NationStates Jolt Archive

Category: Human Rights


Strength: Significant


Proposed by: Speros libertas

Description: A soldier is a unique character. He fights for his home, family, and country. He is not responsible for the actions of his Government, yet he will fight till the death to defend them. Even if he believes he is wrong.

I propose. That in any conflict, theater, war, or skirmish, that the nations at war shall be able to retrieve their fallen comrades and sons. This shall, of course, be conducted in a orderly manner and very quickly. The winning nation shall allow the loosing nation to retrieve the fallen and lost soldiers within one week. The loosing nation shall have done this as quickly as possible. A neutral nation who holds no allegiance to either opposing nations shall be sent as a peacekeeping force to ensure the most humane way to go about this.

All countries within the United Nations shall honor the opposing forces fallen soldiers. A Nation who does not honor this shall be considered a barbarous nation.

The exceptions to this proposal are as follows:
1. Maritime warfare, where the process of honoring the fallen becomes extremely difficult,if not possible, and a nation does not have to honor this proposal.
2. Invading forces are held to the mercy of the defending nation as to if they are able to retrieve their soldiers.
3. Acts of Terrorism are not to be considered a gentlemen war, and therefore the bodies are to be dealt with to however the government, who has been attacked, pleases.
4. Espionage- Spies are to be dealt with as terrorists, and do not have to be honored under this proposal.
5. Disease- If the government who is in control of the area of land where the retrieval is to be taken place feels that the soldiers cannot be retrieved before disease or epidemics occur they have all right, in good faith, to bury soldiers to prevent more loss of life. In this case a marker may be placed by the fallen soldiers country to remember them.

This is my proposal, i was just trying to get it out into the open before it get's deleted. I know most people don't go through all the pages to look at the proposals. So if you would like to support my proposal it would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Criticism is appreciated if it is constructive.

This proposal seems like it could make for a very sensible resolution. I vaguely recall the delegate from Witchcliff once working on a similar idea. The immediate problem that strikes me is its rampant sexism: 'the soldier' need not necessarily be a he, a war need not be 'gentlemanly' to be humane. Whether or not women are allowed to serve in the armed forces in Speros libertas, they are in Quintessence of Dust, and we would object most strongly from a proposal of this type, even if such exclusion were implicit.

A few other observations:
- 'winning' and 'losing' seem to me pretty irrelevant: both sides will have fallen to recover, regardless of their assessment of their relative 'victory';
- the peacekeeping force strikes me as a really bad idea, not least because few neutral nations would be willing to send a force into a post-conflict zone; I think you should simply say the process should be expedited as quickly as possible;
- also lose the 'one week' requirement, which appears wholly arbitrary; particularly where unexploded ordnance is involved, or where identification of the deceased will take time, there's no guarantee 7 days will be enough;
- the bit about spies is ludicrous: intelligence is a legitimate function of military action, and to suggest a spy is a moral corollary to a terrorist is frankly insulting; I would suggest members of covert services be included in this proposal;
- you might also consider, for example, prohibiting defilement of the corpses, including public display.

We hope our criticisms, though, do not overshadow the fact we very much like the idea of this proposal and hope it sees a chance at a vote.

-- Samantha Benson
Congressional Liaison, Department of UN Affairs
Quintessence of Dust, Delegate of Wysteria

Fotar applauds the idea behind this proposal. Our soldiers that pay the ultimate price for our nations certainly deserve proper treatment after their departure from this life.

Samantha Benson of the Quintessence of Dust, however, brings up a few very important points. The nation of Fotar agrees with the points brought up, especially about the peacekeeping force. If a nation stays neutral during the war, there are likely to be a variety of reasons for neutrality including but not limited to insufficient forces, religious beliefs, and not wanting to deal with the aftermath of battle. Therefore, Fotar thinks it is a very poor idea to force neutral nations to become involved in the conflict in any way, including the supervising of this process.

Once again, however, this is a very good idea and with the proper tweaking thinks it would be a wonderful proposal!

_____________________
Fotar
~Vice-Chancellor, Council of Narnia

I feel this matter is important but a NSUN resolution is the wrong way of going about it.

My nation believes in honour but warfare just does not take place on a planetary surface.

It also takes place in the depths of space where the recovery of the dead is impossible under most circumstances.

I believe the best way is to let the diplomats of waring nations handle this rather than try and make a 'one size fits all' proposal.

Ambassdor Sakura Yamamoto, Neo Kirisuban Space Federation

This is an importent issue but what can the UN do. No mater where in the world you are there are always bad people who don't obay the law. Not to metion sure it's great to show respect to another nation but are two nations that were just trying to kill each other really going to quickly clear the dead and walk away. Whether or not the UN will call the nation barbaric, this proposal would only apply to people in the UN so what happens when one nation not in the UN and one nation in the UN go into war.


This is just my look at the bill.

Apart from the obvious gender bias, which has already been pointed out, plus the other relevant points brought up by Fotar and Benson, this does look like it could mount to a somewhat decent proposal.

However, to play the "space card" and by that simply leave all matters in the hands of diplomats, from states previously at war, does not, in our minds, seem like a good way to go about things. Although, the over-all point about recognizing matters of context is valid, and steps should be taken to make sure that a much to narrow "one-size-fits-all" approach does not characterize the final proposal.


We stand assured, however, that the NSUN contains more than enough capable legislators so that this will not be the case

The points brought up by the Droan representative are, in our opinion, not nearly enough to render legislation of this kind unnecessary. The problem concering UN-states and non-UN-states is of course important, but reading the situation in this matter brands a whole lot of the NSUN-work as "unnecessary".

We will follow the work carefully.

Jenny Kahn
Resident bureaucrat.
Timur Lenk UN-office (TLUNO)