Even in peacetime, means of personal identification – such as national identity cards, passports, birth certificates, driving licences and social security numbers – are crucial for verifying an individual’s identity so that they can access services, address legal or administrative matters and more. In times of armed conflict, personal identification plays a vital role in the application of international humanitarian law (IHL).
To implement IHL effectively, it is necessary to identify people. Determining the identity and status of distinct categories of people, such as combatants and civilians, is key to applying the protections and obligations that IHL provides, and the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 and Additional Protocol I of 8 June 1977 contain provisions to that end. Measures for personal identification provide a means of specifying the status of people involved in or affected by an armed conflict and thus of indicating the protection to which they are entitled.
However, the mere fact of possessing an identification document does not entitle the holder to protection (except in the case of military personnel posted to civil defence organizations), since it is the capacity or function of the person that is the determining factor. In the context of armed conflict, identification measures also help to prevent disappearances and facilitate the tracing of missing persons. It is states and parties to the conflict that must implement these measures, which enable the bodies for which IHL makes provision to function properly. (These include national information bureaux and the Central Tracing Agency, whose mission is to inform states on the circumstances of their nationals and inform families on what has become of their missing relatives.)
