International humanitarian law applicable in armed conflict has been codified in two parallel streams known, somewhat confusingly, as the law of Geneva and the law of the Hague. The law of Geneva was designed to ensure respect, protection, and humane treatment of those who are taking no direct part in the fighting (wounded, sick, or shipwrecked combatants, medical services, military chaplains, prisoners of war, and civilians) while the law of the Hague laid down the rights and duties of belligerents, including prohibitions and restrictions governing the conduct of military operations. Part of the confusion to which I refer arises from the fact that the law of the Hague includes instruments identified with other cities (the St Petersburg Declaration of 1868, the Geneva Protocol of 1925 on chemical and bacteriological (biological) weapons (CBW), and the 1981 Geneva Convention and Protocols on indiscriminate or excessively cruel weapons). The [Hague] Conference is unanimous in thinking that it is extremely desirable that the usages of war should be defined and regulated. In this spirit it has adopted a great number of provisions which have for their object the determination of the rights and of the duties of belligerents and of populations, and for their end the reduction and softening of the evils of war, so far as military necessities permit. It has not always been possible to come to an agreement that henceforth all these stipulations should apply to all practical cases. On the other hand, it could not possibly be the intention of the Conference that unforeseen cases should, in the absence of written stipulations, be left to the arbitrary decision of those who commanded the army. In awaiting the time when a complete code of the laws of war may be elaborated and proclaimed, the Conference considers it opportune to state that in cases not provided for in the Articles of this date, populations and belligerents remain under the safeguards and government of the principles of international law, resulting from the customs established between civilized nations, the laws of humanity, and the demands of public conscience … —Statement submitted by Fedor Fedorovich Martens, the Russian legal expert, to the Hague Conference on 20 June 1899 which, with stylistic amendments, was incorporated in the preamble to the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 on the laws and customs of war on land, the last sentence of which was also incorporated in the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, the two Geneva Protocols of 1977, and the Convention on indiscriminate or excessively injurious weapons of 1981.