All participation clause

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The all-participation clause ( clausula si omnes ) is a rule contained in Article 24 of the Geneva Convention of 1906 and Article 2 of the Hague Land Warfare Convention and most of the other Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. It states that these conventions should only apply in the event of war or armed conflict if all the states involved in the conflict are contracting parties to the respective agreement. The participation of a country in this conflict that did not accede to the relevant convention before the beginning of the conflict also invalidates the validity of the agreement for all other participating states.

Historical relevance

The aim of the all-participation clause was to prevent unilateral advantages due to a two-part legal situation with regard to the validity of international humanitarian law in the event of war. Such a situation could have arisen, for example, through the participation of a smaller country that was not a party to the aforementioned agreements. The powers allied with this country would then have been able to use the armed forces of this country for actions which, as contracting parties to these agreements, would have been prohibited by their rules. In view of the experiences with the wars of the time, in which two conflicting parties with only a few states on both sides usually participated, the all-participation clause was therefore considered a sensible regulation. However, it later proved to be problematic in wars in which, as in the two world wars, a large number of states were involved.

For the Hague Regulations and the other Hague Convention, the participation clause to severe restrictions led in terms of their acceptance by the belligerents in both the First and the Second World War . Nonetheless, the Hague Land Warfare Regulations were partially voluntarily respected in both wars. At that time, its principles were already considered customary international law and consequently also binding for states that were not party to the contract. This legal opinion, which is still valid today, was explicitly confirmed for the Second World War by a judgment of the International Military Court of Nuremberg in 1946. In addition, a number of important provisions of the Hague Land Warfare Regulations as part of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 or the two additional protocols of 1977 to the Geneva Conventions are no longer affected by the all-participation clause.

For the Geneva Convention, in which the all-participation clause was included as part of the revision of 1906, this rule would have been relevant during the First World War when Montenegro entered the war . However, no country invoked the clause during the war. The clause was no longer included in the revised Geneva Wounded Convention of 1929 and the POW Convention newly concluded in the same year. The currently valid versions of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 explicitly contain a regulation in Article 2 that excludes any restriction of validity comparable to the all-participation clause.

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