A colleague of mine suggested that the Fourth Geneva Convention may protect wounded insurgents even if their armed forces don’t comply with the laws of war:
Article 3
In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:
1. Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely . . . .
To this end, the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:
(a) Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; . . .
2. The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for.
This does seem to provide a stronger case than the other provisions I cited in the post below, because it doesn’t directly require that the armed group to which the wounded person belongs comply with the laws of war; but even this provision doesn’t strike me as applicable here.
The whole question is whether a wounded enemy soldier is now “taking no active part in the hostilities” — though he had been fighting minutes ago — and is “hors de combat,” which is to say out of combat. If the enemy forces have indeed continued shooting when grievously wounded (which is not a violation of the laws of war), or have pretended to be out of combat and continued shooting (which is a violation), or have pretended to be friendly soldiers and then attacked (which is also a violation), or have hidden explosives under corpses (which likely is perfidious action, and thus a violation, though I’m not sure), then this might make it quite reasonable for our forces to doubt that the enemy soldier is indeed now “taking no active part in the hostilities.”
Comments are closed.