424. Special protection in occupied territories is conferred on (i) certain classes of persons, owing to their vulnerability (refugees, women and children); as well as on (ii) certain indispensable services that must be performed for humanitarian purposes (medical services, civil defence and humanitarian relief). This special protection merely adds to – and never detracts from – the ordinary protection enjoyed by protected persons.

Refugees

425. Although nationals of the Occupying Power are not protected persons under Geneva Convention (IV) (see supra 141), there is a sui generis dispensation in favour of refugees. The Convention tackles this knotty problem in Article 70 (second paragraph):

426. The idea underlying Article 70 (second paragraph) is that the right to asylum, enjoyed by refugees before the outbreak of hostilities, ‘must continue to be respected by their home country, when it takes over control as Occupying Power in the territory of the country of asylum’. The paradigmatic example is that of German Jews who, on the eve of WWII, sought asylum in countries like France or the Netherlands while retaining their German nationality: when the countries of refuge were later overrun by the Nazis, these refugees ought to have continued to benefit from protection.