Respect and protection are basis commitments that are established by international humanitarian law to the wounded and sick. But if the concept of respect generally doesn’t cause controversies in scientific literature, then the understanding of protection can vary significantly among researches. Hereby the existence of a mental disorder in a person is the most uncertain reason for giving protection to him, because the absence of normative definition of this concept in international law opens up great opportunities for its subjective interpretation.

          The goal of the article is detection of the substance of obligation to protect wounded and sick in international humanitarian law and researching of possibility for granting status of protected person to somebody because of his mental disorder. The objectives of the article is to analyze the concept of protection as the complex of obligations towards the wounded and sick, to give the definition of mental disorder as the reason for giving protection to a person within international humanitarian law.

          When solving the problems were used dialectical, logical and systemic general scientific methods; historical and sociological particular scientific methods; formal legal special method.   

          As a result of the research it was determined that the protection of the wounded and sick is consists of the complex of obligations to withdraw people from dangerous circumstances and to provide them required medical treatment. In addition, it was offered the definition of mental disorder as mental condition deviating from normal (healthy) one because of discovering cognitive impairment, emotional regulation disorders or behavioral disorders, which seems the enough reason for recognizing a person as sick in the context of international humanitarian law and granting protection to him.