Transcription
The first three categories that I mentioned, the wounded, sick, and shipwrecked members of the armed forces, are quintessential persons enjoying protection under IHL. Historically speaking, in 1864, the first ever Geneva Convention was adopted, and it was specifically dedicated to ameliorating the conditions of wounded and sick members of the armed forces left in the field.
The idea was that wounded and sick soldiers were already disabled. That's what being wounded or, uh, sick and left on the battlefield to languish is: the very meaning, embodiment of *hors de combat*, if you think about it. And although the language of *hors de combat* was not used in the 1864 Geneva Convention, that's what the drafters had in mind. And therefore, harming them further would serve no military purpose, no valid military purpose. And therefore, they ought to be treated in, uh, uh, humane and, uh, extended, they that they receive assistance, medical assistance, and whatnot.
Because this was fairly straightforward, the notion found widespread acceptance, unlike in the Hague Regulations, for example, where the drafters had to sit down and figure out what kind of harm would be covered by military necessity and therefore potentially to be kept lawful, on the one hand, and where unnecessary suffering began, in a matter of speech. Unlike those people gathered in Geneva, they had a somewhat more straightforward task at hand: that is, to what, what kind of protection and how to extend protection to those who are truly deserving of it.
Some 30 years later, the notion that wounded and sick members of the armed forces in the field ought to be humanely treated and protected found itself being extended to those at sea. So, when the delegates, uh, assembled in the Hague for the first, that is 1899, first Hague Conference, they decided to adopt an instrument in which the protection initially, uh, found in the 1864 Geneva Convention were extended to shipwrecked, wounded, sick, and shipwrecked members of the armed forces at sea.
There too, the notion was not so problematic. The addition of shipwreck was a little bit of a novelty, nevertheless. And that is because being shipwrecked is quite distinguished, distinguished from being sick or wounded. Sickness and wound would pertain to what happens to you personally, the body. Whereas being shipwrecked is a state in which you find yourself. So, it is the misfortune that affects you personally, or the vessel on which you are riding, and that renders you helpless, a helpless, and that is what entitles to humane treatment and protection. So, there's a slight difference, but not a major one.
Then, I, the underlying idea that people who were sick, wounded, and shipwrecked were helpless and defenseless, and therefore equally deserving of protection under IHL, was widely accepted. And one need to, one needs to keep in mind the echo that there is between the protection and humane treatment of wounded, sick, and shipwrecked persons, on the one hand, and on the other hand, persons who are, on the other hand, at least as far as sickness and wound are concerned. If a person, any person, that is, is either unconscious or, uh, incapacitated by virtue of his or her wound or sickness, and therefore incapable of defending oneself, then that person is, all we saw that during the last session.
But what *hors de combat* means specifically is that the adversary may not make this person the object of an attack. So, it's a hostilities conductive facilities rule, or *hors de combat* first and foremost. Whereas when we look at the protection and humane treatment of wounded and sick members of their own forces in the field, first, uh, in, in, in the first instance, then we are no longer talking about, uh, situations of hostilities. They are, in fact, left on the battlefield to suffer. So, although the conditions to which these two systems of protection refer are similar, the, what it means, what IHL tries to do for them is slightly different. *Hors de combat* is about refraining from making them the object of an attack. The Geneva Conventions, the 1864 Geneva Convention and 1899 extension to people, the persons at sea, and the first three 1949 Geneva Conventions, they all deal with the protection of humane treatment of these people beyond that of persons placed *hors de combat*.
Historically, all of these categories that we have been talking about so far were limited to members of the armed forces. So, no civilians there. In 1977, the delegates were gathered in Geneva and decided to extend the notion of wounded, sick, and shipwrecked persons to civilians as well. And that is what we see in Article 8 of Additional Protocol I. There, it is no longer limited to members, members of the armed forces who are sick and wounded.
Separate, there is a curious extension, or in fact, there is, yes, there is a curious extension [Music] as well in Article 8. And first of all, that concerns the extension of the notion of wounded and sick to maternity cases and pregnant mothers and infirm and so on and so forth. Yes, they are, these are medical conditions, to be sure. But one would ordinarily not consider pregnancy as illness in any sense of the term. It's a natural event. And although there are clearly illnesses that are associated with pregnancy, pregnancy itself is not a sick, it's not, it's not an illness. What this shows is the somewhat limited gender imaginations that the delegates in 1977 can be said to have at the time. In the 21st century, uh, it strikes us as a little bit old, uh, to lump these, uh, categories of situations, uh, into the sickness category. So, if we were to revise, uh, the terms of Additional Protocol I on this matter, my guess would be that we would not put it there and rather adopt a new separate provision for their treatment and protection instead.
Similarly, persons with disabilities are placed under the category of the, of the wounded for some curious reason. Nowadays, there is an active debate as to what the status of persons with disability ought to be under IHL. In parallel, of course, there is this lively discourse concerning the human rights of persons with disabilities. And clearly, the discussion we are having under IHL is a reflection of that ongoing debate under human rights. But, uh, as far as treaty law is concerned, persons with disability are somehow considered wounded. And that many commentators now consider is inadequate.
Finally, there is a curious category, if I can say it's a half-category, and that is in the shape of a crew of an aircraft in distress. So, if we can imagine someone who's shipwrecked, although this person is fully, the person's body is fully functional and not suffering from any illnesses or wounds, the situation is such that this person is nevertheless helpless. Now, could something similar happen to the air, their crew of an aircraft that is in distress? Either because of enemy fire, let's say the engine takes a hit and it loses power and altitude, or because of other mechanical malfunctioning events that the aircraft is in distress. And in some circumstances, the crew of such aircraft would decide to descend in parachutes. During their descent, one might say that they are helpless and defenseless in a way that is not dissimilar to people, uh, shipwrecked at sea or other bodies, uh, of water. And sure enough, Article 42 of Additional Protocol I protects them, although not as a full category of protected persons.
As you can see, the protection of members of crews of aircraft in distress under Article 42 of Additional Protocol I is limited to immunity against attacks during their descent. So, it's still part of the *conduct of hostilities* paradigm, if you will, rather than the protection of victims parallel. But the analogy is quite apparent. Just so that there is no misunderstanding, when extending the protection against attacks to members of crews of aircraft in distress, the drafters found it appropriate, appropriate to add a disclaimer. And that is that paratrooping, paratroopers, excuse me, were not eligible for this protection. And reasonably so. Paratroopers are those soldiers who are, whose job it is to jump off perfectly functional or disabled aircraft, depending on the situation of combat, specifically in order to land behind enemy lines and fight. Since the, the very notion of parachuting from aircraft is not one of distress, they are naturally not entitled to protection against attacks.
Common to all these three, plus shall we say, categories of protected persons that we have covered so far, is a condition according to which, in order to be eligible for protection, such persons must refrain from any act of hostility. And here too, one can see an echo in relation to the state of *hors de combat*, if you, if you may recall. In order for you to be in a state of *hors de combat*, not only do you need to fall into one of the three categories listed on Article 1, paragraph 1, but also paragraph 2, excuse me, but also you must refrain from acts of hostility and you must refrain from attempting to escape.
When it comes to the protection of the wounded, sick, and shipwrecked, the latter condition, attaching to *hors de combat*, that is, refraining from attempting to escape, does not appear. The assumption here is that within the meaning of this protective paradigm of IHL, the wounded, sick, and shipwrecked persons are not attempting to escape in the first place. But there is nevertheless a condition that they refrain from committing any act of hostility in order to qualify for protection. Now, analogously with persons descending from aircraft in distress, the, the descent would have to be, uh, done without committing acts of hostility. But there's an additional consideration: once they hit the ground. So, once they hit the ground, they must be given an opportunity to, uh, indicate, if there's a wish, their intention to surrender. Now, the assumption here again is that they are aircraft descending from aircraft in distress. They are not descending to fight. And therefore, once they reach the ground, and one of the obvious options available to them is to surrender. But there is also a disclaimer to the disclaimer to the effect that if it's apparent that their intention is to fight, then clearly this obligation to give such persons an opportunity to surrender does not apply.
Let us consider for a moment when the protective period for these people begins and ends. Being wounded or sick directly affects your corporal existence, that is, your body. So, from the moment you are wounded or become sick until you recover from your wound or sickness, you are protected under IHL. Specifically, in today's terms, you enjoy protection under the first 1949 Geneva Convention, as amended for those states that are bound by Additional Protocol I, under Article 8.
Because you may be sick or wounded, let's say you are a combatant, and during your belligerent activities, you fall sick or you sustain wounds, and your, that condition persists. Now, in the meantime, you are captured by the enemy, which makes you a prisoner of war (POW). So, you are on the one hand sick or wounded, but on the other hand, you are a POW. Is it possible that you may enjoy protection under the first Geneva Convention and also under the third Geneva Convention of 1949, relative to the treatment of POWs? And the answer is yes. So, when it comes to wound and sickness, so long as your condition persists, you may enjoy protection under one Geneva Convention, but also, if you acquire in the meantime an additional status, such as POW, you enjoy protection under that status as well.
This is actually not so when it comes to shipwreck. Your state of shipwreck begins, uh, at the moment when you find yourself in distress and state of helplessness. Your shipwreck ends, basically, once you're fished out of the water. So, imagine you are floating helplessly following the sinking of your ship, and then an enemy vessel comes to your rescue. So, you are lifted from the water. But then what happens to you is that you become a POW, would you not? And at that moment, because you acquire another status, another protected status under IHL, your state of shipwreck ends at that moment. So, here, the concurrent application of multiple protected statuses when it comes to shipwrecked persons does not, does not, does not happen. So, the protective scope of wounded and sick, on the one hand, and shipwreck, on the other hand, is slightly dissimilar, but it's not a major, major difference.
Besides the distinct status and also a somewhat dissimilar, uh, temporal scope of application, however, the three main categories that we have covered so far, that is, wound, sick, sickness, and shipwreck, their protective content, the content of protection that they enjoy, is not that different. And that also explains why the first and second Geneva Conventions are similar in length and protective provisions are basically identical in content. So, if you go through the standard list of what you can expect, then it starts with, for example, the, the general respect and protection that they enjoy, uh, humane treatment, medical care and attention, and no reprisals, which is important. All persons protected under the second, first, and the second Geneva Conventions enjoyed protection against reprisal actions. We briefly mentioned, uh, touched on belligerent reprisals earlier, I believe it was the end of, uh, session three, but, uh, again, they are categorically prohibited from acts of reprisals.
After military engagements, the wounded, sick, and shipwrecked members of the armed forces, according to the three Geneva Conventions at least, are entitled to rescue, a search and rescue, and evacuation, if that is what's necessary in order to enjoy protection. And that goes regardless of your nationality or affiliation. So, friend and foe alike are to be rescued and evacuated. So, and in fact, it has happened in his, in, in the past. Once the naval battles, for example, are over, and you know that there are casualties and they are in dire need of rescue, then the search parties will be sent out, and everyone found floating, regardless of their affiliation, would be rescued. That's at least what the obligation requires of the parties.
Historically, there is a bit of a bind when it comes to the obligation to rescue. During the Second World War, at the height of, uh, the submarine warfare, when submarines attacked, shall we say, merchant ships affiliated with its enemy, then would the submarine be obligated to surface and start searching for survivors? At least the text of the laws and customs of war at the time seemed to imply that this was the case. However, the practice, especially during the Atlantic submarine warfare, showed something a little different. So, in fact, when, I think it was, Admiral Dönitz was put on trial at Nuremberg for war crimes, including potentially the war crime of refusing to rescue survivors at sea by the summer, the German submarines, the charge was actually dropped when the prosecutors realized that the allied submarines engaged in the exact same behavior. That is, when they sank [Music] Axis merchant ships, the submarines refused to surface and rescue, rescue survivors. The practicalities were quite apparent. Unlike large ships, submarines have very limited space available. So, how many people can you realistically expect them to, to, to rescue? Also, there is the added danger that because anti-submarine warfare was also developing really fast, the submarines, once they surfaced, would expose themselves to being spotted and subjected to bombardment. So, there was an urgent need for them to go underwater and run as fast as they could from the scene of the sinking. So, on that account, the otherwise valid obligation to search and rescue survivors in the aftermath of a maritime engagement did not reflect state practice. So, there's a bit of a bind here when it comes to submarine warfare.
Other items of the catalogue of protections that the wounded, sick, shipwrecked persons enjoy under the first and second Geneva Conventions would include things like protection against pillage and ill-treatment, and also, very important, protection against medical experiments. This naturally emanated from the grotesque practice during the Second World War when, uh, mainly POWs and civilian detainees, but also other unfortunate people, would be subjected to such experiments and, uh, treatments. And therefore, there is a categorical prohibition against such experiments, unless, obviously, it is done in line with the standard medical practice and ethics.
The treatment of prisoners of war (POWs) tells a slightly different story. In ancient times, enemy soldiers captured were either executed on site or taken as slaves. That changed, arguably, at least for some categories of enemy soldiers that are captured. Towards the medieval age, unlike peasants and other enemy soldiers who were basically worthless, enemy soldiers of certain ranks, such as knights and aristocrats, basically came with cash. So, if you catch them, you stand to gain financially if they release, if you release them on condition that they go home and collect money and come back to purchase their liberty. By doing so, not only do you stand to gain in prestige, imagine if you were to capture a prince or a duke or a well-known knight, and you so graciously spare their lives, and you stand also to gain financially from the ransom that they pay. So, driven not really by any humanitarian sentiments, but primarily by greed, basically, the practice of sparing certain classes of prisoners of war emerged. So, that was the more or less the picture of the medieval age.
As we moved from the medieval age to, let's say, pre-modern times, where private wars between princes and their feudal knights and so on gave way to the wars between, uh, sovereign states, nation-states with standing armies, mass conscript armies, for example, on either side, the kind of war that Jean-Jacques Rousseau had in mind in the 17th century, for example, then one would no longer be looking at the prestige and financial gains that you would, uh, in, in the POW regime in place. Instead, the POW regime during the 18th, 17th century onwards towards the 19th century would be predominantly characterized by, um, reciprocity and security considerations. So, instead of cash counts, POWs in your custody were essentially the chess pieces taken out of the chessboard. So, the more you take out of combat, the more militarily advantageous to you as a belligerent. So, the reason for their, uh, incarceration, if POWs were incarcerated, because it was not always the case, but if POWs were incarcerated or kept as prisoners, then the primary reason for doing that was your security. And here also is a departure from the previous days when the rightful conquerors of a territory would treat prisoners as criminals because they defined the divine authority that you exercise in conquering their land. You might be tempted to punish them as prisoners. But the connotation of anything punitive was removed from the POW regime when the mass-conscripted armies came into place. And instead, it was the security means and the military advantage that justified POW detention.
It was also a matter of considerable political, uh, significance that, um, large numbers of POWs would be taken out once following large battles. So, if you have thousands of your soldiers taken prisoner by your enemy, and you want your soldiers, mainly young boys, to be treated well, then it is in your interest to show goodwill by treating the prisoners you have correspondingly well. So, if you treat our people well, we will treat your people well too. So, the degree to which POWs would enjoy humane treatment and protection depended significantly on how the other party treated its prisoners of war. So, reciprocal, in other words, relating to this reciprocal treatment was also the, still enduring connotation that POWs had as hostages, sort of glorified hostages who, whose well-being was basically security, not in terms of national security, but collateral, I think that's the better word, in order to just to make sure that your enemy would behave, uh, decently in accordance with the laws and customs of war. If they failed to do that, obviously, you had their soldiers in your care to pay for the consequences.
Both reciprocal considerations and the practice of, uh, treating POWs essentially as hostages, then gave way to what we have today. And this started in the 19th century with the rise of humanitarian sentiment, the humanism that is, and that echoes basically Jean-Jacques Rousseau's philosophy. Those unfortunate people are accidental enemies. And once they are taken out of combat by detention, for example, because they are now prisoners of war, they equally deserve to be treated well. It has nothing to do with their monetary value. It has nothing to do with reciprocal treatment on the other side, but because they are human beings, their status as human beings implied entitlement to certain decent treatment. So, we have come a long way from the ancient times when prisoners were basically slaves or candidates for execution to the recipient of IHL protection.
During session two, we touched briefly on some aspects of the POW regime, that is, what happens when a combatant is captured by his or her enemy and becomes a prisoner of war. We specifically mentioned the post-capture prosecutorial immunity. And the main point from that session was that combatants are entitled to POW status, and part of that status is the post-capture prosecutorial immunity. It is true that combatants are, for the most part, the only individuals entitled to POW status if captured, but there are some exceptions or additional categories of people one may note. For example, the civilian crews of merchant marine, if captured by the opponent, would be entitled to POW status. And that applies to, uh, I think some members of some government aircraft, crew members of government aircraft, and so on and so forth.
There is also an interesting play of presumption, uh, operating in some doubtful cases. Let's say that you are actually a civilian, not a combatant, hence *prima facie* not entitled to POW status, but you take a direct part in hostilities, killing and wounding enemy soldiers as you go, and then you are captured by the enemy. Now, immediately from the second session, we know that you are not entitled to POW status in principle, and you are not entitled to post-capture prosecutorial immunity as a result. So, you expose yourself to criminal charges. But before all that can happen, IHL introduces a mandatory POW presumption for those people who are captured having participated directly in hostilities. So, when they cannot, when your captor cannot establish your status as someone other than a combatant, then until your status is determined, you are entitled to be treated as if you are POW. So, pending your status determination, in fact, both the, uh, third Geneva Convention and Additional Protocol I create what we call sometimes the prisoner of war status determination tribunals. So, if you're captured, and there are thousands of them, so you'll be processed through these status determination tribunals in order for your captor to know whether to treat you as a POW or to treat you as someone other than a POW. Though, but pending that determination, you are treated as a POW. So, that's a presumption, and it's in place in order to give you the maximum degree of protection against certain treatments by the detaining power.
Other kinds of persons who are also entitled to POW status include what we call accompanying personnel, personnel that accompany the armed forces without being members thereof, for example, certain types of war correspondents, kitchen staff, and so on, as long as they are duly accredited by the armed forces into those roles, they too are to be treated as POWs if they are captured.
Now, let's move on to some exclusions from POW status. One tricky type of exclusion involves spies. One could have a combatant engaging, engaged in intelligence collecting activities, for example, behind enemy lines, and that does not personally amount to espionage, for example, as long as this person engaged in intelligence collecting activities behind enemy lines wears uniforms, your uniform, that is, and not the enemy uniforms. But if an enemy combatant is caught engaging otherwise in espionage, then although this person remains a combatant, he or she is not entitled to POW status and instead be treated as a spy. And you know what happens to a spy who's caught: it's usually summary tribunal and execution. So, if you are a combatant, you, you should think really carefully before agreeing to act as a spy behind enemy lines, because this is the kind of fate that may await you in case you're exposed and captured.
Also of note is the treatment of medical and religious personnel of the armed forces. If they are captured, although they are members of the armed forces, we know from section two that they are not actually combatants. So, what happens when they are captured? They do not become POWs. Instead, they become what we call retained personnel. Retained personnel are sort of an elevated kind of POWs, if I can put it in colloquial terms, but there are specific privileges and duties that are attached to retained personnel. But for the most part, we are interested in prisoners of war as a protected status.
So, let's now move on to the content of POW protection. We cannot possibly cover all of them. The third Geneva Convention alone is more than 140 articles long, and it would make no sense for us to go through them article by article. Let us start by covering the temporal scope of POW protection. Your POW status begins from the moment you fall into the power of your enemy. And what that means is that you are then to be evacuated from dangerous zones. That is, now that you are disabled by virtue of your POW detention, you have no means of protecting yourself or defending yourself. So, being left in the in the zone of conflict, for example, or active hostilities, is something that you cannot control. So, the detaining power takes responsibility for your well-being and is therefore obligated to evacuate you from such zones into the, uh, rear area.
Here comes a strange possibility. Imagine you are a small reconnaissance unit operating just behind enemy lines, collecting intelligence, but you're not engaging in espionage, that's not that it's clear, but your mission is such that speed and mobility is of the essence. Unfortunately, you chance upon a lone enemy soldier, and you have no choice but to capture this enemy soldier. What are you going to do? This enemy soldier is now a POW because you have taken him into your power. But you can't realistically drag them throughout the rest of your reconnaissance mission because he is likely to drag you and slow you down. Your unit is so small, you cannot detach some of its members to accompany this POW back into the rear area either. When this happens, it often occurred to people that the only realistic option is to basically dispose of this POW. And it, we have historical records of how this happened in real life. In, for example, the Napoleonic Wars, when Napoleon's army marched towards Moscow, large numbers of Russian POWs were executed on site because the French generals considered them to be basically a burden in their march towards Moscow. Similarly, during the Second World War, there is a famous or infamous Malmedy massacre, at Malmedy, it's called the massacre, where hundreds of American POWs were killed by advancing German units during the Battle of the Bulge because they were preoccupied with the speed of their movement and advance. Dedicating members of their units to safeguarding and transporting American POWs to the rear area was considered to be an undue burden, and therefore it was decided that the most expedient solution was to kill them.
In view of such unfortunate and, some might say, despicable incidents, a provision was inserted in Additional Protocol I. It comes at the end of Article 41, I believe, on the treatment of combatants in case of combat that in unusual conditions of combat, when it's not feasible for the captor to transport the POWs or persons eligible for POW status to the rear area, what the captor is obligated to do is, in fact, to release this person and to really release this person with provisions for his safety. Some of you may have seen, watch the movie called Saving Private Ryan. And in fact, there's an episode in that movie where this happens. When Captain Miller and his company, his company, his platoon, comes across and captures the last surviving German soldier at the radar site, a fierce debate ensues as to whether they should simply kill this German soldier. And the character of Captain Miller, played by Tom Hanks, decides to release this German prisoner of war. And that is exactly what Article 41, paragraph 3 of Additional Protocol I, in fact, requires. It was a controversial provision when it was adopted in 1977, and it, it was not easy for many states to accept this. But, um, I think it's fair to say that even countries like, uh, Israel now consider this to be binding customary IHL. So, there is a bit of a hope there.
So, if that is the beginning of your POW status, when does it end? It can end at various moments, of course. If you, for example, die while in detention, then that's when your POW status comes to an end. But you may be also released during hostilities, for based on some specific arrangements that are envisaged under the third Geneva Convention or elsewhere, as the case may be. But most importantly, after the conclusion of major hostilities, you may be, or you are actually, you have to be released and repatriated without delay. And that's Article 118 of the third Geneva Convention. That's when your POW status ends, of course, unless you are, during your incarceration, charged with war crimes, for example, by your detaining power. In that case, your POW detention may extend beyond the cessation of major hostilities and persist until the end of your judicial proceedings. I mean, but these are rather relatively exceptional. The vast majority of POWs would be, uh, eligible for mandatory release and repatriation, pursuant to Article 118 of the third Geneva Convention.
But here is a problem. The language used in Article 118 of the third Geneva Convention seems to suggest that the detaining power is obligated to release and repatriate everyone, that is, all prisoners of war. What if a prisoner of war doesn't want to be repatriated? And this happened, not only during the Second World War. At the end of the Second World War, there was a very painful episode, a series of episodes, where Soviet POWs in the hands of the allied powers were forcibly repatriated to the Soviet Union. But that was before Article 118 was written. Article 118 of the third Geneva Convention was written in 1949. Once that article came into, it was written, although not formally in force, during the Korean War, those parties involved in the Korean War found themselves grappling with the problem of, especially Chinese and North Korean POWs in the custody of the United Nations Command, unwilling to be repatriated. So, there's a conflict between what Article 118, the language of Article 118, appeared to require of the detaining power, such as the United Nations Command, on the one hand, and on the other hand, some compelling humanitarian considerations. If you agree with what was being said at the time, that forcibly repatriating certain unwilling Chinese and North Korean POWs would amount to basically sending them to torture and persecution. And this was, admittedly, a very uncomfortable moral dilemma.
Some of you may also know that in 1951, the Refugee Convention was adopted, and Article 33 of that convention encapsulated the famous, uh, prohibition against *refoulement*, the non-refoulement principle. But, uh, quite aside from that, Article 118 itself didn't seem to provide for an exception on account of *refoulement*. Everybody had to be repatriated according to its terms. In the end, the decision was reached, ostensibly by both parties, but if you look at the history, it was kind of done by default on the part of the United Nations Command, that, uh, many of those unwilling POWs would simply be reclassified as civilians and then released into the South or into neutral countries like India, instead of being sent compulsorily to the North. And although it was technically, some argued, in breach of Article 118 of the third Geneva Convention, subsequent practice amongst belligerent states came to essentially write into Article 118, uh, a customary exemption from mandatory repatriation. And that is what the law, that is what the law says today, despite the Geneva Convention. So, there's a bit of a history, a curious history, that modifies the scope of Article 118 of the third Geneva Convention regarding the end point of your POW status and what happens to you once you are taken prisoner.
There are certain phases during your existence as a prisoner of war that are governed specifically by the third Geneva Convention. As a matter of general observations, the third Geneva Convention would contain provisions regarding the general hygienic conditions of your facility, the freedom of your religious exercise, uh, food and canteen, communications with the exterior, and so on and so forth. Basically, these are arrangements that concern the administration of a POW camp. Although not all POWs are necessarily to be mandatorily detained in camp facilities, there are two things I want to highlight when it comes to POW treatment: one is labor, and the other is escape. Unlike their civilian counterparts, that is, civilian detainees, some POWs may be lawfully subjected to compulsory labor, namely those POWs who are enlisted personnel, that is, members of the armed forces who are not officers. Those enlisted personnel POWs who are enlisted personnel may be not required to perform labor, but only under certain conditions and only in certain sectors. They are in any event prohibited from being forced to work in humiliating or dangerous conditions.
And there was a bit of a problem when it comes to subjecting POWs to engage in dangerous labor. For example, at the end of the Second World War, Denmark wanted to force German POWs in mine clearing, because the Germans ostensibly knew where the mines were, so they were the experts, so to speak. But this would be contrary to the terms of the third Geneva Convention because the labor is dangerous or humiliating labor, too, to basically make a show, a case out of out of those POWs, that's also prohibited. Although non-commissioned officers who are POWs may also be required to work, they may only be required to work in some supervisory capacity.
The situation is very different when it comes to officers. Officers may not be compelled to work. It's a very curious thing if you think about this. Why would there be such different treatments based on the POW's rank? The only explanation that I have been able to come up with in the end is that certain senior members of the enemy armed forces who have been taken prisoner are too senior to be forced to work. This has a historical echo because in the past, virtually all officers were aristocrats. So, aristocrats tended not to have any profession. Well, they didn't have to work. That was a whole point of being aristocrats, in some ways. So, it was humiliating and and unbecoming of their status to be forced to work. Today's officer corps in many of the armed forces around the world are clearly not aristocrats, but because of the tradition that they have inherited from those, those days, officers are still exempt from compulsory labor under the third Geneva Convention. And that, I think, is something that I can only describe as reflections of, I don't know if it's chivalry, but also it's certainly some sort of a military honor. So, it's not based on humanitarian considerations. It's not based on military necessity considerations. It's based on honor, I would think.
Let's move on to escape. Escape is also a very, sort of, unique institution when it comes to POW treatment. Why would IHL want to regulate escapes, one might ask? Now, POWs are there because, not because they're criminals, because they are just unfortunate to be captured by the enemy. And POWs owe no, uh, allegiance of any kind to the captor. I mean, it will be quite the contrary. They are the representatives of an adversary, being members of its armed forces and so on. And that meant that, uh, um, they would be free to attempt to escape. In fact, some Western militaries, I'm not sure about other militaries, but some Western militaries make it a duty on the part of members of their armed forces to attempt to escape. Which is, for example, the case for the U.S. Army. Part of the duty, uh, that certain Western powers impose on members of the armed forces also includes, uh, refusal to offer or accept parole.
So, parole is, if you remember our earlier discussion, had to do with the provision of money, the ransom payment to purchase one's liberty. But in the modern day POW system, in fact, parole, it's still a thing, at least on paper. So, the captor is free to grant parole on certain conditions that it deems appropriate. And as recently as during the First World War, the German Kaiser, in fact, is known to have given a parole on one British soldier. I think his name is called Captain Robert Campbell. He was kept as a POW under the, in Germany during the First World War. Now, he petitioned the Kaiser Wilhelm II for a parole because his mother was dying in London, so he wanted to arrange her funeral. The Kaiser granted this parole, so sent Captain Campbell off on his journey back home through the battlefields of continental Europe, and he made it to London, arranged his mother's funeral. And astonishingly, perhaps, he made the point, because Captain Campbell made a point of going back all the way through the, uh, battlefields of continental Europe back to his, uh, place of detention, as a POW, because that was the term that they were, these are the terms of his parole. And once he has returned to his place of detention, then together with his other fellow POWs, that British POWs, he tried to escape. It's a very strange, uh, system of honor, but nevertheless, it was the case.
In any event, so, attempting to escape is an acknowledged part of the POW regime. And the third Geneva Convention says that if you succeed in escaping, that is, either reach a neutral power or rejoin your friendly forces, then you are free to resume your hostilities against what is now your previous or former detaining power. If you are released, on the other hand, by the grace of your detaining power, then you are, in fact, prohibited under the third Geneva Convention from, uh, resuming hostile acts against your former detaining power. If you are unsuccessful in your escape, however, then you may be captured, recaptured, and you may be subjected to disciplinary punishment by your detaining power.
What if, if you become a POW and you successfully escape, then rejoin your friendly forces, and you fight, and you are unlucky enough to be captured again by your enemy? Here, your detaining power, your once again detaining power, is not permitted to punish you for the previous successful escape that you carried out. It's as if you are, your captors capture the POW for the first time. So, there are, there are to be no consequences, no punitive or otherwise disciplinary consequences for your earlier successful escapes. And this actually happened, multiple, uh, episodes of people captured multiple times by their enemy actually did happen. So, it's not just a theoretical prospect, it reflects the real practice of states.
We are finally left with one last major category of protected persons to consider, and that is civilians. Here too, we need to go back in history a little bit. Civilians were probably the subjects of regulation by the laws and customs of war in the past, but mainly in connection with only certain specific situations. So, to name a few, we had situations of assault, that is, one party takes a locality in a surprise, for example. We had siege, we had a blockade, and we had occupation. So, in each of these situations of warfare, a belligerent party would come into contact with civilians of their opponents, and therefore, it was considered only proper that the laws and customs of war would deal with their interaction, rudimentary as the provisions were at the time. But other than that, at least in those days, in the medieval era or up to the medieval era, civilians were not really at the forefront of the laws and customs of war. Fighting took place in empty fields in many occasions, in many cases. So, unless you are somehow, really, an unfortunate civilian who happens to just wander into the middle of a fight, then the law had no reason to really come up with elaborate rules about your treatment.
This gradually changed as the war expanded spatially because of the development of advanced weapons which would deliver, uh, force and inflict violence beyond the lines of contact into the rear area, for example, attacking supply lines, depots, and so on and so forth, where civilians are more likely to be present. So, with the gradual expansion of warfare and advancement of military techniques and technology came the awareness that the law would have to do a little more about, uh, treating civilians who are caught in the fighting. But even then, if you look at what kind of provisions the law used to have, then you are in for some disappointment. So, for example, the two regulations on land warfare coming out of, uh, 1899 and 1907 respectively, there is precious little content regarding how the occupying power is to treat the residents of the territory that it administered. If you look through those regulations, you would come across the feeling that the drafters are more concerned about the treatment of property in occupied territory than the people who lived on it.
This state of affairs, uh, disappointing as it was, persisted basically until the end of the Second World War. So, despite the development of mass, uh, military capacities, including, for example, strategic bombers that would carry out raids thousands and thousands of kilometers away from their point of departure and unleash this massive destruction on cities and so on, the law itself remained remarkably inadequate. So, there was a great need to have IHL updated, to update the laws and customs of war when it came to the treatment and protection of civilians. And this happened in 1949. The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 is the first international instrument, legally binding international instrument, that is dedicated in its entirety to the protection of civilians in war. So, it is groundbreaking in that regard.
The Fourth Geneva Convention. Now, then comes the fine print. The fine print that we need to look at with a magnifier in hand is Article 4 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. If you have a text of Article 4, I strongly advise that you take a look. It's astonishing how more text of Article 4 is spent telling you who is not protected by the Fourth Geneva Convention than telling you who is in fact protected by the Fourth Geneva Convention. So, people who are protected under the other any of the other four Geneva Conventions, the POWs, uh, wounded, sick in the battlefield, or wounded and sick shipwrecked at sea, they are all excluded from the scope of the Fourth Geneva Convention, mainly because those conventions only apply to members of the armed forces. But still, and then the second paragraph of Article 4 tells you who is still not protected, even as civilians. So, non-stateless persons, um, [Music] remember the nationals of the co-belligerents and nationals of neutral powers remain unprotected under the Fourth Geneva Convention as long as the states of which they are nationals maintain normal diplomatic representation in the country, in the state in whose power they find themselves. It also says that the nationals of the state party not party to the Fourth Geneva Convention remain unprotected, although that's now academic because in fact, virtually, if not all, of the states that exist in the world today are in fact party to parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention. So, that's that's academic.
So, what are we left with? If you are a civilian, but so, what do you have to do? Basically, you would have to be a civilian and an enemy national in the territory of a belligerent state. That's when the first paragraph of Article 4 says you're protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention. I forgot to mention, uh, who is also not protected by implication under the Fourth Geneva Convention, that is, some a person who finds himself or herself in the hands, in the in the hands of his or her own state. This person is not protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention because of the first paragraph of Article 4. Article 4 limits itself to essentially enemy civilian nationals.
Why is that? Why is the scope of Article 4 of the Fourth Geneva Convention actually so narrow? If you go back in, if we were to go on a sort of time trip back to 1949, the world was a very different place. It was truly a world governed by nation-states, like sovereign states. So, if you are a national of a state and if you go abroad, your well-being while abroad was exclusively, basically, the responsibility of the state of your nationality. In fact, it's largely the case even today. So, if I were, for example, I carry a Japanese passport and I live in Sweden, if I were to get into trouble with the Swedish police, the first thing I'm expected to do is to call the Japanese embassy, because it is the Japanese government and its officials in Sweden who are primarily responsible for my well-being while I am abroad. And this explains the fact that in the second paragraph of Article 4, a number of civilian nationals are excluded from the scope of Geneva IV. So, belligerent, co-belligerent nationals and neutral nationals are excluded as long as the states of which they are nationals maintain normal diplomatic relations with the state in whose power you find yourself. And that's, that means that it is the responsibility of the state of your nationality to look after you if you get into trouble with the state in whose power you find yourself during.
An armed conflict, so it's not the business of international humanitarian law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention, to intervene in that arrangement. So, conversely, if you are a national of the state with which this state of your residence, the current residence, is at war, then the chances are, although it's not always the case, diplomatic relations would have been severed between them, which would mean that you would have no real prospects of your state of nationality. You, in situations such as these, the Fourth Geneva Convention basically says, we would come to replace your state of nationality in extending protection where we can.
So, it's an instance, the Fourth Geneva Convention is what we call an instance of interstitial protection or legislation. So, it's between spaces because there are well-established spaces reserved for sovereign states, and when that expectation is either absent or cannot be realistically maintained, then international law would come in to substitute itself for this. That being the case, it's a very modest instrument, as it turns out, the Fourth Geneva Convention. That said, there is still a major area where the Fourth Geneva Convention becomes essential for the well-being of enemy civilian nationals, and that's when occupation happens.
So, when a state occupies a part of another state, part of the territory of another state, typically on that 33, a lot of enemy nationals reside. So, you are basically moving over to their church. So, suddenly you find yourself running a territory populated predominantly by persons eligible for Geneva for protection. They find themselves suddenly in the hands of which there are no nationals. So, the standard interpretation of the first paragraph of Article 4 would give the residents of occupied territory the full range of Geneva for protection. So, for them, the Fourth Geneva Convention is like a constitution. Although it's not a constitution, it is effectively a constitutional guarantee because the constitution then in place, previously in place, had been sort of displaced by the fact that you come to occupy the territory. So, for example, the residents of the Gaza Strip, if we still consider the Gaza Strip occupied, that's a debatable, contested proposition, or in the West Bank, or in Northern Cyprus, for example, the Geneva Convention, the Fourth Geneva Convention would apply to the residents there. So, in this narrow but significant set of cases, Geneva 4 is very important. But otherwise, in the vast majority of cases where two states simply go to war with each other and there are odd enemy civilian nationals in the territory of their respective states, that's how useful the Fourth Geneva Convention actually is.
This disappointingly narrow scope of Article 4 of the Fourth Geneva Convention did not go unnoticed, to be sure. When the delegates returned some three decades later, or two and a half decades later, to Geneva to negotiate the two Additional Protocols, genuine attempts were made to rectify the situation. However, these efforts proved quite modest in their accomplishment, if I can put it like that. And basically, there are two, only two additional groups of civilians who would now have access to Geneva for protection, and they are de jure refugees and stateless persons. Stateless persons, in fairness, were implicitly covered by Article 4 of the Fourth Geneva Convention already, as it was phrased in 1949, but it was not explicitly stated. The first Additional Protocol fixes that. So, stateless persons are considered protected persons within the meaning of Article 4 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Refugees are trickier. In the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, there were only a couple of provisions that dealt specifically with refugees. Of course, the whole idea of refugees was not very well established in 1949. That came to exist two years later with the adoption of the 1951 Refugee Convention. But colloquially speaking, refugees existed, obviously. The one, only one significant provision then included in the Fourth Geneva Convention had to do with the treatment of persons who had fled their state of nationality into the territory which is unfortunately now occupied by that same state of nationality from which they had fled. So, if you can imagine a German refugee fleeing to Southern France, right on the eve of the Second World War, I know better still, to the north, north front, northern France. So, northern France was actually occupied by Germany. So, those these poor German refugees who thought that they had escaped Nazi persecution by fleeing to northern France would find themselves once again on the German administration there. The Fourth Geneva Convention says these are not to be treated adversely based on their previous flight from the state of their nationality.
The other provision deals with the incarceration or the assigned residents through which the state may subject their enemy civilian nationals only on its territory, and the security considerations shall not be imposed. The enemy nationals shall not be considered to be a security threat merely on account of their own enemy nationality if they are refugees. If they were refugees, to be humans. So, it was very modest indeed. The Additional Protocol, the First Additional Protocol, fixes this to some extent. It says that those persons who are de jure refugees, recognized as refugees according to the international instruments prior to the outbreak of their own conflict, would enjoy their status as protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention. Here, the catch also is the requirement that you have to have been recognized as a refugee prior to the outbreak of the war. So, if you, as is often the case in contemporary conflicts, if you become a refugee because of the ongoing conflict, then you're not covered by this provision under Additional Protocol because you became a refugee only after the conflict had broken out. So, there too, it doesn't really add a lot of muscle when it comes to protecting the de jure refugees under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
One last major category of unprotected civilians remains to be discussed, and that is civilian persons who find themselves in the power of their own state. Article 4 is very explicit that it doesn't cover such people. In 1977, states, some states, tried to extend the protection of the Geneva Conventions and IHL generally to persons against their own states. It sounds somewhat humanitarian, as you can imagine. Human rights law, international human rights law, is there precisely to protect individuals against their own states. This failed as far as inserting explicit texts into the language of Article. Additional Protocol 1. The debate focused on the language of Article 75 of Additional Protocol 1, envisaging fundamental guarantees. There, insofar as persons are affected by reasons of an armed conflict, then and who do not enjoy more favorable conditions under other instruments of IHL, the following protections should apply. Here, some states, like Finland, for example, tried to explicitly provide that this includes nationals against their own states, but that did not succeed. So, Finland, for example, appended a declaration when ratifying Additional Protocol 1, whereby Finland interprets Article 75 as covering civilians against their own nationals, against their own states. The ICRC similarly proposes the same interpretation, that is, Article 75 covers civilian persons against their own states, but that's their view.
In 1999, the Yugoslav Tribunal tried to add its own voice to this matter. So, in Bosnia, there were situations where Bosnian Serbs, to some extent, mostly Bosnian Serbs, would maltreat Bosnian Muslims, for example. Although to a small extent, reverse abuse did happen, the Bosnian Muslims abusing Bosnian Serbs or Bosnian Croats, for that matter. But so, in this particular case, called the Tadić case, the situation was one where Bosnian Serbs were abusing Muslims. But if you think about what nationalities these people have, both the abusers and the victims, they were all technically Bosnian nationals in a non-international conflict. So, that would mean that Article 4 of the Fourth Geneva Convention would leave them unprotected under that convention for reasons that I reserved until session six. The Appeals Chamber in the Kordić case decided that the Bosnian conflict was in fact an internationalized conflict. But there still remained a question of nationality. If you were to interpret Article 4, of which they are not nationals, well, they are the nationals of Bosnia-Herzegovina, at least technically. So, in that decision, there appears judgment in the Kordić case, the Appeals Chamber decided to interpret nationality within the meaning of Article 4 not to mean the technical bond of citizenship, but instead as ethnic allegiance. So, if you have an ethnic allegiance that is different from the ethnic allegiance of your abuser, so you are a Bosnian Muslim, so your allegiance lies with the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina, whereas the Bosnian Serb abuser would have their ethnic allegiance to the Bosnian Serb entity or by extension Serbia. So, your allegiance does not correspond to each other. And if that's the case, according to the Appeals Chamber, it means you are not a national of the party in whose hands you find yourself, and therefore you come under the protection of the Fourth Geneva Convention. This was a very interesting, not to mention controversial, interpretation of the expression "of which they are nationals," but it is a well-meant, sort of well-intended attempt to expand the scope of Article 4, limited as it is, to the situations of contemporary conflicts where formal nationality may not be a determinative factor when it comes to determining, when it comes to deciding who's a victim and therefore deserving of protection.
Arguably, the most important context in which the protection of the Fourth Geneva Convention comes into play is that of de facto occupation, as I mentioned earlier. It's quasi-constitutional. But this quasi-constitutional status that the Fourth Geneva Convention enjoys when it comes to occupied territory is a double-edged sword. Let me show you why. One of the key provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention regarding the administration of occupied territory is that the occupying power may not alter the law in force unless it impedes with its imperative military security considerations or if it impedes the implementation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Now, it's understandable how this kind of provision came into place. After all, there is a grave danger that the occupying power may decide to change the law arbitrarily, annex the territory, for example, unilaterally, and so on. In order to preempt such measures, judicial measures, the Fourth Geneva Convention requires the occupying power not to alter the law except for these two circumstances. This would work as long as the occupation is seen as some sort of a temporary situation awaiting final settlement at the end of a war, for example, in the peace treaty or in formal armistice agreements where the territorial status of the territory is settled. So, either to cede the territory or to regain its former sovereign status, and so on, that would determine this judicial conundrum. But as we know, some situations of de facto occupation persist for a long time. So, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, again, Gaza Strip is a bit difficult to deal with, but the West Bank has been under de facto occupation by Israel since 1967, so that's more than half a century of occupation.
Now, within the last half century, a lot has happened in the realm of international human rights law, for example. So, not only did we have the core covenants, the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights on the one hand, and Cultural, Social, Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on the other hand, but also the whole set of human rights treaties that have since come into force. If Israel, as an occupying power, is prohibited from introducing additional human rights measures or to give, let's say, women residents of the West Bank voting rights that they did not enjoy before, would that somehow contradict Israel's obligations as an occupier? After all, they are, it would be altering the law in place. Would so, there is a clash between the regime of de facto occupation as it was originally intended and intended to be temporary, and the fact on the ground that occupation may persist, last for decades. So, some commentators have advanced theories, known sometimes as transformative occupation, where the occupying power would be, first of all, released from this obligation to freeze the law as it finds it on occupation, as it were, and but also to keep up with, keep the local law in sync with the contemporaneous development of international law on the relevant matter. This remains a theory because it's not written anywhere in the Geneva Convention, that's for sure, and not even under customary international law, as far as we can see. But it's a much-needed perspective, if you will, on a system of law that is intended for one purpose but it doesn't quite fit modern reality.
Now, if we move on to the substantive content of protection that Geneva 4 offers, there is a large degree of overlap between Geneva 4 and Geneva 3. Especially Geneva 4 deals with conditions of detention, much like Geneva 3 deals with the conditions of POW detention. And as I mentioned earlier, there was a widespread perception at one point that being a POW means being more protected under IHL than being a civilian detainee. And this perception is still very widely shared. But if you take a closer look, you may begin to realize that the difference is more symbolic than substantive. Much of the protection and treatment that POWs enjoy are also present in the Fourth Geneva Convention and vice versa. If I want to point out one significant difference between POWs in detention and civilian detainees under the two Geneva Conventions, that is labor. Unlike non-officer POWs who may be subjected to compulsory labor, no civilian detainee may under any circumstances be compelled to work. It has to be entirely voluntary. So, in that respect, being a civilian is kind of better off than being a non-officer POW. So, there is one situation where the reverse is true.
Another situation where civilians arguably enjoy more protection than POW detainees is the grounds for their detention. POWs under the Third Geneva Convention may be detained simply based on the fact that they are POWs. So, because they are, may be detained as POWs, they may be detained for the duration of hostilities. Remember, it's taking the pieces off the chessboard. And the fact of your detention need not be reviewed judicially at any point if you are a POW. So, you may spend the rest of the war in detention. Now, compared to that, civilians who are eligible for protection under the Fourth Geneva Convention may only be detained if security considerations, specific security considerations, so demand. And in fact, even if you are detained on that ground, the ground needs to be reviewed at least twice a year. And as soon as the ground, the security ground that would justify your detention ceases to exist, then you need to be released. At least that's what the Fourth Geneva Convention requires of your detaining power. Obviously, if during your detention you are charged with a criminal offense, for example, then you may be detained on that separate ground. But if you are a civilian detainee simply because your security consideration, according to the detaining power, demanded, then as soon as those grounds cease to exist, you must be released.
Here is one reason why the Bush administration, during the war on terror, wanted to advance the idea of unlawful enemy combatants. Those detained at Guantanamo, for example. Apart from the constitutional problems that keeping people detained without habeas corpus access would raise under U.S. law, the practice also came into trouble with international humanitarian law. So, if you were to treat those captured in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere on suspicion of their membership in the Taliban, for example, or Al-Qaeda, excuse me, Al-Qaeda was the major thing, and brought to Guantanamo, or yeah, this, in fact, even as Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, that was then run by the Taliban, then granting such people POW status would serve you some good purposes. That is, you can keep them in Guantanamo without any judicial review, as I said, POWs can be detained for the duration of hostilities simply because they are POWs. So, that would serve Washington somewhat well. But it would also bring with that status a lot of other privileges. One tricky privilege was the restricted interrogation to which they were to be exposed, no psychological pressure of any kind, let alone torture, in an effort to extract information from them. That's only one of the many inconvenient protections that POWs would enjoy. On the other hand, if they were to, if you, the U.S. government, were to treat those people in Guantanamo as civilian detainees, then you don't have to deal with, you don't have to worry about those inconvenient protections that the POWs would enjoy under the Third Geneva Convention. But then the problem is that you have to review the security considerations that would justify their detention every six months. So, the solution that Washington D.C. tried to come up with was to create a middle pseudo status, unlawful enemy combatants, who would be neither combatants nor civilians, and therefore they would fall through the cracks between the Third and the Fourth Geneva Conventions. One high-ranking, I think it was a Justice Department official, could be a Defense Department official, I don't remember, for the Bush administration, reportedly said that Guantanamo is the judicial equivalent of outer space, and that was the intended consequence of calling them unlawful enemy combatants.
I also need to highlight some of the provisions that came into force by virtue of Additional Protocol 1 when it comes to protecting civilians, and that mainly has to do with the provision of humanitarian aid to the population in need. So, besides the prohibition against using starvation as a means, a method of war, which we discussed during session three, there are specific rules concerning how to deliver humanitarian relief consignments and who is responsible. So, in principle, the state in control of the territory where the civilians reside is responsible for their well-being, for example, the food and so on. But when they are inadequately supplied, then relief action shall be subject, however, to the consent of the state in question. And offers of assistance, for example, are not to be seen as an unfriendly act. Additional Protocol 1 seems to suggest that offers of assistance, under certain conditions, must be accepted. But that's certainly not the case when it comes to Additional Protocol 2, which governs certain types of non-international conflicts, where offers can be made and not to be seen as an unfriendly act, but the authorities in place are in no way, at least explicitly, obligated to accept such offers. So, there is a bit of a discrepancy between what to do with humanitarian consignments in those two types of armed conflicts. But this is important because, as I mentioned earlier, siege warfare is affected by this. So, whereas siege as such remains unprohibited, that is lawful according to today's IHL, it cannot involve the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. For those who are trapped in the besieged locality, that practically means that you have to either let them go out of the besieged locality, or we have to agree to the provision of humanitarian assistance from the exterior. That's where the requirement, according to some commentators and some provisions, arguing that accepting offers of assistance is mandatory according to Additional Protocol 1. But these are, in essence, although there are many other interesting areas of discussion for protecting civilians, the features that I think are the most important and most interesting for our purposes, that is, for this introductory course in IHL.
Now, we have covered the second tenets of IHL when it comes to protecting and humanely treating victims of war. When we return for session six, we will move on to the structural and procedural aspects of IHL, namely conflict classification and its implementation. Thank you.