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 of, legal, status, desertion, cases, war and/or crime:
“In the course of the actual attainment of selfish ends—an attainment conditioned in this way by universality—there is formed a system of complete interdependence, wherein the livelihood, happiness, and legal status of one man is interwoven with the livelihood, happiness, and rights of all. On this system, individual happiness, etc. depend, and only in this connected system are they actualized and secured.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)
“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)
“The world men inhabit ... is rather bleak. It is a world full of doubt and confusion, where vulnerability must be hidden, not shared; where competition, not co-operation, is the order of the day; where men sacrifice the possibility of knowing their own children and sharing in their upbringing, for the sake of a job they may have chosen by chance, which may not suit them and which in many cases dominates their lives to the exclusion of much else.”
—Anna Ford (b. 1943)
“One must know that war is common, justice is strife, and everything happens according to strife and necessity.”
—Heraclitus (c. 535–475 B.C.)
“Crime and bad lives are the measure of a State’s failure, all crime in the end is the crime of the community.”
—H.G. (Herbert George)