[PASSED] Military Identification Tag Act

[Stellonia]

"This is a dangerous proposal. The ethnicities or religions of captured combatants could be revealed through the names on their tags. Their captors could then inflict cruelty upon them based on their ethnicity or religion."

OOC: Imagine if someone named Goldberg were to be captured by Nazi forces. He wouldn't want to have his tag on him.

If someone was captured by Nazis or any such cruel forces, cruelty would be inflicted upon them regardless. If soldiers have tags on them and their fellow countrymen somehow manages to recover their bodies, at least they could be sent back to their families and/or given a proper burial.

The cruelty would have presumably been greater had the captured party been of a certain ethnicity or religion. This proposal needs some provision that enables soldiers to use some pseudonym that conceals their origins.

[Kenmoria]

If someone was captured by Nazis or any such cruel forces, cruelty would be inflicted upon them regardless. If soldiers have tags on them and their fellow countrymen somehow manages to recover their bodies, at least they could be sent back to their families and/or given a proper burial.

The cruelty would have presumably been greater had the captured party been of a certain ethnicity or religion. This proposal needs some provision that enables soldiers to use some pseudonym that conceals their origins.

(OOC: The proposal requires that member states issue these tags. It does not require that soldiers use them. Presumably, a soldier likely to be captured would choose not to wear their tag when there was an imminent danger of defeat.)

[Stellonia]

The cruelty would have presumably been greater had the captured party been of a certain ethnicity or religion. This proposal needs some provision that enables soldiers to use some pseudonym that conceals their origins.

(OOC: The proposal requires that member states issue these tags. It does not require that soldiers use them. Presumably, a soldier likely to be captured would choose not to wear their tag when there was an imminent danger of defeat.)

See Article 7.

[Kenmoria]

(OOC: The proposal requires that member states issue these tags. It does not require that soldiers use them. Presumably, a soldier likely to be captured would choose not to wear their tag when there was an imminent danger of defeat.)

See Article 7.

(OOC: In that case, I agree with you. There should be an exception for reasons of personal safety.)

[Alba and Cymru]

"This is a dangerous proposal. The ethnicities or religions of captured combatants could be revealed through the names on their tags. Their captors could then inflict cruelty upon them based on their ethnicity or religion."

OOC: Imagine if someone named Goldberg were to be captured by Nazi forces. He wouldn't want to have his tag on him.

"Excessive cruelty to military prisoners would be a violation of World Assembly Resolution #17. Besides, excessively aggressive captors will inflict harm upon prisoners of war anyway, regardless of religion or ethnicity. Nationality is also a major factor in the discrimination against prisoners of war, but nobody needs an ID tag to find out that demographic.

"Considering the possibility that 'Nazi forces' aren't members of the World Assembly, I'm quite certain that international courts would find state-sponsored torture on foreign combatants quite a heinous crime. We are all aware of the track record of those types of governments.

"Lets weigh our options here, ambassador: on one hand, millions of military casualties are marked as 'Missing-in-Action' indefinitely and thousands more die from a lack of blood transfusions, on the other we have the possibility of prisoners of war being discriminated by the name they were given.

"Due to the notion that patriotic men and women go into the military to uphold the values and customs of our nations knowing very well of the risks and dangers that come with it, I think it would be most appropriate to at least provide them and their families with means to survival and remembrance."

[Stellonia]

"This is a dangerous proposal. The ethnicities or religions of captured combatants could be revealed through the names on their tags. Their captors could then inflict cruelty upon them based on their ethnicity or religion."

OOC: Imagine if someone named Goldberg were to be captured by Nazi forces. He wouldn't want to have his tag on him.

"Excessive cruelty to military prisoners would be a violation of World Assembly Resolution #17."

"This does not apply when WA member states go to war with non-WA member states. The latter are not bound by GA#17, so they could use information contained on captured soldiers' tags to profile them and commit acts of violence towards soldiers of specific ethnicities or religions."

"Lets weigh our options here, ambassador: on one hand, millions of military casualties are marked as 'Missing-in-Action' indefinitely and thousands more die from a lack of blood transfusions, on the other we have the possibility of prisoners of war being discriminated by the name they were given."

"We will be happy to support this proposal once its issues are rectified. We think that this can be done easily enough."

[Pope Saint Peter the Apostle]

See Article 7.

(OOC: In that case, I agree with you. There should be an exception for reasons of personal safety.)

The Holy Empire, although admitting that States could technically sue POWs for such behaviour, notes that such bad faith Enforcement is not supported by the international Community and will not happen.

Still, in a time that DNA tests are readily available, it's at best questionable whether the Hypothesis raised here is of any serious concern. Still full support for the Proposal.

--Saint Michael the Archangel, patron saint of the military
Senior membrum, Sanctus Commissio Sancti Imperii

[Araraukar]

"Lets weigh our options here, ambassador: on one hand, millions of military casualties are marked as 'Missing-in-Action' indefinitely and thousands more die from a lack of blood transfusions"

IC: "Only by incompetent nations. I mean, seriously, have you never heard of keeping records?"

OOC EDIT: If they go MIA, that means their bodies weren't found. If their bodies aren't found, you can't remove their dog tags from them either, so even with this proposal in place and obeyed to the letter, you'd still have your soldiers MIA because you would still be lacking prood that they have actually died.

2nd EDIT: What do blood transfusions have anything to do with anything? That's a healthcare thing, and in anyway, military healthcare (where blood transfusions would be possible) would have plasma and platelets as first treatment, and because of blood-borne diseases, you basically never give blood directly from one person to another. Sounds like your problem is lack of donations, which you can make mandatory to soldiers if you want.

[LollerLand]

"Lets weigh our options here, ambassador: on one hand, millions of military casualties are marked as 'Missing-in-Action' indefinitely and thousands more die from a lack of blood transfusions"

IC: "Only by incompetent nations. I mean, seriously, have you never heard of keeping records?"

OOC EDIT: If they go MIA, that means their bodies weren't found. If their bodies aren't found, you can't remove their dog tags from them either, so even with this proposal in place and obeyed to the letter, you'd still have your soldiers MIA because you would still be lacking prood that they have actually died.

There are tons of graveyards around the world full of soldiers whose bodies couldn't be identified, denying their families of their right to do the final rites of their loved ones. If identification tags were mandatory when these soldiers were sent to war, the amount of such unidentified bodies would be much lower.

[Kenmoria]

(OOC: In that case, I agree with you. There should be an exception for reasons of personal safety.)

The Holy Empire, although admitting that States could technically sue POWs for such behaviour, notes that such bad faith Enforcement is not supported by the international Community and will not happen.

Still, in a time that DNA tests are readily available, it's at best questionable whether the Hypothesis raised here is of any serious concern. Still full support for the Proposal.

--Saint Michael the Archangel, patron saint of the military
Senior membrum, Sanctus Commissio Sancti Imperii

“States wouldn’t sue POWs for such behaviour, the Compliance Commission would fine and possibly sanction member states for permitting such behaviour. That’s the way that GA compliance enforcement works.”

[Araraukar]

There are tons of graveyards around the world full of soldiers whose bodies couldn't be identified

OOC: Such as? If there are tons of graveyards of actual unknown soldiers (who were killed in the modern era when the "dog tags" were actually reliably a thing that existed and just wasn't used), instead of killed POWs or non-military fighters, then I'm sure you can throw me some links to such RL locations.

[Alba and Cymru]

This proposal is now in queue.

[Alba and Cymru]

"This does not apply when WA member states go to war with non-WA member states. The latter are not bound by GA#17, so they could use information contained on captured soldiers' tags to profile them and commit acts of violence towards soldiers of specific ethnicities or religions."

"I provided an argument to this point already, ambassador. Non-member states who engage in this behaviour have always been held accountable by international courts."

"We will be happy to support this proposal once its issues are rectified. We think that this can be done easily enough."

"What issues are needed to be resolved? If an identification tag does not have identification on it, then it cannot be considered such. Even if we changed the identification requirements to include some other form of identification, i.e. fingerprint ID, who is to say that discriminatory non-member states would not use such information maliciously anyway? If we allowed certain ethnicities to forgo this resolution, then we would see a disparity in medical malpractice amongst minority military combatants, not to mention the number of minority soldiers whose bodies would go unidentified in death. This would social injustice."

[Araraukar]

"This does not apply when WA member states go to war with non-WA member states. The latter are not bound by GA#17, so they could use information contained on captured soldiers' tags to profile them and commit acts of violence towards soldiers of specific ethnicities or religions."

"I provided an argument to this point already, ambassador. Non-member states who engage in this behaviour have always been held accountable by international courts."

OOC: Not any court established by the WA, so as far as the WA is concerned the non-WA nations can do whatever they want. Which was the point being made. You're banning WA nations' soldiers from throwing away their dog tags. Thus you're enabling the non-WA nations that take said WA nations' soldiers as POWs to reads all the information you're mandating (and everything else the nations might put on the ID tags) to be identified per person.

The espionage issue wasn't resolved either because of the same issue.

Although... after a closer look... There seems to be nothing forbidding WA nations from providing the tags to soldiers - say, new enlistees, and then decommissioning the tags, while the soldiers head off to active duty with or without them. It talks only of active/decommissioned tags, not active/retired combatants. Which sounds like yet another error.

[Kenmoria]

"This does not apply when WA member states go to war with non-WA member states. The latter are not bound by GA#17, so they could use information contained on captured soldiers' tags to profile them and commit acts of violence towards soldiers of specific ethnicities or religions."

"I provided an argument to this point already, ambassador. Non-member states who engage in this behaviour have always been held accountable by international courts."

"We will be happy to support this proposal once its issues are rectified. We think that this can be done easily enough."

"What issues are needed to be resolved? If an identification tag does not have identification on it, then it cannot be considered such. Even if we changed the identification requirements to include some other form of identification, i.e. fingerprint ID, who is to say that discriminatory non-member states would not use such information maliciously anyway? If we allowed certain ethnicities to forgo this resolution, then we would see a disparity in medical malpractice amongst minority military combatants, not to mention the number of minority soldiers whose bodies would go unidentified in death. This would social injustice."

“A quite easy remedy would be for your proposal to permit soldiers to destroy or not use their tags if that soldier has a reasonable fear that they might face injurious treatment as a result of their tag or any contents thereof.”

[Agualia]

"I provided an argument to this point already, ambassador. Non-member states who engage in this behaviour have always been held accountable by international courts."



"What issues are needed to be resolved? If an identification tag does not have identification on it, then it cannot be considered such. Even if we changed the identification requirements to include some other form of identification, i.e. fingerprint ID, who is to say that discriminatory non-member states would not use such information maliciously anyway? If we allowed certain ethnicities to forgo this resolution, then we would see a disparity in medical malpractice amongst minority military combatants, not to mention the number of minority soldiers whose bodies would go unidentified in death. This would social injustice."

“A quite easy remedy would be for your proposal to permit soldiers to destroy or not use their tags if that soldier has a reasonable fear that they might face injurious treatment as a result of their tag or any contents thereof.”

I agree fully with this preposition. Agualia will abstain from voting until there is a reaction to this idea.

[Medwedgrad]

Medwedgrad votes in favour of this resolution. If we wage wars, let's do it as civilized as possible, let's insist of honourable treatment of soldiers and let's make further steps against barbarism, terrorism, paramilitary troops, etc.

[Sebero Sree]

"The Republic of Sebero Sree would like to voice its complete support for this proposal and would like to also urge all it's fellow WA members to vote in its favor."

[Aynia Moreaux]

Aynia Moreaux and all her territories do hereby voice their full support for this resolution, and it has the full backing of the region of Caer Sidi and her citizens. Good luck!

[Heavens Reach]

This is the only sort of wartime resolution we'll back: one which protects soldiers, but not the institution of war. Support.

[Stellonia]

OOC: I intend to draft a repeal and a replacement for this.

[Heavens Reach]

OOC: I intend to draft a repeal and a replacement for this.

OOC: then you must be pretty confident in its success.

[The Westirlands]

“A quite easy remedy would be for your proposal to permit soldiers to destroy or not use their tags if that soldier has a reasonable fear that they might face injurious treatment as a result of their tag or any contents thereof.”

While my humble nation might have a liberal attitude towards the issue of identification, I have to agree with this sentiment above. Given the historical evidence of the treatment of Jewish American POWs compared to Non-Jewish American POWs during the Second World War. It is absurd to outlaw a soldier's ability to eliminate their identification if they have a reasonable fear of persecution based on their ethnicity. Obviously a war criminal that eliminates their identification to avoid punishment is different from the scenario above and so I would welcome an amendment to the resolution on this issue.

Until then, I'm going to have to vote no.

[Alba and Cymru]

“A quite easy remedy would be for your proposal to permit soldiers to destroy or not use their tags if that soldier has a reasonable fear that they might face injurious treatment as a result of their tag or any contents thereof.”

"If we do so, what is to prevent a soldier faced with charges of war crimes from throwing away their tags and going incognito? Do bear in mind that the entire reason why clause 7 was introduced was to prevent enemy combatants from destroying the tags for the purpose of humiliation or related reasons."

OOC: I intend to draft a repeal and a replacement for this.

"Good luck, ambassador. I hope that this is for the sake of the international community and not for the sake of vanity."

[Kenmoria]

“A quite easy remedy would be for your proposal to permit soldiers to destroy or not use their tags if that soldier has a reasonable fear that they might face injurious treatment as a result of their tag or any contents thereof.”

"If we do so, what is to prevent a soldier faced with charges of war crimes from throwing away their tags and going incognito? Do bear in mind that the entire reason why clause 7 was introduced was to prevent enemy combatants from destroying the tags for the purpose of humiliation or related reasons."

“Doing that would be in violation of GA law, since there would not be a risk of discriminatory treatment as a result of the tag. Of course, I am not saying that breaking WA law is physically impossible. However, under the current situation, someone removing their tag with the intent of committing war crimes is treated the same as someone removing their tag for the purpose of avoiding discriminatory treatment and possibly torture.”