Legal Status of Desertion in Cases of War Crime
Under international law, ultimate "duty" or "responsibility" is not necessarily always to a "Government" nor to "a superior," as seen in the fourth of the Nuremberg Principles, which states:
"The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him."
Although a soldier under direct orders, in battle, is normally not subject to prosecution for war crimes, there is legal language supporting a soldier's refusal to commit such crimes, in military contexts outside of immediate peril: In 1998, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights document called “Conscientious objection to military service, United Nations Commission on Human Rights resolution 1998/77” recognized that “persons performing military service may develop conscientious objections” while performing military service.
This opens the possibility of desertion as a response to cases in which the soldier is required to perform crimes against humanity as part of his mandatory military duty. This principle was tested unsuccessfully in the case of U.S. Army deserter Jeremy Hinzman, which resulted in a Canadian federal court rejecting refugee status to a deserter invoking Nuremberg Article IV.
Read more about this topic: Desertion
Famous quotes containing the words legal, status, desertion, cases, war and/or crime:
“There are ... two minimum conditions necessary and sufficient for the existence of a legal system. On the one hand those rules of behavior which are valid according to the system’s ultimate criteria of validity must be generally obeyed, and on the other hand, its rules of recognition specifying the criteria of legal validity and its rules of change and adjudication must be effectively accepted as common public standards of official behavior by its officials.”
—H.L.A. (Herbert Lionel Adolphus)
“As a work of art it has the same status as a long conversation between two not very bright drunks.”
—Clive James (b. 1939)
“Bachelors alone can travel freely, and without any twinges of their consciences touching desertion of the fire-side.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“In cases of defense ‘tis best to weigh
The enemy more mighty than he seems.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Only the person who has experienced light and darkness, war and peace, rise and fall, only that person has truly experienced life.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“Each man’s private conscience ought to be a nice little self-registering thermometer: he ought to carry his moral code incorruptibly and explicitly within himself, and not care what the world thinks. The mass of human beings, however, are not made that way; and many people have been saved from crime or sin by the simple dislike of doing things they would not like to confess ...”
—Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)