Water 2020, 12, 340 15 of 28 attention to water access denial and more meaningful interaction between IHL and environmental law could have substantive impacts on international legal practitioners. Though the Commentaries have yet to explicitly address water or environmental law, the ICRC notes the following: When the Geneva Conventions were adopted, many areas of international law were still in their infancy, such as human rights law, international criminal law and refugee law, but they have grown significantly . . . These areas of law are complementary to humanitarian law as they all seek to provide protection to persons in need of it. Humanitarian law is not a self-contained body of law; there is a lot of communication with other areas of international law . . . interpretations offered in the new Commentaries take these developments in other areas into account . . . [79] The 2016 Commentaries addressed Common Article 3, which pertains to the “humane” treatment of “persons taking no active part in the hostilities” in non-international conflicts. The ICRC notes, “While international armed conflicts still occur, the vast majority of recent armed conflicts have been non-international . . . and have generated a level of suffering that is no less than that encountered in international armed conflicts” and “[c]ompared with the number and detail of the provisions governing international armed conflict in the Geneva Conventions, common Article 3 is brief and formulated in general terms” [80]. The Commentaries go on to explain that, at the time of drafting the Conventions, this article may have been purposely limited in outlining scope and “intentional[ly] lack[ing] [in] detail” in order to maximise the number of nations that would be adopt the Conventions. This self-critique, and noted need for an updated understanding of the Article’s applicability, is useful to understand the intentionally vague language that is found in the 1997 UNWC, when a “discussion” about compensation for the destruction of water infrastructure is called for, rather than an explicit demand for reparations. Additionally, the Commentaries section on Article 3 contains numerous references to how statehood is understood and how the Geneva Conventions apply to colonial domination and occupational rule: [I]nternational armed conflicts . . . also include armed conflicts in which peoples are fighting against colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist régimes in the exercise of their right of self-determination . . . [80] Here, the Commentaries briefly address an updated interpretation of IHL application to military occupation (an important issue regarding the Israeli occupation of the OPT and US occupation of Iraq). The issue at hand, however, is whether the Commentaries have substantively addressed the intersection of water law, such as the UNWC and the existing Geneva Conventions. The answer to that question is no. The answer to another, more hopeful question—Is the ICRC capable of addressing this intersection in future Commentaries?—is a definitive yes. The ICRC has noted that IHL must be continually reinterpreted to account for its own dynamism and the dynamism of the bodies of law with which it interacts. A major step forward would be for the ICRC to feature water law in future Commentaries, given the rapidly increasing significance of global water scarcity in armed conflict. 6. Reparations How ought states and non-state actors be required to address instances of the weaponisation of water that have already occurred? One approach is implementation of reparations requirements. What is the ICC’s potential role in mandating reparations, following the Court’s 2016 announcement of an intended pivot towards focusing on environmental crimes? One potential path forward is that the ICC should be supported to expand the Trust Fund for Victims to make reparations to victims of water and environmental crimes, particularly when these victims are stateless or from states unable or unwilling to make reparations (e.g., Yemen, Syria). The Trust Fund for Victims is a fund, separate from