[Statement of the Civil Society Initiatives for International Humanitarian Law (CSI-IHL)

The Civil Society Initiatives for International Humanitarian Law (CSI-IHL) joins other concerned quarters in condemning the recent kidnapping of three personnel of the impartial humanitarian body International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) by armed elements in Sulu, and in calling for the safe soonest unconditional release of these ICRC persons, including in appealing to the better senses and consciences of their captors.  At the same time, all those concerned about and working for this safe release would do good to take stock of certain legal, factual and practical parameters.    

As has already been pointed out regarding this incident, ICRC personnel are humanitarian relief personnel who must be respected and protected under international humanitarian law (IHL), both under customary rules and under treaty provisions, and both in international and non-international armed conflicts.  Likewise, under these and other norms of international law, the taking of hostages is prohibited, even considered an act of terrorism, and in the case of the taking of ICRC personnel as hostages, a war crime. Aside from being part of IHL and international law, these rules and norms are derived from established custom, from the principles of humanity and the dictates of the public conscience.  And in the Muslim law on war, the persons of the hostages are inviolable and they must be treated with much consideration.   

At the same time, the kidnapping incident in question cannot be simplified to have been done in the context of an armed conflict between government and dissident armed forces.  It cannot be simplified by automatically blaming the usual suspect, the "Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG)."  Our own preliminary inquiries with Sulu sources point to a more mixed group of perpetrators with kinship interconnections in varying ways to the local police, military, politicians, Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and ASG. Under the circumstances and based on experience, it is quite possible though that some "turnover" may be made to an established ASG commander in the vicinity in order up the ransom ante.  What we have here appears to be more the phenomenon of kidnap-for-ransom (KFR) in the Zamboanga, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi (Zambasulta) area rather than a situation of internal armed conflict, even if contending armed forces are implicated.