treaty law in both international and non-international conflicts and so strengthens the protection offered to victims.
The customary IHL Database is the updated version of the Study on customary international humanitarian law conducted by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and originally published by Cambridge University Press.
The Database is divided in two parts:
1. Rules
This part presents an analysis of existing rules of customary IHL. While comprehensive, the Study does not purport to be an exhaustive assessment of all rules in this area of law.
This part of the Study is also available in Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish.
A summary of the Study and the list of rules is available in many other languages.
2. Practice
This part contains the underlying practice for the rules analysed in Part 1. Rules. It is updated on a regular basis. The most recent update in December 2017 integrates national practice for two countries . The most recently added practice is marked in green.
Source materials are gathered by a network of ICRC delegations and Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies around the world.
They are incorporated into the Database by a joint British Red Cross-ICRC research team based at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge.
International materials updated in August 2016 were incorporated into the Database by a research team at the International Criminal and Humanitarian Law Clinic, Laval University.
