/ 31 March 1995

The Norgaard Principles

THE Norgaard principles are named after Carl Aage Norgaard, a Danish national and president of the European Commission on Human Rights, who was asked at the time of the Namibian settlement to frame guidelines defining the concept of a political prisoner.

For a crime to be deemed a political offence, he stipulated the following should to be taken into

* an offender’s motive (whether it was personal or political);

* the circumstances in which the offence was committed (whether it was committed during an uprising, for

* the nature of the political objective (such as overthrowing a government) and the offence and its

* the object of the offence — whether it was directed against government agents or property or ordinary citizens) and

* the relationship between the offence and the political objective.

In the United States, acts directed against civilian targets causing indiscriminate injury and destruction have been regarded beyond the parameters of a political offence. Swiss and Dutch courts consider the proportionality between the offence and the political objective to decide whether the political element of a mixed offence predominate.

Norgaard argued against a narrow approach in considering whether or not an act was political where reconciliation was the aim.

However, in the Namibian context, where Swapo’s battle was directed against overthrowing the South African regime and not against Namibians, Norgaard felt serious acts of indiscriminate violence against civilians or civlian property could not be regarded as having a sufficiently direct relationship to Swapo’s political objective to be deemed political offences.