Rules of Surrender
Category: Human Rights | Strength: Mild | Proposed by: Separatist Peoples | Resolution link | World Assembly forum thread
Category: Human Rights | Strength: Mild | Proposed by: Separatist Peoples | Resolution link | World Assembly forum thread
Description: COGNIZANT of the World Assembly’s enduring commitment to ensuring ethical standards in warfare;
FINDING UNTENABLE the international community’s lack of just standards on the treatment of combatants laying down arms, and;
RESOLVED to rectify this oversight;
The General Assembly,
DEFINES surrender as the act of combatants capitulating to an enemy force during a time of armed conflict between nations;
DEFINES a parley as the negotiation for surrender, ceasefire, or other form of truce between representatives of parties in an armed conflict;
DEFINES a symbol of truce as an inviolable signal made by a party of the conflict for the cessation of hostilities and intention to parley, including signals of military tradition such as waving a white flag, laying down arms, or other internationally recognized symbol so associated;
DEFINES hors de combat as a state in which a combatant is immediately recognizable as unable to engage in combat, including the state of being wounded, incapacitated, unarmed, or otherwise incapable of defending themselves;
OBLIGES member states to extend the following protections and duties:
Article I. Those parties participating in a parley, under the protection of a symbol of truce, or in the process of complying with the terms of a negotiated surrender are entitled to the following:
1. Protection from assault, injury, or detainment by any combatant party to the conflict while displaying, broadcasting, or otherwise openly utilizing a symbol of truce;
2. Good faith in all negotiations relevant to the conditional surrender by combatants party to the conflict;
3. Expectation of all rights and protections afforded by World Assembly law, regardless of the status of the combatants’ nation of origin;
Article II. Those parties participating in a parley, under the protection of a symbol of truce, or in the process of complying with the terms of a negotiated surrender have the duty to:
1. Comply, in good faith, with all accepted terms of surrender, insofar as they are legal and do not constitute an outrage of personal dignity, and;
2. Refrain from perfidious activity while under the protections of a symbol of truce, including but not limited to abusing the protections of a symbol of truce, feigning surrender to take advantage of the enemy, or using a symbol of truce or parley to screen force deployment, munitions resupply, or reconnaissance operations;
Article III. Those parties accepting surrender have the duty to:
1. Immediately recognize and confer upon the surrendering party all the protections of prisoner of war status following the satisfaction of the terms of surrender, and;
2. Refrain from perfidious activity as it relates to the process of negotiating and accepting surrender;
ASSERTS that member states shall consider combatants found hors de combat to be surrendering and accordingly extend the protections outlined in Articles I and III, subject to the belligerents’ reasonable ability to comply with the duties outlined in Article II.1;
DECLARES that those belligerents in violation of the duties herein shall have their protections as outlined in Article I.1 revoked as the situation requires;
MANDATES that member states consider the deliberate and knowing violation of these Articles a war crime, and exercise their jurisdiction over violators appropriately.
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