ISLAMABAD, May 25: The world community is bogged down by the sexed up terminology of "War Against Terrorism" as the governments are using the fancy term to indulge in violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and Geneva Conventions.

At a workshop organized by the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) for journalists on Geneva Conventions here on Tuesday, the situation in Wana, Iraq, Afghanistan and international conflict was discussed as lawyers and journalists tried to decode the spin added by the authorities in trying to justify their illegal actions in conflict situations.

In an interactive session on various aspects of the Geneva Conventions, ICRC's legal officer Dilawer Khan said the terminology like "illegal combatants" and "unlawful combatants" did not exist in IHL.

Answering a question about application of IHL in the context of the statements emanating from the White House and other heads of states in chorus about the current global conflict, ICRC's media coordinator and also a lawyer, Frederic Gouin, said: "War Against terrorism" was a sexed up term for media consumption and in real legal terms it was non-existent.

An ICRC publication distributed on the occasion in one of its sections categorically sated that "torture or inhuman treatment of a protected person, attacking the civilian populations, unlawful deportation or transfer" constituted war crimes.

However, when asked specifically if the Bush administration and its allies using the ruse of war against terrorism to trample human freedoms and liberties and the right to life could be prosecuted for war crimes as per the criterion enunciated in the ICRC publication, the two representatives of ICRC refused to get bogged down in the controversy.

Mr Gouin said it was a matter which did not fall in the domain of ICRC and the International Court of Justice was competent to handle the matter. International humanitarian organizations like the ICRC followed the dictum of impartiality and conducted their operations by staying neutral, he said.

After a debate on pros and cons of maintaining confidentiality and questioning of the ICRC's stated position, Mr Gouin conceded that the principle of confidentiality was not 100 per cent and the matter was taken up with the authorities concerned without going public.

Earlier, tracing the advent of humanitarian laws protecting the civilian population or non-combatants in an armed conflict, Mr Dilawer said IHL had its roots in various religious texts including the Holy Quran, Mahabharta, the Bible which clearly underlined the modalities, reasons and modus operandi of war.

Mr Khan also maintained that several instances and references found in the Holy Quran, Bible and Mahabharta served as a blue-print for the formulation of the present-day international humanitarian laws.

He said Islamic laws denounced the use of excessive force even in a war situation, and clearly stated that even the prisoners of wars and those combatants who were no longer involved in an armed conflict were to be protected.

He said Geneva Convention, Hague Convention and UN laws provided protection to the victims of armed conflicts and limited the use of force in a situation where non-combatants were likely to bear the brunt in terms of loss of life and destruction of property and crops along with army regulars.

He said even those combatants who had slung their rifles and had decided to call it a day were supposed to be protected under the Geneva convention regardless of the fact if they were known to have committed war crimes in the past. Talking about the journalists covering the armed conflicts, he said the protection humanitarian laws afforded journalists was still precarious.