LLM Group 4 Human Rights Law International Humanitarian Law and Refugee Law 2025-26 Question Paper with Solutions

For full marks, cover: the question has two limbs and they are weighted about equally. The PRINCIPLES limb is not a list of nice ideas; each principle has a treaty provision or a settled customary rule behind it, and the answer should name it. The FACILITIES limb means the Third Geneva Convention, and the marks are in being specific: Article 17 on what a prisoner must disclose, Article 13 on public curiosity, Articles 49 to 57 on labour, Article 118 on repatriation and Article 126 on access are the ones an examiner is looking for. Do not answer the second limb with generalities about humane treatment. End on the Indian implementing statute, because a question on a convention India has ratified should say how India gives effect to it.

The principles

DISTINCTION. The parties must at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants, and between civilian objects and military objectives, and direct operations only against military objectives. Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited. The principle is in Articles 48, 51 and 52 of Additional Protocol I of 1977 and is accepted as customary international law binding on all States including those, like India, which are not parties to the Protocol.

MILITARY NECESSITY. A belligerent may use only that degree and kind of force required to achieve the legitimate purpose of the conflict, namely the complete or partial submission of the enemy with the minimum expenditure of life and resources. Necessity is a LIMIT and never a justification for departing from a rule: where humanitarian law states a prohibition, necessity cannot override it, because necessity has already been taken into account in the framing of the rule.

HUMANITY and the prohibition of unnecessary suffering. It is forbidden to employ weapons, projectiles and material and methods of warfare of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering, a rule traceable to the St Petersburg Declaration of 1868 and stated in Article 35(2) of Additional Protocol I.

COMMON ARTICLE 3, the minimum floor. Identical in all four Conventions of 12 August 1949, it applies in armed conflict NOT OF AN INTERNATIONAL CHARACTER and requires that persons taking no active part in hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention or any other cause, be treated humanely without adverse distinction. It prohibits, at any time and in any place, violence to life and person including murder, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; the taking of hostages; outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment; and the passing of sentences and carrying out of executions without previous judgment by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees recognised as indispensable by civilised peoples. The International Court of Justice in Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua (Nicaragua v. United States of America), International Court of Justice Reports 1986 page 14, held that these rules constitute a MINIMUM YARDSTICK applicable in international armed conflict as well, and reflect elementary considerations of humanity.

Prosecutor v. Dusko Tadic, Decision on the Defence Motion for Interlocutory Appeal on Jurisdiction, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Appeals Chamber, 2 October 1995, settled two questions that had been open since 1949. It defined an ARMED CONFLICT as existing whenever there is a resort to armed force between States, or protracted armed violence between governmental authorities and organised armed groups, or between such groups within a State, which supplies the threshold for the application of the whole body of law. And it held that customary international law imposes INDIVIDUAL CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY for serious violations of common Article 3 and of other rules applicable in internal armed conflict, rejecting the argument that the law of internal conflict carried no penal consequence. The two holdings together are what made the prosecution of atrocities in non international conflicts possible, and they are the basis on which Article 8(2)(c) and (e) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 1998 were drafted.

Responsibility and basic treatment. ARTICLE 12 makes the DETAINING POWER, and not merely the individual who captured them, responsible for the treatment of prisoners. ARTICLE 13 requires that prisoners be treated humanely at all times, prohibits any unlawful act or omission causing death or seriously endangering health, forbids physical mutilation and medical or scientific experiments not justified by the prisoner's treatment, and requires protection at all times against acts of violence or intimidation, against insults and AGAINST PUBLIC CURIOSITY, a provision aimed directly at the parading of captured personnel before cameras. Measures of reprisal against prisoners are prohibited. ARTICLE 14 requires respect for their persons and their honour, and provides that women shall be treated with all the regard due to their sex and in no case less favourably than men. ARTICLE 15 places the maintenance and the medical attention required by their state of health on the Detaining Power FREE OF CHARGE. ARTICLE 16 forbids adverse distinction based on race, nationality, religious belief or political opinions.

Labour. Articles 49 to 57 permit the Detaining Power to use the labour of prisoners who are physically fit, taking into account their age, sex, rank and physical aptitude, with a view to maintaining them in good health. OFFICERS may not be compelled to work; non commissioned officers may be required only to do supervisory work. Permitted classes of work are agriculture, industries other than metallurgical, machinery and chemical industries, public works and building operations without military character or purpose, transport and handling of stores, commercial business, arts and crafts, domestic service and public utility services. UNHEALTHY OR DANGEROUS labour may not be imposed, and the removal of mines or similar devices is considered dangerous labour. Working conditions and pay are regulated, with compensation for accidents.

Contact with the outside world. Articles 69 to 77 require that prisoners be enabled to write a CAPTURE CARD immediately on capture, and thereafter to send and receive letters and cards, to receive relief shipments, and to execute legal documents.

Complaints and representation. ARTICLE 78 gives prisoners the right to make known to the military authorities their requests regarding conditions of captivity, and an unrestricted right to apply to the representatives of the PROTECTING POWER. Articles 79 to 81 provide for the election of a prisoners' representative in every camp.

Grave breaches. ARTICLE 130 defines the grave breaches of the Third Convention as wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment including biological experiments, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, compelling a prisoner to serve in the forces of the hostile Power, and wilfully depriving a prisoner of the rights of fair and regular trial. ARTICLE 129 obliges every party to search for persons alleged to have committed grave breaches and to bring them before its own courts or hand them over for trial, which is universal jurisdiction in treaty form.

How India gives effect to the Conventions

India ratified all four Geneva Conventions on 9 November 1950 and implemented them by the GENEVA CONVENTIONS ACT, 1960. The Act makes GRAVE BREACHES of any of the four Conventions punishable, with the penalty of death or imprisonment for life where the offence involves the wilful killing of a protected person and imprisonment up to fourteen years otherwise; it applies to any person, whatever his nationality, who commits such a breach in or outside India, which is the domestic vehicle for the universal jurisdiction required by Article 129. It requires that a protected person be tried only by a court competent under the Conventions, provides for notice to the Protecting Power before trial, and makes the misuse of the Red Cross and related emblems an offence.

India is NOT a party to Additional Protocols I and II of 1977, so the treaty provisions on distinction and proportionality bind India only as customary international law, which the International Court of Justice and State practice have accepted them to be.

the Detaining Power is responsible under Article 12, protection extends to insults and to public curiosity under Article 13, a prisoner need give only his name, rank, date of birth and number and may not be coerced in any way under Article 17, officers may not be made to work and no prisoner may be given dangerous labour under Articles 49 to 57, collective and corporal punishment are forbidden under Article 87, repatriation must follow the cessation of active hostilities without delay under Article 118, and the International Committee of the Red Cross may go to every place of detention and interview prisoners WITHOUT WITNESSES under Article 126. India ratified the Conventions on 9 November 1950 and enforces the grave breaches through the Geneva Conventions Act, 1960, which reaches any person of any nationality wherever the breach is committed.