Editing Fourth Geneva Convention (section)

=== Section I. Provisions common to the territories of the parties to the conflict and to occupied territories ===

==== Article 32: Prohibition of corporal punishment, torture, etc. ====
A protected person may not have anything done  "of such a character as to cause physical suffering or extermination&nbsp;... the physical suffering or extermination of protected persons in their hands. This prohibition applies to murder, [[torture]], [[corporal punishment]]s, mutilation and medical or scientific experiments not necessitated by the medical treatment. While popular debate remains on what constitutes a legal definition of torture, the ban on corporal punishment simplifies the matter; even the most mundane physical abuse is thereby forbidden by Article 32, as a precaution against alternate definitions of torture.

The prohibition on scientific experiments was added, in part, in response to experiments by German and Japanese doctors during [[World War II]] of whom [[Josef Mengele]] was the most infamous.

==== Article 33: Individual responsibility, collective penalties, pillage and reprisals ====
{{blockquote|
No protected person may be punished for any offense he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of [[intimidation]] or of [[terrorism]] are prohibited. 

[[Pillage]] is prohibited.

[[Reprisal]]s against protected persons and their [[property]] is prohibited.
}}

Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions, [[collective punishment]] is a [[war crime]]. By collective punishment, the drafters of the Geneva Conventions had in mind the reprisal killings of [[World War I]] and [[World War II]]. In the First World War, the Germans executed Belgian villagers in mass retribution for [[Resistance movement|resistance]] activity during the [[Rape of Belgium]]. In World War II, both German and Japanese forces carried out a form of collective punishment to suppress resistance. Entire villages or towns or districts were held responsible for any resistance activity that occurred at those places.<ref name=keylor>Keylor, William R., ''The Twentieth-Century World and Beyond'', Oxford University Press, New York: 2011.</ref> The conventions, to counter this, reiterated the principle of individual responsibility. The [[International Committee of the Red Cross]] (ICRC) Commentary to the conventions states that parties to a conflict often would resort to "intimidatory measures to terrorize the population" in hopes of preventing hostile acts, but such practices "strike at guilty and innocent alike. They are opposed to all principles based on humanity and justice".{{citation needed|date=December 2022}}

[[Additional Protocol II]] of 1977 is about the protection of victims of non-international armed conflicts explicitly forbidding collective punishment. But as fewer states have ratified this protocol than GCIV, GCIV Article 33 is the one more commonly quoted.