Why does the Geneva Convention forbid medics from carrying any more than the most basic of self-defense weapons?
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Because you are not supposed to shoot at medical personnel on the battlefield therefore it would only make sense that they do not need to carry the same weapons as infantry and so on…
Because imagine how ineffective the international law would be if an army could just hide all their soldiers behind red crosses and then call foul when they got shot at by the other army in a regular firefight.
Part of the privilege that comes with enjoying protection under the Geneva Convention means sacrificing the right to exploit such privelege for military advantage.
The whole purpose of the Geneva Convention is to define and codify the line between ethically acceptable and unacceptable behaviour so as to minimize unnecessary human suffering caused by war.
A medic’s role is to save life and reduce human suffering. Humans on both sides benefit when medics can perform their duties with decreased risk of being targeted by the enemy.
Every participant on the battlefield has a right to self-defence.
But allowing medics to contribute to offensive operations while enjoying protection from attack is unsportsmanlike. Sportsmanship is a good way to frame principles in the Geneva Convention to gain a sense of how its drafters approached battlefield ethics. Without basic respect for dignity and integrity, human beings are nothing more than savage animals. When such creatures are armed and fight on behalf of nations, we call them “war criminals.”
Edit: since my original post doesn’t explicitly say so, the point is to be able to identify when people commit unethical actions during war so that justifiable legal action may follow after the fact.
Because the war crimes rules also say you’re not allowed to shoot at medics.
If medics were allowed to be armed, armies could just dress up *all* their soldiers as “medics” and say “haha you can’t shoot any of us.”
But that obviously wouldn’t work, and the enemy would shoot at them anyway…*leaving zero of the intended protection for their* ***actual*** *medics.*
To give the other side a relatively good reason to believe that they really are there just for medical help
I’m curiosu as to which fighting force actually follows this though. If you’re fighting someone/in a firefight with someone, if you come across a medic with his hands up what is preventing you from blasting the dude? Or doing worse to him? It’s not like there are people in the warzone with a clipboard and pencil being like ‘mmyup that’s a warcrime you can’t do that’. I feel like medics probably get blasted/executed all the time.
Fought in three conflicts as a combat medic, never wore a red cross and was just as well armed as everyone else. Strictly speaking we were not allowed to take part in offensive activities like ambushes but we’re also told to take part in contacts as we’re still an extra weapon until there are casualties and even then you want to win the firefight
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Beause it is important that medics are not seen as a threat.
A medic with a gun is someone who can shoot you, which means you might want to shoot them first.
And if *some* medics have guns then you might have to worry that *any* medic you see has a gun, even if it’s not visible. And then you might want to shoot them too.
In order for medics to do their job, people *on eithe side* have to be able to assume that the medic does not constitute a threat.
The Geneva Conventions declare medical personnel to be non-combatants. Depending on which army, they may or may not carry rifles to defend themselves. However, it would be very difficult to argue that someone carrying anything more than the bare minimum weapon that a soldier might carry is a non-combatant. Painting a red cross on a howitzer would be a bit ridiculous.
Many of the rules about noncombatant status exist to make sure that people don’t take advantage of the protection and exploit it in perfidy. If this was tolerated, the writers expected that it would result in people disregarding noncombatant markings because of the possibility of perfidy.
If a medic is firing his weapon, it is not a war crime to fire upon him. You can expect any and every soldier to be issued a rifle. However, they would not issue anything more (e.g. grenade launcher, automatic rifle/light machine gun, designated marksman rifle, anti-tank launcher at the squad level, machine gun, heavier anti-armor weapon, at the platoon level, mortar or other heavier weapons at the company and battalion levels) to someone who isn’t expected to use it outside of situations when he is personally fired upon. Those things are expensive and giving it to one of those guys means that you have one less to fire at the enemy. Anyone who has one of those can be expected to be using it, and therefore, not a noncombatant. Routinely giving other weapons out to people wearing noncombatant markers would cause adversaries to assume perfidy and fire upon actual medics.
Some medics do forego noncombatant status and carry heavy firepower with them for various reasons (including but not limited to that the opposing forces do not care about noncombatant status, is not a signatory, and is willing to do things that would be war crimes if they were signatories). One example is the Israeli Defence Force’s tank-ambulances, another example is the heavily armed helicopters that the United States Airforce pararescuemen ride in (the helicopters that the US Army sets aside to be used exclusively for medical evacuations do not have any weapons and have a red cross carried on them).
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