Rule of law, justice and reconciliation

Restoring the rule of law, which often breaks down in war situations - especially in protracted conflicts - is considered vital to a return to a situation of sustainable peace, based on the assured protection of civilians and the return of civil order.

For the regular rule of law to really take hold during a transition from armed conflict, humanitarian workers stress, one of the first priorities has to be a comprehensive programme of disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) of former combatants. Longer term, this will also involve long term investment in education, training, family and community support.

But, more closely connected to IHL, such a transition also involves justice, reconciliation and accountability for war crimes. In order to provide for this, the impunity with which armed actors violate IHL must be ended, and en effective system of deterrence established, according to observers.

Situations of armed violence frequently generate the most appalling of crimes, including massacres, summary executions, death by starvation or disease, torture or ill treatment, as well as forced displacement or recruitment to arms, sexual abuse and violence, violations of rights to health, liberty and education, and so on - ad nauseum.

In the overwhelming majority of cases, the victims and their families do not receive justice, and those who kill, torture, rape or attack civilians do so with the expectation of impunity.

The establishment of criminal courts for the former Yugoslavia, for Rwanda and Sierra Leone over the last decade or so has been recognised as an important step in asserting the need for accountability, in order to bind sometimes fragile peace and protect civilians during transition.

Kofi Annan has also highlighted that amnesties for combatants "remain unacceptable to and unrecognisable by the UN unless they exclude genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes" - those offences for which the International Criminal Court has been established.

"The entry into force of the Rome Statute of the ICC marks an important deterrence against war crimes," according to Annan. "The culture of impunity is being challenged."

Many of the issues of law, justice and reconciliation relevant to protection - from restitution of property to land rights- directly relate more to politics than humanitarianism and humanitarian law, yet critically affect them.

"There is a certain point at which what the humanitarian system can deliver stops and where other forms of action are absolutely necessary," explains James Darcy of the ODI's humanitarian policy group.

"So, we see the need for coherence in the sense that there are certain forms of political action that are absolutely, intrinsically connected to humanitarian outcomes."

The issue of deterrence is important as part of a package of incentives for belligerents to respect the rules of war and, in that regard, the establishment of the ICC is viewed by humanitarian workers and IHL advocates as an extremely important development.

In the words of Kofi Annan, justice and reconciliation must work together to address the underlying causes of conflict and to prevent possibly violent retribution.