Why did everyone one day decide to have rules for war?
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“Everyone” did not decide “one day.” It was a very gradual process. A Swiss businessman named Henry Dunant had visited a battlefield in 1859 and was appalled at the conditions for treating wounded soldiers. When he got back to Switzerland he formed an organization to improve the treatment of wounded soldiers and civilians in war zones – which is now known as the Red Cross.
The Swiss government held a convention in Geneva in 1864, inspired by some of the things that Henry Dunant was advocating for, and 16 countries sent delegates. At the end of the First Geneva Convention, 12 countries agreed to ratify a treaty that codified certain rules, basically around how to treat wounded soldiers and an agreement that Red Cross personnel were neutral.
There were several updates to the Geneva Conventions, some after WW1 and some after WW2. Those wars made the horrors of war more obvious, the need for rules more obvious, and also revealed some of the deficiencies in the original agreement.
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