Uruguay
Practice Relating to Rule 143. Dissemination of International Humanitarian Law among the Civilian Population
Uruguay’s Law on Cooperation with the ICC (2006) states:
The State is obliged to inform and disseminate to the widest extent possible the norms of domestic and international law that regulate the aforementioned crimes and offences [including war crimes]. Education and training programmes must be implemented for public officials, in particular for all levels of teaching, judicial, police, … and external relations personnel.
According to the Report on the Practice of Uruguay, which contains, as annexes, several syllabi of courses of the faculty of law of the University of Uruguay, IHL is part of the teaching in public international law and human rights law in the university’s law faculty.
By a ministerial decree, a national committee on humanitarian law was created within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Uruguay to study and formulate recommendations on the dissemination of the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the 1977 Additional Protocols at all levels of public and private education, and on the implementation of IHL through legislation, regulations, and measures guaranteeing the effective application of the Conventions.
In 2003, in its second periodic report to the Committee on the Rights of the Child, Uruguay stated:
327. … At the domestic level, since 1992 an inter-ministerial commission has been working to incorporate the norms of international humanitarian law into domestic law and to disseminate information and provide training on that subject.
328. One of the most significant achievements has been the inclusion in primary, secondary and university (law school) curricula of States’ obligations under international humanitarian law.