{"id":1571,"date":"2004-07-01T09:20:32","date_gmt":"2004-07-01T13:20:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/site\/?p=1571"},"modified":"2011-04-05T21:52:10","modified_gmt":"2011-04-06T01:52:10","slug":"issue_45-2_jinks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/2004\/07\/issue_45-2_jinks\/","title":{"rendered":"The Declining Significance of POW Status"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>What is the significance of prisoner-of-war (POW) status? Drawing on the substance, universal acceptance, broad-based institutionalization, and enforcement machinery of the Geneva Convention for the Protection of Prisoners of War (\u201cPOW Convention\u201d), conventional wisdom maintains that denial of POW status to combatants has drastic protective and policy consequences. Contrary to this conventional wisdom, this Article argues that denial of POW status carries few  protective or policy consequences, and that the gap in protection for  those classified as POWs and those not so classified (e.g., those  designated \u201cunlawful combatants\u201d) is closing. The only gaps that persist  are: (1) that POWs are \u201cassimilated\u201d into the legal regime governing  the armed forces of the detaining state; and (2) that POWs enjoy  \u201ccombatant immunity.\u201d The scope and significance of these gaps are, however, also diminishing\u2014from both a protection and policy perspective. The Article further argues that this emerging \u201cprotective parity\u201d has important implications for humanitarian law and policy: (1) it clarifies  and consolidates debates about coverage gaps in the Geneva law; (2) it  recasts debates about the proper procedure for determining \u201cstatus\u201d in  humanitarian law (procedurally, POW status might be understood only as an  affirmative defense to any prosecution for simple participation in  hostilities); and (3) it underscores the escalating inefficiencies of  approaches that calibrate treatment based on complex status  determinations (and, in doing so, provides an explanation of why some  states\u2014including the United States\u2014expressly incorporate elements of  \u201cprotective parity\u201d into their military policy). Finally, the Article offers a normative defense of \u201cprotective parity\u201d\u2014emphasizing whether it can be reconciled with the principle of distinction.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Contrary to this conventional wisdom, this Article argues that denial of POW status carries few  protective or policy consequences, and that the gap in protection for  those classified as POWs and those not so classified (e.g., those  designated \u201cunlawful combatants\u201d) is closing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[123],"tags":[47,52],"class_list":["post-1571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-print-archives","tag-laws-of-war","tag-legislation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZu3S-pl","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}