Military occupation

Military or belligerent occupation is hostile control by a ruling power over a sovereign territory that is not part of the ruling power's own sovereign territory.: "For all those reasons, the utility of retaining the adjectives 'belligerent' or 'wartime' or even 'military' has become rather limited, as the trigger for international regulation is not the mode of assuming control by the occupant but the temporary suspension of the sovereign's authority." The controlled territory is called occupied territory, and the ruling power is called the occupant. During a military occupation, the occupier has certain responsibilities to uphold public order.: The authority of the legitimate power having in fact passed into the hands of the occupant, the latter shall take all the measures in his power to restore and ensure, as far as possible, public order and [civil life], while respecting, unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country.

Hundreds of years ago, the old notion of "to the victor belong the spoils" was replaced with the new notion that sovereignty was not to be taken from a state by force. Military occupation, which is a loss of a sovereign's control of a territory, but not a loss of sovereignty, was thus considered temporary. Ideally, a peace treaty would soon return control to the ousted sovereign.: "the delegates to the Brussels and Hague Conferences conceived occupation as a transient situation, for the short period between hostilities and the imminent peace treaty, which would translate wartime victories into territorial concessions by the defeated party."

Examples of military occupation
Fascist Italy
German Empire
Modern Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia
Nazi Germany
Occupaion of Cyprus

Related pages
Annexation
Colonization
Imperialism
Invasion

References

Category:International law
Category:Military tactics