Why Not Start the Geneva Conventions in the Home?

Published Wednesday, 28th December, 2011 | By Susan AKA Peacefull

The Geneva Conventions emerged out of the carnage of World War II, as did the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Hatred and beliefs unleashed a blood bath that can be scarcely believed. The horror of the holocaust is the most notable example. However, my mind turns to the Palestinians today and other peoples subject to inhumane treatment.

Today we tend to speak of Second World War without any real understanding of the horror. Only those involved would be aware. Human beings live in a duality consciousness that oscillates between love and fear. The challenge today is to move humanity towards the consciousness of love or they will indeed destroy the planet and all beings that have a right to life.

We see today human rights violations continuing. There has to be significant interventions. I always recall Gareth Evans (former Australian Foreign Minister) the concept of ‘The Responsibility to Protect’. I feel that is indeed an obligation that could be enshrined in law to provide a legal mandate to protect all people. (next blog comments on this).

The violent violations evoke the recognition of the value of all human life whether you agree with them or not. We have to find a place of peace where all people can meet. Some have attempted interfaith dialogues to show that we can share the same god, the central concept being to love thy neighbour or that love is god. Even if people can turn there, we have a starting place.

The shape of the future whether it is violent or peaceful comes back to what we teach our children. Do we live unconsciously (no questioning of ourselves and values) or consciously (taking responsibility for thought, word and action). Do we consciously model for children good role models in men and women? Do we define what is a good role model? Do we as societies say nothing and allow values and ethics to fall by the wayside? Do we show children how to resolve problems through our own example or just blame the other? Do we encourage them to have courage to face themselves or do we brush off the issue?

Indeed international conflicts are the macrocosm of us. We are the microcosm. So if we do not teach human rights, human dignity and justice in the home, school and society then how will children know when they grow up what a civil society looks like? I think of kids with parents embroiled in their own unresolved issues ignoring their children’s needs. Or others coming to their child’s defence without an awareness of teaching fairness just modeling revenge or the idea ‘we stick together’. I have heard parents shout, scream and hit their children teaching them violence and control. I have seen parents love themselves through their children but not loving the child and teaching them empowerment. They send them out to be successful as they have dreamed to be. I’ve heard parents speak of spirituality and then abuse and force their children to their will with aggressive attitudes and behaviours. I see parents in the home whilst their child plays the most violent games. You can hear the machine gun fire as the child fantisizes they are a soldier killing others, or they are stealing cars and so on. There is no conscious link to what violent simulation teaches and the subliminal acceptance of violence as fun. Moreover, how many children these days see their parents divorce or leave, the lack of consciousness around the impact on the children and responsibilities in raising children. There is no understanding of the verbal or physical violence played out in front of children or including them and the terror and insecurity they teach.

I have to say I smile and shake my head at the collective blindness of what we teach our children through our actions and beliefs. As we watch the real violence play out on television I hear huffing and puffing from parents and dismay at the state of the world, unable to see it is the world they are creating every day. They sit as armchair spectators and not participants. The participant is the one who takes responsibility or what is termed ownership, this is the beginning of learning about peace in active ways, but nonviolent in thought, word and action.

This blog is concerning the Geneva Conventions. They are designed to protect innocent civilians in times of warfare or within war zones. We are seeing increasingly urbanised warfare and a turnaround in fatalities to 90% civilian.

The danger to civilians is both deliberate and can be the result of soldier’s attitudes. Soldiers (mostly young men) see their friends killed in war they become emotional and feel intense hatred for the so-called enemy and they take out their anger on civilians as they see them as the same. The other approach is inflicting deliberate reprisals or collective punishments to teach the other side a lesson to cause maximum pain. The psychological impacts are to lower their morale, to insult them, keep them in states of continuous fear and emotionally break them down or send them insane. These are the ways of violence, the enemy is dehumanised and worth nothing.

The only honour I see is when people are saved or a greater good is served. Outside of that it is a complete failure of politics and militaries and an increasing threat to civilian communities across the world, given economic stability and environmental sustainability. There are better ways, such as conflict resolution, community decision making, peace education and strengthening international law to intervene and bring those responsible to justice or awareness.

Here is an overview of the Fourth Geneva Convention, we indeed have the responsibility in war and in civilian lives, to protect innocent lives.

Courtesy of wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Geneva_Convention#Part_IV._Execution_of_the_Convention

The Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, commonly referred to as the Fourth Geneva Convention and abbreviated as GCIV, is one of the four treaties of the Geneva Conventions. It was adopted in August 1949, and defines humanitarian protections for civilians in a war zone, and outlaws the practice of total war. There are currently 194 countries party to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, including this fourth treaty but also including the other three. (Refer wikipedia for a list of all 194 countries)[1]

In 1993, the United Nations Security Council adopted a report from the Secretary-General and a Commission of Experts which concluded that the Geneva Conventions had passed into the body of customary international law, thus making them binding on non-signatories to the Conventions whenever they engage in armed conflicts.[2]

Part I. General Provisions

This sets out the overall parameters for GCIV:

Article 2 states that signatories are bound by the convention both in war, armed conflicts where war has not been declared and in an occupation of another country’s territory.

Article 3 states that even where there is not a conflict of international character the parties must as a minimum adhere to minimal protections described as: noncombatants, members of armed forces who have laid down their arms, and combatants who are hors de combat (out of the fight) due to wounds, detention, or any other cause shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, with the following prohibitions:

(a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
(b) taking of hostages;
(c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment
(d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.

Article 4 defines who is a Protected person: Persons protected by the Convention are those who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever, find themselves, in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals. But it explicitly excludes Nationals of a State which is not bound by the Convention and the citizens of a neutral state or an allied state if that state has normal diplomatic relations within the State in whose hands they are.

A number of articles specify how Protecting Powers, ICRC and other humanitarian organizations may aid Protected persons.

Protected person is the most important definition in this section because many of the articles in the rest of GCIV only apply to Protected persons.

Part II. General Protection of Populations Against Certain Consequences of War

Article 13. The provisions of Part II cover the whole of the populations of the countries in conflict, without any adverse distinction based, in particular, on race, nationality, religion or political opinion, and are intended to alleviate the sufferings caused by war.

Part III. Status and Treatment of Protected Persons
Section I. Provisions common to the territories of the parties to the conflict and to occupied territories

Article 32. A protected person/s shall not have anything done to them of such a character as to cause physical suffering or extermination … the physical suffering or extermination of protected persons in their hands. This prohibition applies not only to murder, torture, corporal punishments, mutilation and medical or scientific experiments not necessitated by the medical treatment’ While popular debate remains on what constitutes a legal definition of torture (see discussion on the Torture page), the ban on corporal punishment simplifies the matter; even the most mundane physical abuse is thereby forbidden by Article 32, as a precaution against alternate definitions of torture.

The prohibition on scientific experiments was added, in part, in response to experiments by German and Japanese doctors during World War II, of whom Josef Mengele was the most infamous.

Collective punishments

Article 33. No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.
Pillage is prohibited.

Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions collective punishments are a war crime. By collective punishment, the drafters of the Geneva Conventions had in mind the reprisal killings of World Wars I and World War II. In the First World War, Germans executed Belgian villagers in mass retribution for resistance activity. In World War II, Nazis carried out a form of collective punishment to suppress resistance. Entire villages or towns or districts were held responsible for any resistance activity that took place there. Additional concern also addressed the United States’ atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which, in turn, caused death and disease to millions[citation needed] of Japanese civilians as well as their decedents[sic][citation needed]. The conventions, to counter this, reiterated the principle of individual responsibility. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Commentary to the conventions states that parties to a conflict often would resort to “intimidatory measures to terrorize the population” in hopes of preventing hostile acts, but such practices “strike at guilty and innocent alike. They are opposed to all principles based on humanity and justice.”

Additional Protocol II of 1977 explicitly forbids collective punishment. But as fewer states have ratified this protocol than GCIV, GCIV Article 33 is the one more commonly quoted.

Section III. Occupied territories

Articles 47-78 impose substantial obligations on occupying powers. As well as numerous provisions for the general welfare of the inhabitants of an occupied territory, an occupier may not forcibly deport protected persons, or deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into occupied territory (Art.49).
Article 49 – Population transfer [show]
Article 50 – Care and education of children [show]
Article 53 – Destruction of property [show]
Article 56 – Medical services [show]

Part IV. Execution of the Convention

This part contains “the formal or diplomatic provisions which it is customary to place at the end of an international Convention to settle the procedure for bringing it into effect are grouped together under this heading (1). They are similar in all four Geneva Conventions.[3]

Annexes

The ICRC commentary on the Fourth Geneva convention states that when the establishment of hospital and safety zones in occupied territories were discussed reference was made to a draft agreement and it was agreed to append it as an annex I to the Fourth Geneva Convention.[4]

The ICRC states that “the Draft Agreement has only been put forward to States as a model, but the fact that it as carefully drafted at the Diplomatic Conference, which finally adopted it, gives it a very real value. It could usefully be taken as a working basis, therefore, whenever a hospital zone is to be established.”[4]

The ICRC states that Annex II is a “…draft which, according to Article 109 (paragraph 1) of the Convention, will be applied in the absence of special agreements between the Parties, deals with the conditions for the receipt and distribution of collective relief shipments. It is based on the traditions of the International Committee of the Red Cross which submitted it, and on the experience the Committee gained during the Second World War.”[5]

Why Not Start the Geneva Conventions in the Home?

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