ICRC remembers colleagues, addresses impunity

The staff of the International Commitee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Monday paid tribute to colleagues who have died while bringing assistance to victims of war, including one killed in May when an ICRC plane was fired on in southern Sudan. The date was the fifth anniversary of the assassination of six ICRC delegates at a hospital in Chechyna but, over the years, has become a day to honour and remember all ICRC personnel who have lost their lives while doing their humanitarian work around the world. Monday's commemoration extended to colleagues from the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and from other humanitarian agencies, together with civilian and military medical personnel killed while performing their duties. It also sought to address the issue of impunity for those who did harm, or sought to do harm, to humanitarian workers. Danish pilot Ole Friis Eriksen was killed in May when an ICRC aircraft came under fire when a technical problem forced it to reduce altitude over the Didinga Hills, Eastern Equatoria, southern Sudan. The Sudanese government and the rebel Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) each accused the other of responsibility for the killing, which occurred between Lokichoggio, northwestern Kenya, and Juba, Western Equatoria, on a flight for which prior notice had been given and authorisation received from all the parties. That tragedy, which followed the brutal killings of six ICRC workers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo less than two weeks earlier, "underscored the dangers faced by humanitarian personnel in delivering assistance to those in need", UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Kenzo Oshima said back in May. For the ICRC, security problems - from the Ituri assassinations, to the premature halt to an aid programme in northern Burundi and the forced withdrawal of expatriate staff from Afghanistan in September 200 - were among the most telling obstacles to its humanitarian work this year, it reported last week in a preview of planned operations for 2002. These were reminders of how difficult, but how important, it was for a neutral and independent humanitarian organisation to maintain access to the victims of conflict or internal violence and work in close proximity to them, it added. On 21 May, after a suspension of almost two weeks, the ICRC announced the resumption of its aid flights into southern Sudan under new, stricter conditions, based on information that the attack had not been premeditated, but the result of a tragic combination of circumstances, and that the ICRC was not deliberately targeted. To this day, investigations into the deaths of ICRC staff undertaken by the authorities of the countries concerned "have yielded no tangible results," the ICRC reported on Monday. It appealed once again that the relevant authorities "do their utmost to find the perpetrators of these acts and to bring them to justice." The ICRC called upon all those taking part in armed conflict and internal violence - in Sudan and elsewhere - to respect impartial humanitarian work and medical activities, and to refrain from attacking anyone involved in such action. As civilians, humanitarian workers were protected by the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and the Additional Protocols of 1977, it said, adding that civilian and military medical personnel were protected by all four Geneva Conventions and their two Additional Protocols. "The wilful killing of such personnel is a grave breach of international humanitarian law," the ICRC added.