A Visiting Forces Act is a law governing the status of military personnel while they are visiting within areas under the jurisdiction of another country and/or while forces of one country are attached to or serving with forces of another country, and may also apply to some foreign nonmilitary persons who are associated with visiting military forces (e.g., dependents, civilian employees, etc.). Such acts commonly address such issues as criminal jurisdiction, treatment of apprehended individuals found to be foreign military personnel who are absent without leave or military deserters, double jeopardy situations, etc. Individual Visiting Forces Acts enacted by individual governments may address such issues directly, or may act as enabling legislation so that separate Visiting Forces Agreements between a host country and other countries may attain the force of law. Depending on the legislative climate in the host country, such enabling legislation may or may not be necessary.
Famous quotes containing the words visiting, forces and/or act:
“For the Lord thy God is a jealous God among you.”
—Bible: Hebrew Deuteronomy, 6:15.
The words are also found in Exodus 20:5, referring to the second commandment: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image ... for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.”
“The next thing his Lordship does, after clearing of the coast, is the dividing of his forces, as he calls them, into two squadrons, one of places of Scriptures, the other of reasons....
All that I have to say touching this, is that I observe a great part of those his forces do look and march another way, and some of them fight amongst themselves.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)
“The soul, which is the first principle of life, is not a body, but the act of a body; just as heat, which is the principle of calefaction, is not a body, but an act of a body.”
—Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274)