Abstract
Although combatants and other persons taking a direct part in hostilities are military objectives and may be attacked, the moment such persons surrender or are rendered hors de combat, they become entitled to protection. That protection is provided for in Common Article 3 and the First and Third Geneva Conventions (GC) relating to the treatment of the ‘wounded, sick and shipwrecked’ and ‘prisoners of war’ (POW) respectively; supplemented (for international conflicts) by Additional Protocol I. These conventions are binding as treaty law, but the key provisions are in any event customary in nature. Humanitarian treatment of prisoners of war was not emphasized until the second half of the nineteenth century. The Hague Regulations did not prevent many of the hardships that prisoners suffered during World War I; they did provide an enlightened basis for regulation. Besides the failure to anticipate the problems that arose in World War I, the chief defect of the regulations were a lack of specificity and the absence of any enforcement procedures. After the First World War, a conference at Geneva adopted new, more elaborate rules. Like the prior rules, the new rules did not anticipate the new modes of warfare adopted in the Would War that followed their acceptance.
Published Version
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