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The National Information Bureau in Aid of the Victims of Armed Conflicts*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2010

Marco Sassòli
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Extract

War separates families; it separates prisoners of war from the Power on which they depend and civilians from their country of origin or residence. Uncertainty about what has happened to a loved one who is missing on the battlefield or in enemy-controlled territory is much more difficult to bear than the news that he has been captured and interned by the enemy, or sometimes even that he is dead. Moreover, registering a captured person helps to protect him. The provisions for obtaining, collating and transmitting this type of information are a major step forward in international humanitarian law. The National Information Bureau (hereinafter NIB) plays a key role in the system laid down for this purpose by the 1949 Geneva Conventions. The NIB has the important but difficult task of obtaining and transmitting information on protected persons of the adverse party who are in the hands of the party to the conflict to which the NIB belongs.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of the Red Cross (1961 - 1997) , Volume 27 , Issue 256 , February 1987 , pp. 6 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © International Committee of the Red Cross 1987

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Footnotes

*

Expanded version of a presentation made to the Seminar on National Information Bureaux organized by the International Institute of Humanitarian Law, in conjunction with the Swedish Commission on National Information Bureaux on 30 and 31 May 1986 in Stockholm.

References

1 See Art. 14 of the Regulations respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, annexed to the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907.

2 See Art. 77 of the Convention.

3 See Art. 122 (1) of the Third Convention and Art. 136 (1) of the Fourth Convention. The text of these provisions does not speak of a “National Information Bureau” but of an “official Information Bureau”. However, as the title in the margin of these two articles is “National Bureau”, the term “National Information Bureau” will be used hereinafter to indicate the Bureaux provided for by Article 122 of the Third Convention and Article 136 of the Fourth Convention.

4 Article 122 (1), second sentence, of the Third Convention. Regarding protected civilians transferred to a neutral Power, the Fourth Convention contains no obligation to organize a NIB. But Art. 45 (3) of the Fourth Convention states that a third State which agrees to accept protected civilians is responsible for the Convention being applied to them; this includes the obligation to inform the families of what has happened to them. It is possible to assign this task to the NIB although it is not expressly mentioned as one of its tasks by the Conventions (for “supplementary Convention-based activities”, see Chapter III).

5 Jean, Pictet, ed., The Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, Commentary, vol. IV Google Scholar, Geneva Convention relative to the protection of civilian persons in time of war, ICRC, Geneva, 1958, p. 523, and vol. III Google Scholar, Geneva Convention relative to the treatment of prisoners of war, ICRC, Geneva, 1960, p. 574.Google Scholar

6 See Art. 16 (1) and (2) of the First Convention and Art. 19 (1) and (2) of the Second Convention.

7 See Art. 16 (3) of the First Convention and Art. 19 (3) of the Second Convention.

8 See Art. 17 of the First Convention and Art. 20 of the Second Convention.

9 See Art. 122 (4), (5) and (6) of the Third Convention.

10 See Art. 119 (2) of the Third Convention.

11 See Art. 94 of the Third Convention.

12 See Art. 120 (2) of the Third Convention.

13 Art. 136 (2) of the Fourth Convention specifies the persons involved. It should be noted that this article was placed, at the express request of the ICRC, in Section V and not in Section IV of Part III of the Fourth Convention. It therefore applies not only to civilian internees but to all persons protected by the Fourth Convention.

14 See Art. 138 (1) and (2) of the Fourth Convention.

15 See Art. 136 (2) of the Fourth Convention.

16 See Art. 139 of the Fourth Convention.

17 See Art. 130 (3) of the Fourth Convention.

18 See Art. 50 (4) of the Fourth Convention. The NIB must have a branch office in territories occupied by the Power to which it belongs, if only to carry out this task. But such an office is usually also necessary in order to obtain information on protected persons detained in an occupied territory by the Power to which the NIB belongs.

19 See Art. 17 (1) of the Third Convention.

20 See Art. 17 (4) of the Third Convention.

21 See Art. 31 of the Fourth Convention.

22 Except that on children in occupied territories, which is provided for in Art. 50 (4) of the Fourth Convention; this information should probably not be forwarded automatically, but merely stored and thus make it possible to reply to requests.

23 The Third Convention refers to a “Central Prisoners of War Information Agency” (Art. 123) and the Fourth Convention refers to a “Central Information Agency for Protected Persons” (Art. 140). As the work of these two agencies is always, in practice, entrusted to the CTA, a permanent institution which is a department of the ICRC in Geneva, we will hereinafter speak of the CTA.

24 See Art. 122 (3) of the Third Convention and Art. 137 of the Fourth Convention. If the NIB must choose between two Protecting Powers because a civilian has a country of origin other than his country of residence or because a prisoner of war depends on a Power other than his country of origin, it should make its choice on the basis of the CTA's criteria as set out in notes 25 and 26.

25 Art. 140 (2) of the Fourth Convention. If a civilian's country of origin and country of residence are not the same, the CTA forwards the information to one of the two countries or to both. It chooses between these countries according to the interests of the protected person and bearing in mind that it is above all for the family that the information is forwarded (see Pictet, , op., cit., vol. IV, p. 530).Google Scholar

26 See Art. 123 (2) of the Third Convention. In practice, if the Power on which the prisoner depends is not his country of origin, the CTA will not transmit information to the latter unless the prisoner consents, as this may inform that government that its citizen has enlisted in the armed forces of a foreign country.

27 Art. 137 (2) of the Fourth Convention.

28 Art. 140 (2) of the Fourth Convention.

29 See Art. 122 (4) of the Third Convention and Art. 138 (1) of the Fourth Convention.

30 See Art. 122 (7) of the Third Convention and Art. 137 (1) of the Fourth Convention.

31 Art. 122 (7) of the Third Convention.

32 See Pictet, , op. cit., vol. IV, pp. 530/531.Google Scholar

33 See Final Record of the Diplomatic Conference of Geneva of 1949, Federal Political Department, Berne, 1950 and 1951, vol. III, p. 91.

34 See Art. 74 and 124 of the Third Convention and Art. 110 and 141 of the Fourth Convention.

35 See Art. 16 (3) of the Universal Postal Convention in its 1984 version.

36 See Art. 64, para. 3, of the Telegraph Regulations (revised in Geneva, 1958) annexed to the International Telecommunication Convention. All telegraph services are obliged to accept these telegrams bearing the prefix RCT (see the 1977 Orange Book of the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee of the International Telecommunication Union, Vol. II.3, nos. A 287–297).

37 See Art. 75 of the Third Convention and Art. 111 of the Fourth Convention.

38 Visits provided for by Art. 126 of the Third Convention and Art. 143 of the Fourth Convention.

39 See, for example, Djurovic, Gradimir, L'Agence centrale de Recherches du Comité international de la Croix-Rouge, Genève, 1981, pp. 254, 257–264 Google Scholar and, more particularly, ICRC, Annual Report: 1950, p. 51 Google Scholar, 1951, pp. 55–56; 1952, p. 52; 1956, p. 26; 1961, p. 28; 1963, pp. 26, 27, 36; 1965, pp. 18, 44; 1967, pp. 7, 25; 1968, p. 30; 1969, p. 27; 1970, pp. 38, 75; 1971, p. 57; 1973, pp. 12, 50; 1977, p. 36; 1978, pp. 18, 27; 1982, p. 31; 1984, p. 14.

40 In peacetime, this person need not deal full-time with that task.

41 Thus, Resolution XIV adopted by the Twenty-fifth International Conference of the Red Cross with regard to NIBs recommends that States “invite their Red Cross or Red Crescent Society as well as the ICRC to lend such assistance needed to establish the National Information Bureau”.

42 As well as the neutral Powers mentioned in Article 4.B (2) and 122 (1) of the Third Convention.

43 In the case of a NIB created by a neutral Power, they are of course not enemy aliens, but combatants who depend on one of the States party to the conflict.

44 See Art. 30 (4), 54 (2), 68 (2), 77 (1) of the Third Convention and 91 (4), 113 (1) and 129 (3) of the Fourth Convention.

45 See Art. 104 and 107 of the Third Convention and Art. 43 (2), Art. 71 (2) and (3) and Art. 75 of the Fourth Convention.

46 See Art. 70 of the Third Convention.

47 See Art. 106 of the Fourth Convention.

48 See above, Chapter II, 2.1.

49 See Art. 71 of the Third Convention.

50 See Art. 107 of the Fourth Convention.

51 See Art. 25 of the Fourth Convention.

52 Or the Power in whose hands the persons protected by the Fourth Convention are.

53 The NIB is entitled to exemption from postal dues under Art. 16 (1) and (2) of the 1984 version of the Universal Postal Convention.

54 See Art. 33 and 78 of Protocol I.

55 As provided for in Art. 122(3) and Art. 123 (2) of the Third Convention and Art. 137 (1) and 140 (2) of the Fourth Convention.

56 Even in this case, families naturally remain entitled to correspond directly with the CTA.

57 Art. 26 of the Fourth Convention.

58 Having two files does not bring with it the risk of gaps or overlapping with regard to registered persons, because it is always possible to know whether a person to be registered or traced is a compatriot of the NIB or an enemy alien. And should the territory of the State to which the NIB belongs be completely occupied, the NIB will often have to give the Occupying Power information it has on the latter's citizens, whereas it must retain the file dealing with its compatriots.

59 It should, however, be remembered that activities in aid of military internees, i.e. combatants in a conflict between third countries who are interned by a neutral Power, are activities assigned to a NIB by the Conventions; see Art. 122 (1) in conjunction with Art. 4.B (2) of the Third Convention.

60 See above, Chapter III, 2.2.

61 In this conclusion, the term “Power of Origin” is used to indicate the Power on which the prisoners of war depend or their country of origin; for protected civilians, it means their country of origin or of residence.