Prisoners Of War (POWs) Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Since ancient times, the status of prisoners of war has been an indispensable aspect of warfare and their treatment has oscillated between extermination, enslavement, ransom, and practices of exchange and parole.

The ethics of war have been a hotly debated feature of international relations since the seventeenth century. Hugo Grotius raised issues regarding the ethics of war in his seminal work, The Law of War and Peace (1625). Grotius examined the laws of war from two different perspectives: jus ad bellum, the law concerning the rights of states to engage in armed conflict, and jus in bello, the law governing how wars are to be fought once they have started. Generally the status of prisoners of war is covered by the principles of jus in bello. In the same period, the development of the idea of the nation-state after the 1648 Westphalia agreement shifted the control of prisoners of war from the individual captor to the sovereign. Consequently, the economic exploitation of war captives for labor or ransom was regularized.

In the nineteenth century, the just war tradition that Grotius discussed in The Law of War and Peace began to be formally declared as positive law. In 1862, a code of rules was developed for the conduct of the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865) in accordance with President Abraham Lincoln’s directions. This code was known as General Order 100, or Lieber’s Code, and was the first formal code of law to regulate an army’s conduct toward enemy soldiers since ancient Rome. In this sense, the United States played a key role in developing humanitarian and legal doctrines concerning prisoners of war. About the same time, in 1863, the International Committee of the Red Cross was established in Geneva and an international conference adopted the Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded Armies in the Field in 1906. Furthermore, a series of international conventions were held to contribute to the development of an internationally recognized law of war. These were formulated during conferences in Brussels in 1874,The Hague in 1899 and 1907, Copenhagen in 1917, and Geneva in 1929 and 1949.

The 1929 Geneva Convention concerned the treatment of prisoners of war. It completed the rules of the previous regulations by prohibiting reprisals and collective punishment against prisoners of war. In 1949, after World War II (1939–1945), the Geneva Convention was revised and replaced with four conventions, each of which deals with different aspects of the conduct of war. The third Geneva Convention is primarily concerned with the treatment of prisoners of war. Nearly every state in the world has agreed to be bound by these conventions. Today, many provisions of the Geneva Conventions are considered as customary law.

Article 4 of the third Geneva Convention defines prisoners of war as persons who have fallen into the power of the enemy. Article 4 defines eight categories to classify prisoners of war: (1) members of the armed forces of a party to the conflict; (2) members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps; (3) members of regular armed forces who profess allegiance to a government or an authority not recognized by the detaining power; (4) persons who accompany the armed forces without actually being members; (5) members of crews, including masters, pilots, and apprentices; (6) inhabitants of a nonoccupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces; (7) persons belonging, or having belonged, to the armed forces of the occupied country; and (8) persons belonging to one of the categories enumerated in the present Article, who have been received by neutral or nonbelligerent powers on their territory and whom these powers are required to intern under international law.

Prisoners of war were defined as being in the power of the government that held them prisoner and the captor government was responsible for the safety and humane treatment of prisoners. The Geneva Conventions provide that prisoners of war must be quartered in conditions that meet the same general standards as the quarters available to the captors’ forces. Even though interrogation of prisoners is not prohibited, all forms of mental and physical pressures to elicit intelligence information are forbidden.

Recently, as experienced in the war on terror following 9/11, states have found themselves fighting with nonstate actors like international terrorist organizations. Consequently, the limits of the Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of prisoners of war have become debatable. The treatment of Taliban and al-Qaida detainees in Guantanamo Bay has triggered debates over the status of al-Qaida prisoners, and human rights organizations have questioned the U.S. government’s classification of captured fighters as unlawful combatants and therefore not entitled to protection under the Geneva Conventions.

Bibliography:

Advisory Service on International Humanitarian Law. “What Is International Humanitarian Law?” International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC). www.icrc.org/Web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/humanitarian-awfactsheet/$File/What_is_IHL.pdf.
Christopher, P. The Ethics of War and Peace: An Introduction to Legal and Moral Issues. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1994.
International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC). “International Humanitarian Law: Answers to Your Questions.” http://www.icrc.org/Web/Eng/siteeng0.nsf/iwpList104/0CA6FC89781FC094C1256DE800587554.
“The Third Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, 1949.” International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC). www.icrc. org/ihl.nsf/7c4d08d9b287a42141256739003e636b/6fef854a3517b75ac125641e004a9e68.

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