What is the role of IO's - IGO's and NGO's - regarding hostage takings and kidnappings in the world?

Résumé du document

Today hostage taking is considered as a crime or as a terrorist act. Indeed, hostage taking is one of the many ways of action of the terrorists because, by this way, they can put pressure on States and thus obtain an important media coverage. The hostage taking is one of the favourite ways of action of the terrorists, because it generates a climate of fear that they try to establish. This act has an immediate impact on the State of which the hostages are citizens. Its emotional characteristic leads to dramatization. We can still remember the effects of the hostage-taking of the Israeli sportsmen at Munich during the Olympic Games of 1972, also that of the French people in the 80's at Lebanon and that of the employees of the American embassy in Iran during 1979-1980. Hostage takings at that moment had mainly political objectives and were either linked to a national conflict or to a revolutionary armed movement which wanted to take the power. The political effect of theses hostage takings was significant and thus leads to the adoption of the International Convention against hostage taking by the United Nations.

Extraits

[...] By exchanging information and co-ordinating the taking of administrative and other measures in appropriate ways to prevent the commission of such offences. Thus, I quote the convention as, 'any person who seizes or detains and threatens to kill, to injure or continue to detain another person (hereinafter referred to as the "hostage") in order to compel a third party, namely, a State, an international intergovernmental organization, a natural or juridical person, or a group of persons, to do or abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the hostage commits the offence of taking of hostages ("hostage-taking") within the meaning of this Convention' . [...]

[...] Finally, the EU exhorts the international organizations and the non-governmental organizations to collaborate for the actual initiatives since the kidnapping of hostages and to consent for all the efforts necessary to obtain their release, by putting pressure on the persons responsible, above all when the hostages are not linked to the political conflicts in the region concerned. II But it seems that the actions of the IGO's concerning hostage-takings in the world are not enough effective today 1. A lack of efficiency within the international community and more particular in institutions and IGO's The article 12 says that the Convention do not relates itself to an act of hostage taking committed during armed conflicts at the sense of the convention of Geneva of 1949. [...]

[...] Concerning situations covered by international humanitarian law in which hostages are being held by the authorities, the ICRC needs an agreement or an authorization to operate and to see the hostages. However, in the case of when the hostage-takers are independent from the authorities, the ICRC will act as usual. Even under the circumstances set out above, the ICRC will emphasize that the authorities remain responsible for the hostages' welfare. Finally, it is important to know that the ICRC will not interfere if the hostage-taking is unrelated to an international armed conflict or to an internal violence. [...]

[...] However, the nature of the hostage takings has been changed in approximately ten years. The conflicts of the post Cold War are characterized by ethnic conflicts within destabilized States. The main victims of the hostage takings in this decade are the employees of NGO's and the employees of big companies because they are supposed to be released after the payment of high ransoms. Moreover, the kidnappers can put pressure on the NGO's or on the concerned companies. The motivations of these kidnappers have changed, they generally are the members of criminal organizations and sometimes, in particular to Latin America, the terrorist movements act with the criminal organizations to obtain their ransom. [...]

[...] But the problem is that it was not specified that if this fight against hostage- taking would be done with the help of The United Nations. Hostage taking has its component, not only of armed international conflict but also of ‘status mixtus' (armed conflict in which some elements of peaceful relations remain extant) and of internal armed conflict (revolution, insurgency, or belligerency). If we study the reactions of various governments to hostage taking, we can observe that most of their reactions are often based on emotion rather than on well intended legal principles. [...]