Zimbabwe
Practice Relating to Rule 96. Hostage-Taking
Zimbabwe’s Code of Conduct for Combatants (1993) states that “taking hostages [is] forbidden.”
The Code of Conduct also states: “As a State party to the [1949] Geneva Conventions … your country is bound by these treaties … Article 3 common to all four Geneva Conventions, which regulates non-international armed conflicts, … prohibits taking of hostages”.
Zimbabwe’s Geneva Conventions Act (1981), as amended in 1996, punishes “any person, whatever his nationality, who, whether in or outside Zimbabwe, commits any such grave breach of [any of the 1949 Geneva] Conventions”.