The updated ICRC Commentary on Geneva Convention IV: Bringing civilian protection into the twenty-first century

Since their publication in the 1950s and 1980s respectively, the Commentaries on the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977 have become a major reference for the application and interpretation of those treaties. The International Committee of the Red Cross, together with a team of renowned experts, is currently updating these Commentaries in order to document developments and provide up-to-date interpretations of the treaty texts. This article provides an introduction to the updated Commentary on Geneva Convention IV (GC IV), published online in 2025. It describes the methodology behind the updated Commentaries before explaining the historical background of bringing civilian protection into the framework of the Geneva Conventions. It then discusses how the structure of GC IV impacts its application and explains GC IV’s personal, geographic and temporal scope of application. The article summarizes key substantive protections provided in the Convention for civilians and their property during armed conflicts, including in situations of occupation, and points to where these are addressed in the updated Commentary.