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The Geneva Conventions and medical personnel in the field*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2010

J. Miné
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Extract

To speak of the Geneva Conventions and medical personnel in the field is truly to return to the very source of international humanitarian law, for the event which led to the birth of that body of law was the tragedy suffered at the battle of Solferino in 1859 by the wretched masses of wounded soldiers on both sides who received no care whatever.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of the Red Cross (1961 - 1997) , Volume 27 , Issue 257 , April 1987 , pp. 180 - 191
Copyright
Copyright © International Committee of the Red Cross 1987

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Footnotes

*

Lecture delivered during the “National Instruction Days” of the National Association of the Reserve Officers of the technical and administrative Corps of the French Armed Forces Medical Services (Paris, february 1986) devoted to the International Red Cross and the Geneva Conventions.

References

1 Article 8 of Protocol I stipulates, inter alia, that “(c) “medical personnel” means those persons assigned, by a Party to the conflict, exclusively to the medical purposes enumerated under sub-paragraph (e) or to the administration of medical units or to the operation or administration of medical transports. Such assignments may be either permanent or temporary. The term includes:

(i) medical personnel of a Party to the conflict, whether military or civilian, including those described in the First and Second Conventions, and those assigned to civil defence organizations;

(ii) medical personnel of National Red Cross (Red Crescent, Red Lion and Sun) Societies and other national voluntary aid societies duly recognized and authorized by a Party to the conflict;

(iii) medical personnel of medical units or medical transports described in Article 9, paragraph 2;

(e) “medical units” means establishments and other units, whether military or civilian, organized for medical purposes, namely the search for, collection, transportation, diagnosis or treatment—including first-aid treatment—of the wounded, sick and shipwrecked, or for the prevention of disease. The term includes, for example, hospitals and other similar units, blood transfusion centres, preventive medicine centres and institutes, medical depots and the medical and pharmaceutical stores of such units. Medical units may be fixed or mobile, permanent or temporary;…”

2 Article 22 — The following conditions shall not be considered as depriving a medical unit or establishment of the protection guaranteed by Article 19:

(1) That the personnel of the unit or establishment are armed, and that they use the arms in their own defence, or in that of the wounded and sick in their charge.

(2) That in the absence of armed orderlies, the unit or establishment is protected by a picket or by sentries or by an escort.

(3) That small arms and ammunition taken from the wounded and sick and not yet handed to the proper service, are found in the unit or establishment.

(4) That personnel and material of the veterinary service are found in the unit or establishment, without forming an integral part thereof.

(5) That the humanitarian activities of medical units and establishments or of their personnel extend to the care of civilian wounded or sick.

3 Article 12 — Members of the armed forces and other persons mentioned in the following Article, who are wounded or sick, shall be respected and protected in all circumstances.

They shall be treated humanely and cared for by the Party to the conflict in whose power they may be, without any adverse distinction founded on sex, race, nationality, religion, political opinons, or any other similar criteria. Any attempts upon their lives, or violence to their persons, shall be strictly prohibited; in particular, they shall not be murdered or exterminated, subjected to torture or to biological experiments; they shall not willfully be left without medical assistance and care, nor shall conditions exposing them to contagion or infection be created.

Only urgent medical reasons will authorize priority in the order of treatment to be administered…

4 “In time of peace, the High Contracting Parties and, after the outbreak of hostilities, the Parties to the conflict, may establish in their own territory and, if the need arises, in occupied areas, hospital zones and localities so organized as to protect the wounded and sick from the effects of war, as well as the personnel entrusted with the organization and administration of these zones and localities and with the care of the persons therein assembled.”

5 Protocol II, Article 10, par. 4.