PSYOP Defection Messages, Amnesty, and the Law of Armed Conflict

Calls to defect can save lives. When they promise amnesty, legal review must extend from the words broadcast to the authority behind them and the institutions expected to perform them.

This post explores recent practice with calls for enemy defection, particularly as part of psychological operations during non-international armed conflict, and briefly surveys applicable legal limits.

PSYOP Assurances

Psychological operations that invite enemy personnel to defect or surrender can save lives on both sides of a conflict and weaken an armed group without an attack. In December 2025, U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth directed the Department of War to redesignate “Military Information Support Operations” (MISO) with the older term “Psychological Operations” (PSYOP). The change, which the U.S. armed forces must implement by the end of 2026, revives a longstanding argument about terminology. But a message saying, in substance, “leave and you will not be prosecuted” does more than influence. It communicates a legal assurance requiring prior agreement across the military, diplomatic, and legal institutions expected to perform it.

Commanders and their legal advisers should therefore review such operations as a linked sequence of message, promise, and performance. The message must be lawful; the promisor must have the necessary authority to make the promise; and the institutions receiving, screening, and prosecuting defectors must be able to deliver the assurance under domestic law and applicable international obligations. Otherwise, a tactically successful appeal may mislead its audience, compromise accountability, and make later surrender appeals less credible.

Assurances as an Operational Tool

Operation Observant Compass, which ran from 2011 to 2017, highlights the attraction of the technique. U.S. personnel supported African forces, UN personnel, civilian organizations, and communities seeking to weaken Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) through defection. One broadcast began with the assurance that those who left would not face prosecution. The operational premise was that Uganda had to offer amnesty, defectors had to receive fair treatment, and the messages had to ring true.

The first MISO Support Element–Uganda worked with U.S. agencies, local forces, UN personnel, and NGOs to extend radio coverage, record “come home” messages, distribute leaflets, and connect defectors with designated reporting sites. Later rotations added aerial loudspeakers and messages tailored to specific fighters, including recordings by family members. Reporting sites were managed by local forces or MONUSCO (The UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo), while civilians ran community defection centres. These collective efforts invited LRA members to leave a coercive armed group, expose themselves, surrender their weapons, and trust a network of institutions that no single communicator controlled.

Such a chain presents a legal problem. A message may be disseminated by actors who do not control the law later applied. It may also be heard and acted upon by people suspected of atrocities, wanted by another State, or subject to the jurisdiction of an international court.

The Lawfulness of Assurances

The law of armed conflict (also sometimes referred to as international humanitarian law) does not generally prohibit appeals to desert, defect, or surrender. The U.S. Department of Defense Law of War Manual (DoD Manual) expressly treats propaganda as a permissible means of warfare and states that U.S. armed forces may encourage enemy combatants to “defect, desert, or surrender” (para. 5.26.1.2).

Deception is also generally lawful. Article 24 of the 1907 Hague Regulations permits ruses, and the DoD Manual permits deception that neither infringes international law nor invites reliance upon legal protection. Article 37 of Additional Protocol I (AP I) prohibits killing, injuring, or capturing an adversary by resort to perfidy in international armed conflict. The ICRC’s Customary IHL Study treats the prohibition as customary (Rule 65) in both international and non-international armed conflict, while the DoD Manual disputes its customary extension to capture by perfidy (paras. 5.22.2–5.22.2.1). Both approaches concern an invitation to rely upon protection under the law of armed conflict with intent to betray that confidence.

A false assurance about future prosecution is not automatically perfidy. Immunity from prosecution is not, without more, a protected status under that rule. However, this conclusion is not a licence to lie. A sham surrender route used to expose respondents to attack, for example, may cross the line. Rules on humane treatment after surrender, domestic amnesty law, and the credibility of future operations also remain relevant.

Recent posts have examined technologically enabled surrender and the operational strain of mass surrender. The present problem begins earlier and lasts longer. A general broadcast inviting individuals to surrender does not itself place every listener beyond attack. A person who clearly expresses an intention to surrender is hors de combat and protected from attack, provided they abstain from hostile acts and do not attempt to escape. This is reflected in Article 41 of AP I, the corresponding customary rule, and the DoD Manual (para. 5.9.3).

Assurances and Amnesties

The law of armed conflict encourages amnesty in a defined setting. At the end of a non-international armed conflict, Article 6(5) of Additional Protocol II (AP II) asks the authorities in power to “endeavour to grant the broadest possible amnesty” to those who participated or were detained for conflict-related reasons. The DoD Manual (para. 17.4.4) likewise recognises reintegration programmes during hostilities and the AP II post-hostilities provision. An International Committee of the Red Cross customary formulation excludes persons suspected or accused of, or sentenced for, war crimes.

The rule on amnesties concerns the end of hostilities, whereas defection campaigns often operate during armed conflict. It asks authorities to endeavour to grant amnesty rather than creating a self-executing right, and it does not override duties to investigate and, where appropriate, prosecute war crimes. Operational amnesty during hostilities therefore depends chiefly on domestic law and competent institutions.

Uganda illustrates the difference between a slogan and a legal process. Its Amnesty Act requires reporting, renunciation, surrendering weapons, and a certificate. It permits exclusions and gives the Director of Public Prosecutions a screening role where a person is detained or charged. The Ugandan Supreme Court’s Kwoyelo judgment rejected the proposition that the Act compelled blanket amnesty for grave crimes. A broadcast promising simply that a defector will not face prosecution may omit decisive conditions, exceptions, and decision-makers.

Downstream Effects

An assurance is only as broad as the authority behind it. A military operator cannot ordinarily bind an independent prosecutor. One State cannot immunise conduct from every foreign court, and national amnesties cannot displace the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. The Rome Statute contains no general amnesty bar. A national arrangement may be relevant to admissibility or prosecutorial discretion, but it does not automatically prevent an international case.

The Special Court for Sierra Leone reached the same jurisdictional conclusion concerning the Lomé amnesty. As an International Review of the Red Cross analysis explains, a domestic amnesty did not bar prosecution before the international tribunal or bind other States. The subsequent prosecution of former LRA commander Dominic Ongwen provides an institutional warning. It should not be suggested that Ongwen relied upon a particular defection promise. His case demonstrates only that an operational or domestic assurance cannot safely be advertised as binding the Court.

Amnesty and Human Rights Law

A credible exit can protect life, reduce civilian harm, and help an abducted person escape continuing abuse. Differentiated treatment is particularly important for children associated with armed forces or armed groups. The UNICEF Paris Principles handbook treats release, protection, and reintegration of children as central while recognising accountability and victims’ needs. Screening can distinguish a forcibly recruited child, a low-level participant, and a commander suspected of serious crimes.

Human rights law also limits impunity. UN guidance on amnesties states that amnesties are impermissible where they prevent prosecution of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes or gross human rights violations. The European Court of Human Rights’ Marguš judgment and the Inter-American Court’s Barrios Altos judgment sharply restrict amnesties foreclosing accountability for grave violations. The precise obligation varies with the treaty, jurisdiction, and offence, but domestic forgiveness does not end the inquiry.

The answer is not a slogan about peace versus justice. A calibrated assurance can protect surrender, forgive participation or rebellion, and support vulnerable defectors while reserving investigation and prosecution for grave crimes. The danger lies in collapsing those outcomes into unlimited promises.

Review the Message, Promise, and Performance

Christopher Paul argues that the term information operations confusingly describes both a staff function for integration and activities performed by specialists. Herbert Lin similarly identifies overlapping terminology and organisational separation between psychological, cyber, and other information capabilities. Renaming MISO as PSYOP does not determine who owns a legal promise or who must honour it.

NATO doctrine offers a useful reference point. Allied Joint Doctrine for Strategic Communications (AJP-10 paras 1.40, 3.27) calls for alignment between actions, images and words, protects credibility and addresses the “say-do gap.” Allied Joint Doctrine (AJP-10.1 para. 4.24(f)) also directs information operations staff, supported by a legal adviser, to examine legal implications during mission analysis. Neither expressly treats surrender, defection or amnesty messages as promises requiring review for legal authority and institutional deliverability.

On the basis of the discussion above, it is proposed that commanders and legal advisers should make three checks before broadcasting PSYOP amnesty assurances:

– First, review the message. Identify the audience, required conduct, and benefit offered. Distinguish safe surrender, humane treatment, immunity for participation, conditional domestic amnesty, and reintegration. State material conditions and exceptions intelligibly. A short message may need a linked or repeated explanation rather than a legally inaccurate absolute.

– Second, review the promise. Map legal authority in every relevant jurisdiction and secure agreement from prosecutors, amnesty bodies, and receiving forces before dissemination. Identify outstanding warrants and the treatment of suspected international crimes. Create pathways for children, abductees, and witnesses. Where an institution cannot be bound, say so.

– Third, review performance. Ensure that forces on the ground know where defectors have been told to report and that defectors are protected, disarmed, treated humanely and screened through a timely and intelligible process. Certificates, release decisions and reintegration must match the advertised terms. Plan complaints and corrective messages and test hard cases before broadcast.

The UK Influence Wargaming Handbook (paras. 4.21(b) and 4.22) already recommends exploring cascading effects and unintended consequences. It is therefore suggested that militaries should test such promises in exercises that introduce a prosecutor refusing an advertised amnesty, an outstanding foreign warrant, or mistreatment at a reporting site. The importance of this is that such exercises can reveal whether immediate influence success creates longer-term failure. Performance determines the truth of the next message. Every honoured assurance becomes evidence for the next audience; every breach becomes an adversary counter-message. A commander should only promise what they can deliver, express the limits that matter, and build the route from first contact to a lawful outcome before the first broadcast.

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Dr Michael John-Hopkins is a Senior Lecturer in Law at Oxford Brookes University and previously worked with the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, where he worked on the Milošević case.

The views expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense. 

Articles of War is a forum for professionals to share opinions and cultivate ideas. Articles of War does not screen articles to fit a particular editorial agenda, nor endorse or advocate material that is published. Authorship does not indicate affiliation with Articles of War, the Lieber Institute, or the United States Military Academy West Point.

Photo credit: U.S. Marine Corps, Sgt Demetrius Munnerlyn