Humanitarian Provisions Research Articles

Comparative Study of Categories Protected During Armed Conflict in Islamic Law and International Humanitarian Law

Islam has emerged in the Arabian Peninsula as a universal human religion that advocates virtue, humanity, and compassion. Isalm has established detailed rules for protecting civilians and civilian targets during armed conflicts. The Islamic Shari'a rules recommended compassion for enemies, not over-killing them, and refraining from any act contrary to the provisions of the Islamic Shari'a. Islamic Shari'a, through its sources, such as the Holy Quran and the Prophet's Sunna, has established rules protecting the victims of war to decide on humanitarian provisions that are already considered for all humanitarian principles relating to the protection of victims of armed conflict and civilians who are not involved in such conflicts, i.e., non-combatants in general. Since the end of the nineteenth century and during the twentieth century, after World and regional wars have caused terrible humanitarian disasters from killing, displacement, torture, and other inhumane treatment, the world's peoples and States have been alerted to the need to establish rules protecting specific groups during armed conflicts, culminating in the international conventions, most notably the Hague Conventions 1899-1907, the four Geneva Conven Conventions of 1949 and the two Protocols 1977 annexed to it. This paper addresses “the categories Protected during armed conflicts in the Islamic Shari'a and those protected in international humanitarian law by reviewing what has been recognized in the Islamic Shari'a for the protection of specific categories during armed conflict and what has been dealt with in the international conventions.

Africa and the Domestic Implementation of the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols: Problems and Solutions

AbstractThe Geneva Conventions have achieved universal ratification, and Additional Protocols I and II are binding on all African states except Eritrea and Somalia; however, their observance in African conflicts is flawed and inconsistent. From deliberate attacks on civilian populations to abduction and hostage-taking, humanitarian rules are openly flouted. Through an extensive assessment of the domestic measures required to implement the Geneva Conventions and Protocols in Africa, this article identifies the current level of implementation, existing gaps and possible non-legal factors that impact respect for the instruments in African conflicts. Violations are often associated with historical, political, religious and social factors that tainted the instruments’ lofty provisions and bequeathed a legacy that challenges the obligation to respect. Additionally, continuous political and religious struggles and the search for identity and relevance have displaced the ideals of the instruments’ humanitarian provisions. Reversing this trend requires an approach that appeals to and engages the continent beyond the traditional argument of obligation to respect.

Life Lived in Relief: Humanitarian Predicaments and Palestinian Refugee Politics by Ilana Feldman

Reviewed by: Life Lived in Relief: Humanitarian Predicaments and Palestinian Refugee Politics by Ilana Feldman Michael Vicente Pérez Ilana Feldman, Life Lived in Relief: Humanitarian Predicaments and Palestinian Refugee Politics. Oakland: University of California Press, 2018. 336 pp. Life Lived in Relief is Feldman's third monograph and represents the culmination of over a decade of research. Impressive in its scope and depth, the book is one of few scholarly works committed to understanding the predicaments of Palestinian displacement and humanitarianism over 70 years. There is, of course, good reason for this. Numbering over five million, Palestinian refugees today are anything but a homogenous community. The diversity of Palestinian exile notwithstanding, Life Lived in Relief successfully renders a coherent framework for thinking across what Feldman calls the "longue durée of Palestinian displacement." Both a historical work of the archives and an ethnographic narrative of encounter, Feldman situates the dilemmas, contradictions, and complexities of humanitarian practice and the political engagements of Palestinian refugees within the single frame of the humanitarian condition. This is not to say that Feldman is offering a unitary account of Palestinian life under humanitarianism. There is no essential Palestinian experience in this book. Rather, Feldman takes the contentious practices of humanitarians and what she calls the discordant politics of Palestinian refugees as the analytical center of exile. The result is nothing short of an extraordinary tome rich in detailed accounts and profound analysis. Life Lived in Relief covers an extraordinary range of historical and contemporary events in accessible prose and in exceptional detail. Structurally, the text is divided into two parts that consider two inextricable sides of the Palestinian predicament: "The Humanitarian Situation" and "The Humanitarian Condition." In the first part of the book ("The [End Page 1629] Humanitarian Situation"), Feldman examines humanitarian responses to Palestinian displacement paying close attention to "the development and uses of categories, practices, and subjectivities" (30). Consisting of three chapters, this section explores several contentious issues surrounding the determination of refugee status, the distribution of aid, and the purpose of humanitarianism. In each case, Feldman offers nuanced accounts of the difficulties and power relations inherent to humanitarian practice. Take, for example, the matter of refugee status (Chapter 2). The original definition of a Palestinian refugee was a "working definition" designed for UNRWA that linked the fact of displacement with the necessity of aid. This meant that the determination of refugee status was inseparable from the determination of need. For humanitarian workers charged with addressing the crisis, Feldman shows how the question of eligibility became a critical source of power. Exercised through seemingly benign practices like the management of registries, humanitarians engaged in regulatory techniques designed to discipline and control refugee conduct. In its efforts to purge fraudulent claimants from the registry, for example, UNRWA workers conducted intrusive investigations that not only generated suspicion within the community, but also turned the distribution of aid into a punitive form of control. Thus, as Feldman documents, UNRWA workers cut rations for Palestinian families under investigation until they could demonstrate their status as "genuine refugees" in need of continuing assistance. The power behind humanitarian provisions was not confined to the politics of registration. In another compelling example (Chapter 3), Feldman considers how humanitarians used rations to regulate Palestinians' involvement in emergent economies of aid. According to the archives, UNRWA discovered that Palestinians were using aid as a source of income or in ways that conflicted with humanitarian purposes. Thus, in a letter sent to the UNRWA director from the Lebanese office, Palestinians were accused of "selling huts to outsiders [and] taking water to their private houses from the main point" (73). In order to regain control of the situation, the UNRWA official requested permission "to cut progressively the rations of adults if they refuse to obey our instructions" (73). As Feldman documents, the director complied with the request and some untold number of Palestinian families were subjected to the reduction or suspension of humanitarian rations. The preceding examples occurred in the early period of Palestinian displacement. Although power has remained central to humanitarian [End Page 1630] practice, Feldman reveals that Palestinians have been anything but passive objects. On the contrary, Palestinian refugees have constantly...

The Saga Of Domestic Workers: A Socio-Legal Overview

Domestic workers constitute a lion’s share of the total work force globally as well as nationally. Statistics reveal that their numbers have been steadily increasing throughout the years. Despite their majority, the conventional attitude of the society as well as the laws, undervaluing their efforts is of major concern. The rights and dignity available to any other category of workers are denied to them. A few national legislation across the world directly address this issue. The Convention on the Rights of Domestic Workers ignited an international interest in securing the position of Domestic workers. The convention is colored by fundamental and humanitarian provisions guaranteeing rights to Domestic workers. India has not ratified the convention so far. This paper is an inquiry into the global status of Domestic workers and the legal efforts to make visible this ‘invisible class’ with special emphasis to India.

Immigrants from the Pacific: “Drain on the Economy” or Active Participation in the Labor Force?

In May 2008, a major controversy about the participation of Pacific Islanders and their descendants in the New Zealand economy was initiated by the release of a report claiming they were “a drain on the economy,” were becoming an “underclass” and displayed “significant and enduring underachievement.” This report received considerable media attention at the same time that the first results of New Zealand's Longitudinal Immigration Survey (LisNZ) were released. The results of the LisNZ received much less attention in the media, even though they contained considerable information about the participation of Pacific migrants in the labor force. This paper reviews some of the findings contained in the May 2008 release of LisNZ data as well as some additional information relating to the larger group of Pacific migrants who entered under all categories of approval spanning skilled migration, business migration, family sponsorship, humanitarian provisions, as well as the special Pacific categories. Three simple indices of labor market participation are used to compare migrants entering under the special Pacific categories with Pacific migrants who gained approval for residence under the other categories. Greater attention is then focussed on the labor market participation of three groups of Pacific migrants – Fiji Indians, Samoans and Tongans. Fiji Indians are included because they are the largest single group of immigrants from a Pacific country in the LisNZ survey database. The evidence generated by the first wave interviews of the LisNZ does not support an argument that Pacific migrants are failing to gain employment in New Zealand and thus becoming a “drain on the economy” or that “Polynesian immigration fuels an underclass.” On the three measures of labor force participation there were generally small differences between the Pacific migrant groups, however these were defined, and the rest of the migrants interviewed in the LisNZ. There were some expected differences in occupation distributions, education levels, and ways of obtaining work in New Zealand. But these differences are not indications of “underachievement” or any systemic failure of policies regulating immigration from the Pacific.

UN Peacekeeping Operations: Applicability of International Humanitarian Law and Responsibility for Operations-Related Damage

In the five decades that followed the Korea operation, where for the first time the United Nations commander agreed, at the request of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), to abide by the humanitarian provisions of the Geneva Conventions, few UN operations lent themselves to the applicability of international humanitarian law

The Laws of War and Women's Human Rights

This is a review of historical developments in international criminal law leading up to the inclusion of rape as a “crime against humanity” in the current war crimes tribunal for the ex-Yugoslavia. In addition to the need to understand the specificity of events and their impact on women, the laws of war must also be understood in their specificity and the ways in which even the humanitarian provisions of those laws privilege military needs.

The United States, self-determination and the struggle against Bolshevism in the Eastern Baltic region, 1918–1920

Three times in the twentieth century the recession and reassertion of Russian and Soviet power along the Baltic Sea have weighed the balance between American idealistic principles and United States strategic interests, between devotion to the rights of small nations and attention to the needs of great powers. While scholarly surveys of the Baltic states in international affairs have noted some contradictions and compromises in American decision-making, there has been no detailed examination of the first test of American policy, during the Russian Civil War of 1917-1920, when President Woodrow Wilson articulated ideals that have served as touchstones for the rest of the century.1 In the absence of a thorough study, many scholars have held that Wilsonian policy was either forthrightly for the principle of self-determination or solidly for the territorial integrity of the former Russian Empire.2 However, close analysis of the papers of American officials reveals that they were often ambivalent about the two principles, that they divided into opposing factions at the Paris Peace Conference, and that their decisions to support Baltic nationalists and anti-Bolshevik Russians were influenced less by abstract ideals than by desires to contain Bolshevism or overthrow the Soviet government. Although public opposition made direct military intervention against Bolshevism unthinkable and Congress constricted the availability of funds, President Wilson and his advisors did not resign themselves to a policy of passive nonintervention. American officers and diplomats pursued a range of limited and indirect efforts to influence developments in the Baltic region, including delivering humanitarian provisions to anti-Bolshevik Russian forces, withholding such supplies from Bolshevikcontrolled territories, participating in an undeclared blockade of Soviet Russia, approving the retention of German troops on the eastern front

India and Pakistan—Vietnam—Yemen—ICRC President's Voyage in Central America

Application of the Geneva Conventions. — With the end of the Indo-Pakistan conflict, one can observe with satisfaction that the two parties, in accordance with their undertaking, applied the Geneva Conventions and accepted the ICRC's intervention. Humanitarian provisions were thus generally effective on either side of the lines.

Response to the ICRC appeal for respect to be given to the rules of humanity in Viet Nam

It will be recalled that the International Committee of the Red Cross addressed to the Governments of the Republic of Viet Nam, of the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam, as well as of the United States of America an appeal urging them to respect, in present conditions, the humanitarian provisions of the Geneva Conventions to which these States have acceded. This appeal was also sent to the National Liberation Front. In its number of September 1965, the International Review published the replies received by the ICRC. The one dated August 10, 1965, emanated from the United States Government and the other of August 11, 1965, was sent by the Government of the Republic of Viet Nam.