حماية أفراد الدفاع المدني أثناء النزاعات المسلحة

The Civil defense individuals Protecting During Armed Conflicts

Abstract

The civil defence members perform a protection to the civilian population in addition to preserve the civilian objects to minimize the loses causes from armed conflicts. It is mostly clear that these members need to be protected from attacks during their humanitarian tasks while they support help to the victims of armed conflicts.
This thesis covers in chapter one the definition of the civil defence members as civilian or militarian persons identified by parties of the armed conflict in order to provide the help to the civilian population during these conflicts as well as during peacetime. These activities aim to reduce the damages generated from these conflicts or disasters caused by human or natural actions. Usually these members carry a distinctive badge in order to signify and protect them at the same time. The protection of them is based on conventions of international humanitarian law, the international norms, and national laws. Chapter two discusses the legal regulation for the protection of civil defense members and it includes a review of the legal rules that provide legal protection to civil defense members, whether they are civilians or military personnels. As the rules of international humanitarian law provide the protection for both groups with the distinction of some provisions related to them. And lastely, the individual international criminal responsibility resulting from breaching of the protection afforded to civil defense members is mentioned in this chapter. Therfore, the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the two Additional Protocols of 1977 established criminalizing rules for breaching this protection, and the Statute of the International Criminal Court in Rome in 1998 also set criminal rules for similar protection breach cases.
To support and maximize the required protection to the civil defence members, several suggestions have been mentioned. One of the most prominent suggestions is that the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 didn’t refer to this protection, but the First Additional Protocol of the Geneva Conventions of 1977 referred to this protection where individual criminal responsibility considers one of the most important guarantees for the protection of these members. Moreover, it is important to protect these members during national armed conflicts similar to international armed conflicts.
Finally, Iraqi government is required to develop the work of their civil defence members with modern training techniques and provide them with suitable technical equipments for optimal work and protection effeciency.