IRIN Web Special on Civilian Protection in Armed Conflict

Though International Humanitarian Law (IHL) lays down the minimum protection and standards applicable to situations where people are most vulnerable in armed conflict, the gaps between protection in principle and reality are wide, and keenly felt by civilians in conflict situations around the world.

Addressing the UN Security Council in November 2002, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan spoke of the need for actions required for the protection of civilians in three key areas:

• Secure humanitarian access
• The clear separation of civilians and combatants
• Swift re-establishment of the rule of law, justice and reconciliation during post-conflict transitions

In addition, he highlighted three new challenges emerging for the protection of civilians in conflict: sexual exploitation and gender-based exploitation in situations of war, commercial exploitation and the escalating threat posed by global terrorism.

That said, the importance of other issues has not receded and includes, especially: the growing phenomenon of non-state armed groups; and the need to vigorously promote respect for the law in war situations.

Much of this agenda for the protection of civilians falls within the remit of IHL, though some aspects of reconciliation are beyond the purely humanitarian sphere - moving into the sphere of state politics - and will not be considered in detail here.

Humanitarian access

Carefully negotiated humanitarian access does much to improve the protection of civilians in the short term and to improve prospects for a transition to reconciliation in the longer term, according to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has a specific mandate under the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war to protect and assist victims of armed conflict and internal violence.

This humanitarian imperative to assist the victims of war has, over time, come to include other humanitarian agencies assuming the right to have safe and unimpeded access under the Geneva Conventions when they offer their assistance as "independent and impartial" actors on behalf of civilians and other vulnerable people.

Unimpeded access to all populations in need (on the basis of impartiality) can remove a basis for grievance, de-escalate a conflict, lower its intensity, give an indication of the benefits of peace, and set the stage for an effective transition to peace. Yet, in most cases, access continues to be a challenge.

In many conflicts, protection and assistance for civilians are manipulated, delayed or denied, and has obstacles put before it, including the insecurity of aid workers.

The results of limitations or denials of access have been very evident in the DRC, where war is estimated to have caused over two million "excess deaths" (over and above natural wastage) in the population, including some 350,000 deaths as a direct result of violence.

There is still great concern about humanitarian access in many conflict situations in Africa, as well as in Afghanistan, where security remains a major concern - although considerable gains have been made in Sudan, where access has been a fraught issue.

Humanitarian workers continue to be targeted as well. Relief staff have been attacked or killed in the DRC, Sudan, Burundi, Chechnya, the Occupied Palestinian Territories and, just recently, in Cote d'Ivoire, where four Red Cross volunteers were killed in March.

This gap between rhetoric and reality has repeatedly been highlighted by events in Sudan, where a complex series of interconnected violent conflicts have caused devastation for the civilian population.

On the one hand, for example, Sudanese President Umar Hassan al-Bashir signed a decree in February to set up a national commission on international humanitarian law, welcomed by the ICRC that month as "a major step towards effective implementation of humanitarian law in Sudan, a country that has suffered 19 years of internal conflict."

Barely a week later, on 6 March, the International Crisis Group (ICG) warned that - even as peace talks on Sudan resumed in Kenya - the Khartoum government was "continuing to violate the cessation of hostilities agreement it signed 15 October 2002 with the rebel Sudan Peoples' Liberation Army (SPLA) and reaffirmed on 4 February 2003."

"The primary victims of the violence are civilians," it said, as "government forces and government-sponsored militias were attacking the oilfields of Western Upper Nile in an effort to dislodge the SPLA and expand oil industry development."

Continuous raids by government-sponsored militias along the Bentiu-Adok oil road in Western Upper Nile [Unity State], southern Sudan, were "discouraging the return of civilians who were displaced by the fighting in January and early February, in direct violation of the 4 February agreement by the parties to facilitate such return," the ICG added.

Non-State Actors

A particular problem in trying to secure humanitarian access - and protecting civilian populations, more generally - is that of dealing with armed non-state actors, not all of whom are connected to political structures on which political or diplomatic leverage can be used.

Not only is there a wide range of non-state actors in many conflict situations - from rebel groups to private companies to self-enriching warlords - but the extent to which they recognise, or will live up to, their responsibilities under IHL is very varied, and rarely satisfactory.

The presence of armed non-state actors, who often fail to recognise or live up to international responsibilities regarding access, frequently leads to access being restricted, unpredictable or denied altogether, according to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

"It's often very difficult to know whom it is you're dealing with, where to point the finger of responsibility, not to become complicit in strategies that are actually abusive of civilian populations," says James Darcy of the Humanitarian Policy Groups of the UK-based Overseas Development Institute (ODI).

"Rebel forces will often deliberately blur that distinction; they will indeed take refuge and hide amongst the civilian population. And that makes it extremely hard for humanitarian agencies to know who to deal with and how to conduct themselves."

There is also the link between criminal and 'political' violence to consider, according to analysts, with some armed groups limiting themselves to broadly military activities but others more akin to criminal gangs profiting from the state of general lawlessness that often prevails, with the collapse of civil institutions.

"There is no accountability with people of this kind [profiteering or anarchic] so, yes, I think it creates fundamental problems," Darcy told IRIN.

There are also risks associated with piecemeal and fragmented negotiations for access by humanitarian actors, with combatants frequently trying to play relief agencies against each other to gain a perceived political, tactical or resource advantage - in a way that threatens or diminishes humanitarian space, further endangering access.

But non-state actors are not alone and state parties, too, often fail to fulfil their responsibilities under IHL to allow safe and unimpeded access.

In order to improve humanitarian access, all parties must understand their obligations to civilians and there must be clearly defined conditions for humanitarian access, according to Kofi Annan. Contacts with combatants should be undertaken on a structured and coordinated basis, and tools such as the Security Council aide memoire should be used as a tool for guiding negotiations.

Continued?