Neutrality

 Neutrality refers to the state or condition of being neutral, impartial or unbiased. It is the concept of not favoring or supporting any particular side, position or ideology in a given situation. Neutrality often involved remaining objectives and detected without taking a stance or showing favoritism.

Neutrality can be applied to various contexts including international relations, conflicts, debates or even personal interactions. In international relations, a neutral country is one that refrains from taking sides in a conflict between other nations, maintaining a policy of non-involvement.

In journalism or reporting, neutrality implies presenting information in an unbiased manner, providing equal weight and consideration to all perspective and avoiding personal or partisan opinions. The aim is to provide an objective account of events or issues allowing the audience to form their own opinions based on the presented facts.

It’s important to note that while neutrality strives for impartially, achieving absolute neutrality can be challenging as individuals and institutions often have inherent biases or values that can influence their perception and presented of information.

According to Oppenheim, 'neutrality as the attitude of impartiality adopted by third states towards belligerents and recognized by belligerents such attitude creating rights and duties between impartial states and the belligerents'.

Fenwick defined, 'neutrality is a legal position of a state which remained aloof from a war between two or other states or groups of states while maintaining certain rights towards the belligerents and observing certain duties prescribed by customary law or by international convention or treaties.

Thus, neutral state does not participate in armed conflicts between other states except in self-defense when it is necessary. The neutral state abstains completely from the state of war. Neutrality can be terminated any time by the state declaring neutrality. It is not contractual and permanent in nature. It is a voluntary declaration of a state and applicable only in wartime. It is developed from 18^th century.

But, neutralization fundamentally differs from war time neutrality. It is permanent neutrality which cannot be withdrawn and declared unilaterally because the permanent status of neutralization can only be achieved by the consent or the agreement of interested powers or a neutralized state's independence and territorial integrity are guaranteed permanently by great powers. A neutralized state will never take up arms against any state except to defend itself. It is contractual and applicable both in times of war and peace. The main objective of neutralization is to protect independence and maintain the balance of power of buffer states with the powerful neighboring states. eg. Switzerland, Austria and to some extent Malta are the examples of neutralized states.

Therefore, a set of rules which determines the relations and creates the rights and duties of neutral state and belligerents during the war time is called law of neutrality. The neutrality has been divided into following parts that are perfect neutrality, imperfect neutrality, permanent neutrality, general neutrality, partial neutrality, conventional neutrality, voluntary neutrality, armed neutrality and benevolent neutrality.

According to UN charter, UN charter (article 2.5) says that the UN member states should provide all assistance in any action taken by the UN in accordance with its charter. The members of UN agree to accept and carryout the decision of the Security Council in accordance with the charter.

Article 41, 42 and 43 has ignored the idea of neutrality. Article 41 says- the Security Council may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give its decisions and it may call upon the members of UN to apply such measures.

Article 42 states- it Security Council considers that measures provided for in article 41 would be inadequate, it may such action by air, sea and land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security.

According to article 43 all members of UN in order to contribute to the maintenance of the international peace and security undertake to make available to Security Council on its call.

Neutral nations follow following rights that are, to have its territory immune from hostile activities, to have its territory immune from armed conflicts, to make rules and regulations for its neutrality protection, to prevent military activities and passage for belligerent troops, to maintain diplomatic relations with belligerents, to protect its cables, pipelines and other communication devices connected with belligerent state and to obtain compensation in violation of neutrality and damage of property by belligerents.

And Neutral nations follow following duties that are, to abstain from armed conflicts, to prevent all kinds of war like activities, to provide recognition to the valid activities of belligerents, to accept the right of visit and search by belligerents, to show impartial and equal behavior to the belligerents, to preserve the cultural objects left by belligerents and to re-establish the violated rights in neutral state.

 

 

In surface, neutrality, peace zone and non-aligned are seen similar but those all are different with each other. Later two are only the concepts concerned peaceful environment and they have no legal status in international law. Neutrality has legal status and creates some rights and duties between neutral and belligerent states.

The concept of peace of zone is not so much old and no any international legal instruments concerning peace zone. It is not easy to create a generally accepted of peace zone. Therefore, there is no universally accepted generalized concept of peace zone in international law. We can take only as the reference of peace zone – ZOPFAN (zone of peace, freedom and neutrality) a declaration by ASEAN in 1971, 'Indian Ocean as a zone of peace' declared by UNGA (united nations general assembly) in 1971 and "A proposal for Nepal as a zone of peace" proposed by then king Birendra but no one has completely been implemented yet. Peace zone includes some obligations like- nuclear free status to the region, demilitarization of the region, trustful and good relations among the participating states for peace and security order, guarantee of the territorial integrity, sovereignty and natural resources, freedom of sea and air space according to international law etc.

NAM is a foreign policy of refraining from alignment with military blocks- NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and WTO (Warsaw Treaty Organization) emerged on the behalf of capitalist and socialist groups respectively. The essence of the non-alignment policy lies in strengthening the independence of the participating states and promoting to this end, stability, peace and equality in international relations. NAM is also in favor of peace zone regime. It aims dismantling of foreign military bases in the zone, non-deployment of nuclear weapons, elimination of great power military presence, control of sale and supplies of arms, non-intervention in the internal affairs, peaceful settlement of disputes, adherence to the principle of  'panchasheel', creation for mutual trust and cooperation among states, reduction of all kinds of tensions.