Objective:

To analyze the importance of applying International Humanitarian Law (IHL) in case of armed conflict.

Methodology:

A systematic review was conducted following the PRISMA 2020 protocol, including literature reviews, historical articles published in Spanish or English, literature published in the last 5 years (2016-2021) and documents available in full text. Articles that were not related to the objectives set for this work were excluded. Data sources used were: Pubmed, Cinhal, Scopus, Cuiden and Scielo and search engines such as Google Scholar. Keywords and MeSH terms were used. The AMSTAR-II Scale was also used as a methodological quality assessment tool.

Results:

19 articles were chosen at last.

Conclusions:

IHL has an uncertain origin, based on the confluence of customary norms, which evolved and adapted to the development of humanity, until it became a compendium of rules applicable to any armed conflict. The irruption of Nightingale and Dunant was a breakthrough for the development of legislation in the civilian’s rights defense during an armed conflict.

The IHL embraces the need to create a competent international organization to punish war crimes committed by belligerent states.