On Aug. 12, the world observed the 50th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions, four international agreements that set limits on the conduct of participants in armed conflicts. At first glance, the conventions seem quixotic: How can we apply the rule of law to war itself, where the goal is to bend an adversary to another's will? If the objective is important enough, do not all means justify the ends? The Geneva Conventions explicitly deny that logic. Remarkably, much of the world seems to agree; almost all governments have accepted most or all of the conventions as binding. They are a victory for justice and the rule of law, and serve as a stepping stone for the extension of those principles into other fields of human endeavor.

The Geneva Conventions are a series of international treaties that were signed between 1869 and 1949. They deal with the treatment of wounded and sick members of armed forces in the field; wounded, sick and shipwrecked members of armed forces at sea; the treatment of prisoners of war; and the protection of civilians in times of war. They have something of a checkered beginning: It became apparent during World War II that the first three treaties were not being observed. World leaders, under prodding by the International Red Cross, decided to codify and extend the provisions in an international treaty. A one-week conference in Stockholm in 1948 yielded a document that reiterated the first three conventions and added a fourth, on the protection of civilians. The final version was approved in Geneva a year later. That effort was commemorated this week.

The occasion itself was bittersweet. United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan explained that respect for the accords cannot be celebrated "in this final year of the decade in a century of war, genocide and immense suffering." We can pick any number of places on the globe -- the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Cambodia -- where civilian populations have not been spared; indeed in the 1990s, said Mr. Annan, civilians have become "the very targets of warfare, in campaigns of genocide and ethnic cleansing."