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LONDON, England (CNN) -- As the defenders of a besieged Bosnian town prepared to retreat, the prisoners of war held captive in the local jail feared the worst.
An ICRC aid vehicle in Colombia in 1998. The ICRC says the conventions make its work in war zones possible.
1 of 2 more photos » "The prisoners were saying, 'If the town falls they will shoot us before they leave,'" recalls Charlotte Lindsey, a Red Cross field worker in the Balkans during the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. "We went to the prison authorities and we said, "Look, you cannot let this happen. You are responsible for these prisoners."
Forty-eight hours later, after the town had been captured, Lindsey and her Red Cross colleagues returned to find the prison empty. But the prisoners had all been found alive and liberated by the incoming army.
"We interviewed some of the prisoners and they said the director of the prison and his deputy had stood in front of them to protect them," says Lindsey, now deputy director of communication for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). "They told us: 'They wanted to kill us but they wouldn't let it happen.'"
Even 15 years later, Lindsey is unable to reveal specific details about where the 1994 incident took place or the identities of the protagonists because of the ICRC's strict policy of confidentiality and neutrality.
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But for her the story serves to illustrate the lasting impact of the Geneva Conventions -- the set of universally ratified "rules of war" governing the conduct of armed forces and protecting non-combatants -- even in the heat of one of the most brutal and ethnically charged conflicts of recent decades.
"On a daily basis, living in a war zone, you see examples of the conventions being applied. Every time a soldier is captured and moved to a prison, or a wounded soldier is collected by an ambulance, that is an application of the Geneva Conventions," Lindsey told CNN ahead of Wednesday's 60th anniversary of the signing of the conventions.source: cnn.com