Canada
Practice Relating to Rule 65. Perfidy
Section G. Simulation of protected status by using the United Nations emblem or uniform
Canada’s LOAC Manual (1999) provides: “The following are examples of perfidy if a hostile act is committed while: … feigning protected status by the use of signs, emblems or uniforms of the United Nations.”
The manual also considers it an act of perfidy in air warfare if a hostile act is committed while “using false markings on military aircraft such as the markings of … United Nations aircraft”.
The manual further states that “perfidious use of … protective signs recognized by the Geneva Conventions or [Additional Protocol] I” constitutes a grave breach of the 1977 Additional Protocol I and a war crime.
Canada’s LOAC Manual (2001) states in its chapters on land warfare, air warfare and naval warfare: “The following are examples of perfidy if a hostile act is committed while: … feigning protected status by the use of signs, emblems or uniforms of the United Nations”.
In the chapter on air warfare, the manual further states that it is an example of perfidy in air warfare “if a hostile act is committed while … using false markings on military aircraft such as the markings of … United Nations aircraft”.
In its chapter on “War crimes, individual criminal liability and command responsibility”, the manual identifies as a grave breach of the 1977 Additional Protocol I and a war crime the “perfidious use of … protective signs recognized by the Geneva Conventions or [the 1977 Additional Protocol] I”.
Canada’s Geneva Conventions Act (1985), as amended in 2007, provides: “Every person who, whether within or outside Canada, commits a grave breach [of the 1977 Additional Protocol I] … is guilty of an indictable offence.”
Canada’s Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes Act (2000) provides that the war crimes defined in Article 8(2) of the 1998 ICC Statute are “crimes according to customary international law” and, as such, indictable offences under the Act.
In 2013, in the
Sapkota case, Canada’s Federal Court dismissed a request for review of a decision denying refugee protection to the applicant on grounds of complicity in crimes against humanity in Nepal between 1991 and 2009. While reviewing the submissions of the respondent, Canada’s Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, the Court stated: “The Respondent notes that the
Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court … is endorsed in Canada as a source of customary law.”