After covering conflicts in Rwanda and Russia, Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist Roy Gutman realized that humanitarian law was being violated. But without knowing the specifics of humanitarian law, he couldn't make his coverage as effective as he would have liked.

So Gutman edited a mini-encyclopedia of human-rights violations and tried to bring attention to the issue--as he did at a panel Wednesday night at Harvard Law School.

"The only people who know what humanitarian law is are the governments who are breaking it and the people who aren't doing anything about it," Gutman said. "Humanitarian law has not been widely taught or recognized."

In his book Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know, entries ranging from "armistice" to "genocide" juxtapose newspaper articles with excerpts from international treaties and agreements.

"There's a great body of law for those of us trying to understand conflict," even though those laws are not widely publicized, Gutman said. "The laws sum up the lessons of World War II and the Holocaust. The message is 'Never again.'"

Governments often choose to ignore this body of law, perhaps for political reasons, Gutman said.

While covering "ethnic cleansing" in Rwanda, Gutman noted that the U.S. government almost never used the word 'genocide' in reference to the conflict.

"Using the term creates an obligation to do something about it, and I guess they didn't want to do it," he said.