UN seeks to protect civilians in armed conflicts

Through its unanimous adoption of Resolution 1296 on Wednesday afternoon the UN Security Council placed the protection of civilians in armed conflict at the heart of the UN's future peace-keeping agenda. In paragraph 13 of the resolution, the Council states its intention to ensure that "peace-keeping missions are given suitable mandates and adequate resources to protect civilians under imminent threat of physical danger, including by strengthening the ability of the United Nations to plan and rapidly deploy peace-keeping personnel, civilian police, civilian administrators and humanitarian personnel". In his speech to the Council, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that the Council had already taken action to provide enhanced protection for civilians through the establishment of peace-keeping missions in Sierra Leone, East Timor and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In particular, peace-keeping mandates in Sierra Leone and DRC supported the protection of children through the deployment of child protection advisers, he said. Where a conflict has already led to the mass exodus of a civilian population, a critical element in enhancing their protection lies in improving the security of refugee camps. In Africa, Annan said that UNHCR had made efforts to relocate refugees from borders in Guinea, Liberia, Chad, the Central African Republic and DRC. Annan also referred to his report from last September on the protection of civilians in armed conflict in which he urged the creation of a rapid deployment force to respond quickly to crises and the importance of preventive deployment. In his speech to the Council, ICRC President Dr Jakob Kellenberger said that while the cardinal principle of humanitarian law was the maintenance of the distinction between civilians and combatants, in practice that distinction tended to be blurred. "Civilians have become the primary victims and, often, the very object of war," he said. He added that ethnic, religious, economic and social factors were possible reasons which were compounded by the "emergence of paramilitary groups, whose members may have no proper training and whose actions may be unpredictable, sometimes commiting atrocities and becoming themselves easy targets". Resolution 1296 was adopted almost exactly six years after the Security Council took the decision to scale down UN troops in Rwanda at the start of the genocide in which up to one million civilians were killed.