The Geneva Conventions Detainee's Rights For Prisoners Of War

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The Geneva Conventions, universally accepted treaties in international humanitarian law, codify the protection of the customary laws of war. In doing so, they establish principles that constrain the conduct of belligerents in an armed conflict and specify the duties that those belligerents owe to persons “outside of combat,” whether civilians or prisoners of war (ICRC).
Parties to armed conflicts, including both state and non-state actors, have observed the Geneva Conventions and the protections they delineate for the past fifty years. In particular, one of the central protections provided in Common Article III of the Geneva Conventions outlines a detainee’s right to be treated as a prisoner of war unless and until his status or innocence …show more content…
It prohibits: violence to life and person; outrages upon personal dignity; and sentences and executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples (ICRC). Finally, CA3 requires that the wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for (ICRC). Along with the safeguards embodied in the Geneva Conventions, the Guantánamo prisoners, like other captured prisoners, should be protected by all other international human rights treaties to which the United States is a signatory. The decision to abandon the Geneva Conventions and other international legal requirements represents an unprecedented break with prior U.S. military policy. In previous armed conflicts, even those involving unconventional enemies, the U.S. military adhered to the Geneva Conventions, even when it had evidence that its adversaries were abusing captured U.S. soldiers (CITE). The United States did so based on the principle that it should lead through moral example as well as by military might, and it endangered its own soldiers by doing …show more content…
These fair trial guarantees are considered so essential that “willfully depriving a [prisoner of war] of the rights of a fair and regular trial prescribed in this Convention” is deemed a “grave breach” of the convention—i.e., a war crime. Not only did the United States unlawfully hold detainees without charges, but they also made use of military commissions that “[have been] internationally decried as unfair, unjust, and illegitimate” (Wright). Legal and ethical problems have marred the Guantánamo military commission trials from the beginning. For example, not only do the trials allow admission of secret evidence, hearsay, and evidence obtained through coercion in certain circumstances, but also they consistently allow obstruction of defendants’ access to counsel, and may censor testimony about torture and coercion (ACLU). These trials, which Congress authorized with the Military Commissions Act of 2009, have legitimized a system of military tribunals that fails to meet fair trial and due process standards. In contrast with the rights to a fair trial outlined within the Geneva Conventions, the United States violates the human rights of Guantánamo prisoners by holding them indefinitely without charge and withholding a fair process to determine whether their imprisonment is
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