Switzerland
Practice Relating to Rule 111. Protection of the Wounded, Sick and Shipwrecked against Pillage and Ill-Treatment
Switzerland’s Basic Military Manual (1987) provides: “It is prohibited to despoil the wounded.”
Switzerland’s Aide-Memoire on the Ten Basic Rules of the Law of Armed Conflict (2005) states: “I respect civilian property. Pillaging and robbing, even of wounded or dead persons, are strictly prohibited.”
Switzerland’s Military Criminal Code (1927), as amended, punishes anyone who, on the battlefield, despoils and pillages the wounded and sick. It also provides for the punishment of anyone who uses violence against the wounded and sick.
Switzerland’s Military Criminal Code (1927), as amended in 2007, states: “Any person who, on the battlefield, has laid his or her hands on a … wounded or sick person with the intention to steal, is to be punished with a year imprisonment or less.”
Switzerland’s Basic Military Manual (1987), although it refers to Article 18 of the 1949 Geneva Convention I, does not provide explicitly for the duty of civilians to respect the wounded and sick. The commentary gives as an example, however, that if “a seriously injured parachutist lands near a farm, he shall be cared for until the arrival of the authorities”.