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The Fourth Geneva Convention

  
August 12, 1949

The following are some excerpts from the FOURTH GENEVA CONVENTION:  All occupying powers should observe and abide by.
  
PART1: GENERAL PROVISIONS:

Article 4

Definition Of Protected Persons

Persons protected by the Convention are those who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever, find themselves, in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals.

PARTIII: STATUS AND TREATMENT OF PROTECTED PERSONS

SECTION 1: PROVISIONS COMMON TO THE TERRITORIES OF THE PARTIES OF THE CONFLICT AND TO OCCUPIED TERRITORIES.

Article 27

Treatment

I. General Observations

Protected persons are entitled, in all circumstances, to respect for their persons, their honor, their family rights, their religious convictions and practices, and their manners and customs. They shall at all times be humanely treated, thereof and against insults and public curiosity.

Article 29

II. Responsibilities:

The Party to the conflict in whose hands protected persons may be, is responsible for the treatment accorded to them by its agents, irrespective of any individual responsibility which may be incurred.

Article 31

Prohibitions of coercion

No physical or moral coercion shall be exercised against protected persons, in particular to obtain information from them or from third parties.

Article 32

Prohibition of corporal punishment, torture, etc.

The High Contracting Parties specifically agree that each of them is prohibited from taking any measure of such a character as to cause the physical suffering or extermination of protected persons in their hands.

This prohibition applies not only to murder, torture, corporal punishments, mutilation and medical or scientific experiments not necessitated by the medical treatment of a protected persons, but also to any other measures of brutality whether applied by civilian or military agents.

Article 33

Individual responsibility, collective penalties, pillage, reprisals

No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.

Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.

SECTION II: ALIENS IN THE TERRITORY OF A PARTY TO THE CONFLICT

Article 27

Persons in confinement

Protected persons who are confined pending proceedings or subject to a sentence involving loss of liberty, shall during their confinement be humanely treated.

SECTION III: OCCUPIED TERRITORIES

Article 47

Inviolability of rights

Protected persons who are in occupied territory shall not be deprived, in any case or in any manner whatsoever, of the benefits of the present Convention by any change introduced, as the result of the occupation of a territory, into the institutions or government of the said territory, nor by any agreement concluded between the authorities of the occupied territories and the Occupying Power, nor by any annexation by the latter of the whole or part of the occupied territory.

Article 49

Deportations, transfers, evacuations

Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive. The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.

Article 52

Protection of workers

All Measures aiming at crating unemployment or at restricting the opportunities offered to workers in an occupied territory, in order to induce them to work for the Occupying Power, are prohibited.

© 2005 Palestinian American Council