The importance of adopting national measures to implement international humanitarian law has been stressed on many occasions. It was repeated in the Final Declaration of the International Conference for the Protection of War Victims (Geneva, 30 August–1 September 1993), which reaffirmed the obligation laid down in Article 1 common to the four Geneva Conventions to respect and ensure respect for international humanitarian law in order to protect the victims of war. The Declaration urged all States to make every effort to “adopt and implement, at the national level, all appropriate regulations, laws and measures to ensure respect for international humanitarian law applicable in the event of armed conflict and to punish violations thereof”. The Conference thus reasserted the need to bring about more effective compliance with that law.