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Posted 8:42 PM
by Mary
Geneva Conventions are obscure or ineffective-poll
Source:
Reuters By Olesya Dmitracova
LONDON, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Sixty years after the Geneva Conventions laid down laws to protect civilians during war, most people in violent countries either do not know they exist or say they do not work.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) published its poll on Thursday ahead of next week's 60th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions which bind 194 countries to basic humanitarian principles during armed conflict.
The four conventions deal with the treatment of wounded members of armed forces in the field and at sea, the treatment of prisoners of war and the protection of civilians.
"People in war-affected countries want to see better respect for and implementation of the law," the ICRC's director for international law, Philip Spoerri, said in a statement.
Less than half of 4,000 respondents -- in Afghanistan, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Georgia, Haiti, Lebanon, Liberia and the Philippines -- knew such rules existed.
Half of those people who had heard of the Geneva Conventions believed they did limit civilian suffering in war.
Jakob Kellenberger, President of the Geneva-based ICRC, said earlier the conventions remain relevant, preventing humanitarian disasters from Darfur to Sri Lanka from turning out even worse, but they need to be updated to reflect the fact that most conflicts now take place inside states rather than between them. [ID:nL5558524]
Around 75 percent of the respondents said there should be limits to what combatants are allowed to do, with 10 percent saying there should be no such limits and the rest undecided.
The vast majority disapproved of attacks on enemy fighters in densely populated villages or towns where many civilians would likely be killed, and as many said attacks on health workers and ambulances are never acceptable. Virtually everyone agreed that all wounded or sick should have the right to health care during an armed conflict.
Labels: geneva conventions
Posted 9:50 AM
by Mary
UN torture envoy: US must prosecute Bush lawyers
Associated Press
Published: Friday April 24, 2009
The U.S. is obligated by a United Nations convention to prosecute Bush administration lawyers who allegedly drafted policies that approved the use of harsh interrogation tactics against terrorism suspects, the U.N.'s top anti-torture envoy said Friday.
Earlier this week, President Barack Obama left the door open to prosecuting Bush administration officials who devised the legal authority for gruesome terror-suspect interrogations. He had previously absolved CIA officers from prosecution.
Manfred Nowak, who serves as a U.N. special rapporteur in Geneva, said Washington is obligated under the U.N. Convention against Torture to prosecute U.S. Justice Department officials who wrote memos that defined torture in the narrowest way in order to justify and legitimize it, and who assured CIA officials that their use of questionable tactics was lega
Labels: geneva conventions, torture
Posted 10:06 AM
by Mary
Red Cross Described 'Torture' at CIA Jails
Secret Report Implies That U.S. Violated International Law
By Joby Warrick, Peter Finn and Julie Tate
Washington Post Monday, March 16, 2009; Page A01
The International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a secret report that the Bush administration's treatment of al-Qaeda captives "constituted torture," a finding that strongly implied that CIA interrogation methods violated international law, according to newly published excerpts from the long-concealed 2007 document.
The report, an account alleging physical and psychological brutality inside CIA "black site" prisons, also states that some U.S. practices amounted to "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." Such maltreatment of detainees is expressly prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.
The findings were based on an investigation by ICRC officials, who were granted exclusive access to the CIA's "high-value" detainees after they were transferred in 2006 to the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The 14 detainees, who had been kept in isolation in CIA prisons overseas, gave remarkably uniform accounts of abuse that included beatings, sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures and, in some cases, waterboarding, or simulating drowning.
At least five copies of the report were shared with the CIA and top White House officials in 2007 but barred from public release by ICRC guidelines intended to preserve the humanitarian group's strict policy of neutrality in conflicts. A copy of the report was obtained by Mark Danner, a journalism professor and author who published extensive excerpts in the April 9 edition of the New York Review of Books, released yesterday. He did not say how he obtained the repo
Labels: CIA, geneva conventions, red cross, torture
