Technology and the ICRC’s GC IV 2025 Commentary

https://www.justsecurity.org/132950/technology-icrc-gc-iv-2025-commentary/

Publish Date: 2026-03-09 09:16:00

Sixty-seven years after the ICRC published the so-called “Pictet Commentary” to the 1949 Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilians in Time of War (GC IV), it has completed an updated version that considers, inter alia, State practice, opinio juris, judicial decisions, and scholarly commentary relevant to the evolution of warfare since 1958. That evolution has been driven in great part by technological advances, both in how wars are fought and in their impact on the civilian population. Indeed, the internet, cyber operations, digital data, space operations, autonomous systems, biometrics, artificial intelligence, and countless other technologies were largely inconceivable when the Pictet Commentary was produced.

Developed over five years under the leadership of Jean-Marie Henckaerts, the resulting 2025 Commentary addresses technology not through a single dedicated section but by integrating discussion into the commentary on specific rules. Doing so is consistent with the principle that new technologies are subject to existing law of armed conflict rules. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) confirmed this principle in its Nuclear Weapons advisory opinion, where it observed that to hold otherwise would “be incompatible with the intrinsically humanitarian character of the legal principles in question which permeates the entire law of armed conflict and applies to all forms of warfare and to all kinds of weapons, those of the past, those of the present and those of the future” (¶ 86; see also, e.g., DoD Law of War Manual, § 16.2 on cyber).

But, of course, the very novelty of new technologies sometimes precludes hand-in-glove application of extant rules. This necessitates interpreting the rules in the changed context in which they are to be applied. As Henckaerts has observed, doing so requires States, acting in good faith, to “adapt their interpretations to ensure that the rationale behind the protections remains in place” (see also…

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