Henry Dunant proposed that war should become more humane, but we live in a world increasingly governed by a law of war. In the words of Hersch Lauterpacht, can we not build a law of peace to govern relations between states and peoples?

Human solidarity is the fundamental ethic which must underlay our endeavours, from science and the arts to economics and policy-making. In a call for a new International Humanitarian Order, I co-chaired in the 1980s the UN Independent Commission on International Humanitarian Issues (ICIHI) which issued a report entitled “Winning the Human Race?”. It outlined some of our most pressing existential concerns: poverty, militarization, famine, desertification, and terrorism. Yet over 20 years on, universal wisdom has not overcome material pressures.