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Correction: Teaching in Britain Aug 13th 2009 From The Economist print edition In “Those who can”, published on August 1st, we said that nearly a tenth of Oxford’s class of 2009 will be participating in the Teach First programme this autumn. In fact, nearly a tenth of those who will be Teaching First this autumn are Oxford graduates. Sorry. Copyright © 2009 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved. -83-
The Geneva conventions at 60 Unleashing the laws of war Aug 13th 2009 From The Economist print edition The chasm is still too wide between noble Swiss ideas and the hard reality of locations where war is hell AP Bosnia, where treaties didn’t help WALK the calm, well-heeled streets of Geneva and there seems little to connect this metropolis in neutral Switzerland with the genocidal slaughter in Rwanda and the rape camps of Bosnia in the 1990s, or the appalling violence lately inflicted on civilians caught up in fighting in Darfur, Chad or eastern Congo. Yet decisions taken in Geneva do have an effect, both legal and humanitarian, on people in benighted places— and the world would be much happier if the effect was far greater. The city is the UN’s humanitarian hub, headquarters to both its refugee and human-rights agencies. More memorably, though, it lends its name to a clutch of conventions, adopted six decades ago this month, initially with the horrors of two world wars in mind. Those agreements still form a bedrock for the laws of war and the protection of non-combatants. Yet in a year that has already seen bitter fighting in Gaza and Sri Lanka, and a still mounting civilian toll in an eight-year-old battle against the Taliban in Afghanistan, some inevitably question whether the Geneva conventions and their later protocols are really suited to today’s conflicts. The number of wars between states, where regular, uniformed armies square off against each other, has fallen sharply. This century it has mostly been conflicts within countries that have claimed headlines, with insurgents and rebels, sometimes with foreign backing, battling each other as well as their own government. Do the old rules really apply in such conflicts? And if they still do, how can they be enforced more effectively, since all the evidence suggests they are not only not honoured but dishonoured in the breach? Can they be stretched to cover new threats, such as international terrorism and piracy? To the chagrin of those who would banish war itself, neither the four Geneva conventions of 1949— covering the treatment of the wounded on land and at sea, of prisoners-of-war and of civilians caught up in conflict—nor the couple of extra protocols added in 1977, spelling out in more detail the protection afforded to civilians, seek to outlaw conflict (see table below). Nor do they presume (although they do more for the innocent than the earlier Hague conventions, which concentrated chiefly on outlawing some weapons of warfare) that civilians in a war zone always can be or even should be spared. -84-
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Politics this week Aug 13th 2009 Fr
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Business this week Aug 13th 2009 Fr
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KAL's cartoon Aug 13th 2009 From Th
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Asia’s rebound has several causes
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democratic region. But Brazil’s l
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World trade and commercial aircraft
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Galileo, four centuries on As impor
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Correction: America's sex laws Aug
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SIR - You mentioned the slaughter d
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Professor of the history of art Sch
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Their arrival coincides with, and i
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and integrated well.) Peru has beco
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Clean energy in the Midwest Greenin
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The economics of natural gas Drowni
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meetings on health reform planned f
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Drought in Texas Not a cloud Aug 13
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Page 38 and 39: twice the national average. But it
Page 40 and 41: international institutions and the
Page 42 and 43: Energy v environment in Canada Bomb
Page 44 and 45: further sanctions. Yet it is doubtf
Page 46 and 47: egistered voters are frauds. Yet Mr
Page 48 and 49: Australia's opposition His own wors
Page 50 and 51: Taiwan's typhoon Taiwan's disastrou
Page 52 and 53: Banyan The Burmese road to ruin Aug
Page 54 and 55: Fatah and the Palestinians Fresh fa
Page 56 and 57: Iran and human rights The crackdown
Page 58 and 59: Security in Iraq A return to the ba
Page 60 and 61: Ethiopia's resilient prime minister
Page 62 and 63: America and Africa Hillary (not Bil
Page 64 and 65: Southern Italy's ills The messy mez
Page 66 and 67: Copyright © 2009 The Economist New
Page 68 and 69: Italy's vigilantes On the beat Aug
Page 70 and 71: crisis-driven entanglement in banks
Page 72 and 73: colluded with the Russian patriarch
Page 74 and 75: Prospects for recovery Mervyn's rea
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Page 78 and 79: advanced to scale down much. If the
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Page 82 and 83: Edinburgh festivals Fringe-onomics
Page 84 and 85: Bagehot Love in the time of swine f
Page 88 and 89: Their aim is more modest. It was sp
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Page 96 and 97: Mauro Cutrufo, Rome’s head of tou
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Page 104 and 105: Emerging Asian economies On the reb
Page 106 and 107: y 70%. One reason why Asia’s emer
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Page 110 and 111: Of the three firms, AIG represents
Page 112 and 113: Assessing quantitative easing Muzzl
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Page 116 and 117: Retail bonds in Europe Small fry wa
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Page 122 and 123: In an influential early example of
Page 124 and 125: Thinking space Another way to encou
Page 126 and 127: Detecting habitable new worlds The
Page 128 and 129: The history of science Kepler's wor
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Football and economics Game for gee
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There are two intellectual bugbears
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she continued to lurk, roiling the
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Output, prices and jobs Aug 13th 20
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The Economist commodity-price index
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Trade, exchange rates, budget balan
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Markets Aug 13th 2009 From The Econ
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Office vacancy rates Aug 13th 2009
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