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:
“According to legend, Dr. Sappington purchased his coffin several years before his death and kept it under his bed, with apples and nuts in it for his visiting grandchildren.”
—Administration in the State of Miss, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Anarchism is the great liberator of man from the phantoms that have held him captive; it is the arbiter and pacifier of the two forces for individual and social harmony.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“We all have—to put it as nicely as I can—our lower centres and our higher centres. Our lower centres act: they act with terrible power that sometimes destroys us; but they don’t talk.... Since the war the lower centres have become vocal. And the effect is that of an earthquake. For they speak truths that have never been spoken before—truths that the makers of our domestic institutions have tried to ignore.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)