[Source: Memorandum from the International Committee of the Red Cross to the States Parties to the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949 concerning the conflict between Islamic Republic of Iran and Republic of Iraq, Geneva, May 7, 1983]
Since the outbreak of the conflict between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Republic of Iraq, the highest authorities of both these States parties to the Geneva Conventions have several times confirmed their intention to honour their international obligations deriving from those treaties.
Despite these assurances, the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has had a delegation in the Islamic Republic of Iran and in the Republic of Iraq from the very start of the hostilities in 1980, has encountered all kinds of obstacles in the exercise of the mandate devolving on it under the Geneva Conventions, despite its repeated representations and the considerable resources which it has deployed in the field.
Faced with grave and repeated breaches of international humanitarian law which it has itself witnessed or of which it has established the existence through reliable and verifiable sources,
and having found it impossible to induce the parties to put a stop to such violations,
the ICRC feels in duty bound to make these violations public in this present Appeal to States and its attached memorandum.
The ICRC wishes to stress that, pursuant to its invariable and published policy, it undertakes such overt steps only in very exceptional circumstances, when the breaches involved are major and repeated, when confidential representations have not succeeded in putting an end to such violations, when its delegates have witnessed the violations with their own eyes (or when the existence and the extent of those breaches have been established by reliable and verifiable sources) and, finally, when such a step is in the interest of the victims who must as a matter of urgency be protected by the Conventions.
The ICRC makes this solemn Appeal to all States parties to the Geneva Conventions to ask them – pursuant to the commitment they have undertaken according to Article 1 of the Conventions to ensure respect of the Conventions – to make every effort so that:
The ICRC fervently hopes that its voice will be heeded and that the vital importance of its mission and of the rule of international humanitarian law will be apparent to all and fully recognized, in the transcending interest of humanity and as a first step towards the restoration of peace.
According to the Iranian authorities they today hold 45,000 to 50,000 prisoners of war. The Third Geneva Convention confers on those prisoners a legal status entitling them to specific rights and guarantees.
One of the essential provisions of the Conventions demands that each prisoner of war be enabled, immediately upon his capture or at the latest one week after his arrival in a camp, to send his family and the Central Prisoners-of-War Agency a card informing them of his captivity and his state of health.
This operation proceeded normally at the beginning. However, the obstacle which the Iranian authorities constantly put in the way of the ICRC delegates’ work led to a progressive decline in that activity from May 1982 onwards.
At present the ICRC has registered only 30,000 prisoners of war, leaving 15,000 to 20,000 families in the agony of uncertainty, which is precisely what the imperative provisions of the Conventions are designed to avoid.
The considerable delay and the holding up of mail, every aspect of which is regulated by the Convention, aggravate the families’ worries and the prisoners’ distress.
Although thousands of messages are sent each month by Iraqi families through the ICRC and hence to the Iranian military authorities for censorship and distribution, a great many prisoners of war complain they have received no mail for many months. The ICRC is no longer able to exercise any supervision of the distribution and collection of family messages.
The Third Geneva Convention stipulates that ICRC delegates shall be allowed, with no limitation of time or frequency, to visit all places where prisoners of war are held and to interview the prisoners without witnesses. In the Islamic Republic of Iran this essential provision is being violated.
The ICRC has lost track of the interned population since May 1982: only 7,000 prisoners of war have benefited from regular visits by the ICRC.
Many places of internment have been opened since then but the ICRC has never had access to them and has not even been notified of their existence.
Consequently the ICRC can no longer monitor the material living conditions and treatment of the Iraqi prisoners of war interned in Iran.
Although there did occur at the end of 1982 one truncated visit during which the delegates were not permitted to interview prisoners without witnesses, and two spot visits in March 1983, the latest complete visit to a prisoner-of-war camp consistent with treaty rules dates back to May 1982.
The fact that it has not had access to the great majority of prisoners of war for more than a year, and the systematic concealment of some categories of prisoners of war – high ranking officers, foreigners enlisted in the Iraqi army – gives the ICRC cause to be profoundly concerned about the plight of those prisoners.
In a general way, the Iraqi prisoners of war, right from the time of their capture, are subjected to various forms of ideological and political pressure – intimidation, outrages against their honour, forced participation in mass demonstrations decrying the Iraqi Government and authorities – which constitute a serious attack on their moral integrity and dignity. Such treatment, which runs counter to the spirit and the letter of the Convention, has gone from bad to worse since September 1981.
Last but not least, concordant information from various sources and witnesses confirm the ICRC’s certainty that some camps have been the scene of tragic events leading to the death or injury of prisoners of war.
The Third Geneva Convention states that “parties to the conflict are bound to send back to their own country, regardless of numbers or rank, seriously wounded and seriously sick prisoners of war, after having cared for them until they are fit to travel...”. Although there have been three repatriation operations – on 16 June, 25 August 1981 and 30 April 1983 – and despite the constitution of a mixed medical commission, most of the severely wounded and sick prisoners of war have not been repatriated, as required by the Convention.
So far the ICRC has registered and visited at regular intervals some 6,800 prisoners.
Registration and capture cards
In general, these prisoners of war are registered by the ICRC within the time limit specified by the Convention.
Correspondence between prisoners of war and their families
After some initial difficulties, the exchange of messages between prisoners and their families has been satisfactory for the last several months.
ICRC visits to prisoner-of-war camps
Every single month since October 1980, ICRC delegates have visited prisoners of war in a manner consistent with Article 126 of the Third Geneva Convention, which specifies inter alia that the delegates shall be enabled freely to interview prisoners of their choice without witnesses.
However, in the course of its activities in the Republic of Iraq, the ICRC realised that the Iraqi authorities have never fully respected the Third Geneva Convention.
The ICRC has established with certainty that many Iranian prisoners of war have been concealed from it since the beginning of the conflict. The ICRC has drawn up lists containing several hundred names of Iranian prisoners of war incarcerated in places of detention to which the ICRC has never had access. Although several dozen such prisoners have been returned to the camps and registered by the ICRC no acceptable answer has been found to the problem of concealed prisoners.
Treatment of prisoners of war
In the prisoner-of-war camps the ICRC has noted some appreciable improvement in material conditions. On the other hand, ill-treatment has frequently been observed and on at least three occasions disorders have been brutally quelled, causing the death of two prisoners of war and injury to many others.
Severely injured and sick prisoners of war
The Third Geneva Convention states that “parties to the conflict are bound to send back to their own country, regardless of numbers or rank, seriously wounded and seriously sick prisoners of war, after having cared for them until they are fit to travel...”. Although there have been four repatriation operations – on 16 June, 25 August and 15 December 1981 and on 1 May 1983 – and despite the constitution of a mixed medical commission, most of the severely wounded and sick prisoners of war have not been repatriated, as required by the Convention.
Tens of thousands of Iranian civilians from the Khuzistan and the Kurdistan border regions [on Iranian territory], residing in areas under Iraqi army control, have been deported to the Republic of Iraq, in grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
The ICRC delegates have had only restricted access to a few of these people.
In the prisoner-of-war camps the ICRC has registered more than a thousand civilians, including women and old men arrested in the occupied territories by the Iraqi army, deported into the Republic of Iraq and unjustifiably deprived of their freedom since the beginning of the conflict.
Both in Iran and Iraq captured soldiers have been summarily executed. These executions were sometimes the act of individuals involving a few soldiers fallen into enemy hands; there has sometimes been systematic action against entire enemy units, on orders to give no quarter.
Wounded enemies have been slain or simply abandoned on the field of battle. In this respect the ICRC must point out that the number of enemy wounded to which it has had access and whom it has registered in hospitals in the territory of both belligerents is disproportionate to the number of registered able-bodied prisoners in the camps or to even the most conservative estimates of the extent of the losses suffered by both parties.
The Iraqi forces have indiscriminately and systematically bombarded towns and villages, causing casualties among the civilian inhabitants and considerable destruction of civilian property. Such acts are inadmissible, the more so that some were declared to be reprisals before being perpetrated.
Iraqi towns also have been the targets of indiscriminate shelling by Iranian armed forces.
Such acts are in total disregard of the very essence of international humanitarian law applicable in armed conflicts, which is founded on the distinction between civilians and military forces.
Geneva, May 7, 1983
[Source: Second Memorandum from the International Committee of the Red Cross to the States Parties to the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949 concerning the conflict between Islamic Republic of Iran and Republic of Iraq, Geneva, February 10, 1984]
On May 7, 1983, the International Committee of the Red Cross was compelled to address an appeal to all the States Parties to the Geneva Conventions. With reference to the solemn undertaking of these States to respect and ensure respect for the Conventions at all times, the ICRC asked them to make every effort to ensure the rigorous application of International Humanitarian Law by the two belligerent states i.e. the Islamic Republic of Iran on the one hand and the Republic of Iraq on the other, and to enable the ICRC to effectively perform its humanitarian task of helping the great number of civilian and military victims of this conflict.
Nine months after making its first Appeal, the ICRC notes that the results hoped for have been achieved only to a very limited degree, and it feels that the States Parties to the Conventions should be informed of the lack of respect for the principles of Humanitarian Law in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Republic of Iraq.
The ICRC wishes to stress that its two memoranda concern serious infringements of International Humanitarian Law which are known to have occurred and which endanger the lives and liberty of the tens of thousands of people caught up in this conflict, and which flout the very spirit and principles of that law. These infringements, if unchecked, may, in time, bring into discredit those rules of law and universal principles which the States parties to the Conventions laid down to provide human beings with a better defence against the evils of war.
From its experience the ICRC is conscious that increasingly numerous violations of International Humanitarian Law have invariably placed insurmountable obstacles in the way of peace negotiations, even when all belligerents wished to end the conflict. For example, recent conflicts have been needlessly prolonged because no agreement was reached on arrangements concerning prisoners of war. The ICRC thus calls upon the States working towards the restoration of peace in the region to consider most carefully the problems which will inevitably arise because of the infringements of the Geneva Conventions by the belligerents.
In particular, the ICRC would ask States, in the course of their dealings with each of the two parties to the conflict, to broach the humanitarian questions which are hereby submitted to them. The States are also urged to lend their active support to the ICRC’s efforts to help the victims of the conflict which is strictly within the terms of the humanitarian mandate assigned to the ICRC through the Geneva Conventions. Finally, the ICRC hopes that discussions will be held to designate Protecting Powers willing to undertake the tasks encumbent on such States by the Geneva Conventions. Naturally, the ICRC would wish to work closely with the Protecting Powers.
The ICRC is convinced that the States parties to the Conventions are aware of what is truly at stake in the steps proposed, and that it will be their desire and intention to translate into action the commitment which they undertook in adopting Article 1 common to the Four Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949.
At present, some 50,000 prisoners are without the international protection to which they are entitled by virtue of their status.
In this connection, the ICRC is no longer able to perform the following tasks:
These tasks of surveillance are all categorically stipulated in the Convention and constitute indispensable requirements for the effective protection of prisoners by ICRC delegates.
The ICRC has failed in its attempts to bring aid to these groups, consisting mainly of Iraqi Kurds who have fled from their home territory and are now living in camps in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The ICRC knows that these groups are in great need of food and medicine. By virtue of their status as refugees from an enemy power, these people come under the aegis of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the protection of civilians in time of war. They should therefore be allowed to receive the aid which an organization such as the ICRC could provide.
As a rule, prisoners of war are registered by the ICRC within a reasonably short time of being captured.
On the whole, the exchange of Red Cross messages between the prisoners and their families works well, though delays which may sometimes be quite long are still caused by the Iraqi censorship procedure.
The ICRC has good grounds to be concerned about the prisoners held in places to which it does not have access. These prisoners are deprived of their most basic rights and, according to many mutually corroborating sources of information, are held in conditions which do not meet the requirements of humanitarian law.
The Iraqi authorities have accepted that in principle the ICRC should be present from now on among these civilians, and considerable efforts have recently been made to improve the living conditions of these civilians when it was necessary.
The Iraqi air force has continued to carry out regular indiscriminate bombing of Iranian built-up areas, sometimes more than 200 kms from the front. The result has been loss of life, sometimes on a large scale, and considerable destruction of purely civilian property. These deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian property are sometimes designated as reprisals; they contravene the laws and customs of war, in particular with regard to the basic principle that a distinction must be made between military objectives and civilian persons and property.
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