Type: IOCR

The envoys to India of nine Eastern European countries called Bucharest Nine jointly wrote to acquaint the Indian public with the basic facts on the ground” about the “premeditated, unprovoked and unjustified Russian aggression in Ukraine”.

What is Bucharest Nine?

• The “Bucharest Nine” is a group of nine NATO countries in Eastern Europe that became part of the US-led military alliance after the end of the Cold War.
• The Bucharest Nine or Bucharest Format, often abbreviated as the B9, was founded on November 4, 2015, and takes its name from Bucharest, the capital of Romania.
• The group was created on the initiative of Klaus Iohannis, who has been President of Romania since 2014, and Andrzej Duda, who became President of Poland in August 2015.

Composition

• The B9 are, apart from Romania and Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and the three Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
• All members of the B9 are part of the European Union (EU) and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).
• All nine countries were once closely associated with the now dissolved Soviet Union, but later chose the path of democracy.
• Romania, Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria are former signatories of the now-dissolved Warsaw Pact military alliance led by the Soviet Union.
• The other Warsaw Pact countries were the erstwhile Czechoslovakia and East Germany, and Albania. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were part of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

Functions of B9

• The B9 offers a platform for deepening the dialogue and consultation among the participant allied states, in order to articulate their specific contribution to the ongoing processes across the North-Atlantic Alliance.
• It works in total compliance with the principles of solidarity and indivisibility of the security of the NATO Member States.

Opposition to Russian expansion

• The B9 countries have been critical of President Vladimir Putin’s aggression against Ukraine since 2014, when the war in the Donbas started and Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula.
• After the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the B9 met in Warsaw.
• Ukraine’s President has also appealed to the B9 for defense aid, sanctions, pressure on the aggressor Russia and create one anti-war coalition.

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As the evidence of casualties in the civilian population continues to mount, the world will increasingly look to the Geneva Conventions in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Geneva Conventions Guidelines for Wartime

• These are a set of four treaties, formalized in 1949, and three additional protocols, which codify widely accepted ethical and legal international standards for humanitarian treatment of those impacted by war.
• The focus of the Conventions is the:

1. Treatment of non-combatants and prisoners of war, and
2. Not the use of conventional or biological and chemical weapons

What are the four Geneva Conventions?

(1) First Geneva Convention: Health and Medical Issues

• It protects wounded and sick soldiers on land during war.
• This convention extends to medical and religious personnel, medical units, and medical transport.
• It has two annexes containing a draft agreement relating to hospital zones and a model identity card for medical and religious personnel.

(2) Second Geneva Convention:  Offshore Protection

• It protects wounded, sick and shipwrecked military personnel at sea during war.
• This convention also extends to hospital ships and medical transports by sea, with specific commentary on the treatment and protections for their personnel.

(3) Third Geneva Convention: Treatment of Prisoners of War (PoW)

It applies to prisoners of war, including a wide range of general protections such as humane treatment, maintenance and equality across prisoners, conditions of captivity, questioning and evacuation of prisoners, transit camps, food, clothing, medicines, hygiene and right to religious, intellectual, and physical activities of prisoners.

(4) Fourth Geneva Convention: Civilian protection of occupied territory ***

• It particularly applies to the invasion of Ukraine by Russian military forces.
• It protects civilians, including those in occupied territory.
• Comprising 159 articles, it outlines the norms for this critical dimension of conflict.

Extent of the Fourth Geneva Convention amid the Ukraine-Russia War

• Along with the Additional Protocols of 1977, the Fourth Convention expounds upon the:

1. General protection of populations against certain consequences of war
2. Conduct of hostilities and the status and
3. Treatment of protected persons
4. Distinguishing between the situation of foreigners on the territory of one of the parties to the conflict and that of civilians in occupied territory

• This convention also spells out the obligations of the occupying power vis-à-vis the civilian population and outlines detailed provisions on humanitarian relief for populations in occupied territory.

Which countries are signatories?

• The Geneva Conventions have been ratified by 196 states, including all UN member states.
• The three Protocols have been ratified by 174, 169 and 79 states respectively.

Russia and these conventions

• In 2019, perhaps anticipating the possibility of its invading Ukraine in the near future, Russia withdrew its declaration under Article 90 of Protocol 1.
• By withdrawing this declaration, Russia has pre-emptively left itself with the option to refuse access by any international fact-finding missions to Russian entities.
• Not withdrawing could have find Russia responsible for violations of the Geneva Conventions standards.
• Further, the four conventions and first two protocols of the Geneva Conventions were ratified by the Soviet Union, not Russia.
• Hence there is a risk of the Russian government of the day disavowing any responsibility under the Conventions.

What would be the steps for potential prosecution under the Conventions?

• Under Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the ICC, it is the ICC that has jurisdiction in respect of war crimes, in particular “when committed as part of a plan or policy or as part of a large-scale commission of such crimes.”

To what extent have Geneva Conventions been upheld worldwide in recent years?

• Amnesty International notes that there has been a blatant disregard for civilian protection and international humanitarian law in armed conflicts where four of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council are parties.
• Specifically, Amnesty cited:

1. US-led coalition’s bombing of Raqqa in Syria, which left more than 1,600 civilians dead
2. Destruction of civilian infrastructure and lives in Aleppo and Idlib by Russian forces
3. Leading to mass displacement of millions
4. War in Yemen where the Saudi Arabia and the UAE-led coalition, backed by the West, killed and injured thousands of civilians, fuelling a full-blown humanitarian crisis

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The United States, the European Union, Britain, Canada and Japan are to move jointly to revoke Russia’s “most favoured nation” (MFN) status over its invasion of Ukraine.

What is MFN status?

• The World Trade Organization’s 164 members commit to treating other members equally so they can all benefit from each other’s lowest tariffs, highest import quotas and fewest trade barriers.
• This principle of non-discrimination is known as most favoured nation (MFN) treatment.
• There are some exceptions, such as when members strike bilateral trade agreements or when members offer developing countries special access to their markets.
• For countries outside the WTO, such as Iran, North Korea, Syria or Russian ally Belarus, WTO members can impose whatever trade measures they wish without flouting global trading rules.

Removal of MFN status

• There is no formal procedure for suspending MFN treatment and it is not clear whether members are obliged to inform the WTO if they do so.
• India suspended Pakistan’s MFN status in 2019 after a suicide attack by a Pakistan-sponsored group.
• Pakistan never applied MFN status to India.

What does losing MFN status mean?

• Revoking Russia’s MFN status sends a strong signal that the US and its Western allies do not consider Russia a economic partner in any way, but it does not in itself change conditions for trade.
• It does formally allow the Western allies to increase import tariffs or impose quotas on Russian goods, or even ban them, and to restrict services out of the country.
• They could also overlook Russian intellectual property rights.
• Ahead of MFN status removal, the United States had already announced a ban on imports of Russian oil and gas.

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