Key challenges on civilian protection in conflict

Civilians are the main casualties of modern warfare, with women and children constituting an unprecedented number of the victims. More than 2.5 million people have died directly as the result of violent conflict in the last decade and over ten times that number displaced and uprooted, according to the United Nations. This represents human suffering on an immense, almost incomprehensible, scale for men, women and children – despite the protection many of these people are due under international humanitarian law. “The reason we have become more involved with the protection of civilians is precisely because the nature of warfare has been changing considerably during the last decade or more,” Mark Bowden, head of policy at the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told IRIN. “Wars are fought in a way that target civilians more, or incorporate them more into the means of fighting.” Addressing the UN Security Council in November 2002, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan spoke of 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. Gender based exploitation in war Women and children, especially those displaced from their homes, in violent conflict are especially vulnerable to attack, including rape, trafficking and all manner of physical, sexual and psychological abuse. “It was the middle of the night and I was asleep,” one woman, a widow who was raped in the northern part of the Burundi capital, Bujumbura, told the ICRC. “Suddenly, I heard a noise. Our houses don't have any doors, so I got up to investigate. “That's when a bright light was shone in my face, blinding me and preventing me from seeing my attackers. But I know there were two of them. For several weeks afterwards, it hurt to urinate but I was too ashamed to go and see a doctor.” The woman’s14-year-old niece was also raped and is still traumatised. Young girls and older women are generally more exposed to such crimes, which they have trouble speaking about. In the outskirts of Bujumbura, where clashes between armed groups are common, many women are the victims of violence. The suffering this causes them often further aggravates their plight as poverty-stricken widows and displaced persons. [see Women and War special report at: www.icrc.org] In Somalia, where years of civil war, rampant insecurity and violence has resulted in a collapse of the state, human rights activists complain of arbitrary killings, torture, detention, kidnapping, rape and extortion at the hands of various faction leaders. Clashes between clan militias and private factions have frequently caused the death, injury, displacement and suffering of non-combatants civilians. Human rights activists have expressed concern that warlords and faction leaders are now actively engaged in Somali peace talks in Kenya, and aiming to give themselves “total impunity for their gross violations of human rights.” Meanwhile, The challenges facing Somali children and women are daunting, both now and for the future, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). “The infant mortality rate currently stands at 132 per 1,000 births, and the maternal mortality rate is 160 per 10,000,” the agency reported in late February. “In some parts of the country, one in four children exhibits symptoms of malnutrition. Only 17 percent of children of eligible school age are receiving primary education, and of those in school, less than a third are girls.” The key issue for civilians in Somalia, including women and children, is survival until a much- anticipated future in which civil conflict will no longer prevail, the agency added. The problem of gender-based violence and exploitation in war is a grave and continuing one. Women are caught up in armed conflict with increasing regularity, the ICRC reported in March. They continue to bear the consequences of war, even where this suffering could be avoided. “All too often, female civilians taking no part in hostilities become the deliberate targets of war, or find themselves in danger simply because they happen to be where the fighting is,” the Red Cross stated. “And this despite the protection they are entitled to under international humanitarian law.” Kofi Annan has now called on the Security Council to require follow-up actions and prosecutions in response to allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation, as a means of strengthening ‘the culture of prevention’ in these circumstances. He has also called for the Council to encourage states to adopt minimum standards and codes of conduct in their armies, militias and police services, and to ensure their implementation to reduce the incidence of gender-based violence as a result of power imbalances. “A great deal more work is now being done on the protection of children from recruitment into military activity, on the problems that exist in terms of sexual exploitation and abuse that take place in times of warfare, and establishing codes of conduct and behaviour for belligerents”, among other areas, according to Bowden. The UN system has established a Task Force on the Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in Humanitarian Crises addressing the matter, co-chaired by UNICEF and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. It is also seeking ways to adopt a set of core principles and minimum standards for UN staff in this regard, in recognition that UN staff and peacekeepers have also been responsible for the abuse and exploitation of women and girls. Commercial Exploitation of Conflict In November 2002, Kofi Annan identified the illegal exploitation of natural resources as “a growing problem that serves to fuel conflict and increasingly involves and harms the security of the civilian population.” This has notably been the case in the DRC, where UN and EU investigations found that the efforts by numerous parties to illegally secure natural resources - such as diamonds, timber, coltan and gold – had exacerbated the war, and in some instances been a root cause of violence. The European Union passed a resolution in January in which it called for concrete measures to punish persons found guilty of pillaging the resources of the DRC, including an investigation by the International Criminal Court into "acts of genocide and crimes against humanity committed in Africa and elsewhere, where such acts were perpetrated to illegally secure natural resources.” A UN panel on the pillage of the DRC’s resources reported in October 2002 that, despite the withdrawal of foreign forces from the DRC, "elite criminal networks" had become so deeply entrenched that continued illegal exploitation of the country's natural resources was assured, independent of the physical presence of foreign armies. It also drew attention to the horrific humanitarian consequences of the financially driven conflict, saying that in the five eastern provinces of the DRC, there had been between 3 million and 3.5 million excess deaths between the outbreak of war and September 2002 that directly attributable to the Rwandan and Ugandan occupation. The illegal exploitation of commercial resources – especially diamonds - as a driving force in conflict has also been highlighted in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Angola. In Sudan, human rights groups, humanitarian agencies and international advocacy organisations have been vocal critics of the link between oil production and the military targeting and forced displacement of civilian populations. Not only are civilians caught in the crossfire between warring parties, but in more recent years "the military strategies embraced by both the government and the SPLA [Sudan People’s Liberation Army] have often placed civilians directly in the firing line," the think-tank, International Crisis Group (ICG) reported in October. Government forces and their allied militias have frequently attacked civilian targets as part of an effort to weaken support for the SPLA, while the SPLA relies on guerrilla tactics against the government, according to ICG. The combined effect of militia attacks, bombing raids and mass evictions, often exacerbated during periods of drought, is to create a state of chronic insecurity and poverty, particularly among rural communities in the south. Over the years, this has led to a chronic population drain from the south towards the transition zone between north and south, and further north to the capital, Khartoum. For the first month of 2003, an offensive by government-backed southern militias in the Western Upper Nile oilfields of southern Sudan presented the gravest threat to the peace process since its revitalisation in mid-2002, ICG reported on 10 February. “Much more attention also needs to be paid to the pro-government southern militias and the commercial and political agendas for which they are being used,” it added. Civilian protection and the threat of terrorism The new reach of international terrorism, and the responses of states to that, has also brought new and difficult challenges to the protection of civilians. While terrorism must be condemned without reservation, said Kofi Annan in November, the reaction of states to acts of terrorism must take into account the need to protect civilian life and property, and be undertaken with full respect for international humanitarian and human rights law. “The targeting of civilians and the disproportionate use of force beyond legitimate military objectives are violations of international humanitarian law and must be strongly condemned,” he said. Terrorism and non state-actors are not new phenomena, as it might sometimes appear from listening to some commentaries, Francoise Bouchet-Saulnier, legal counsel of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) told IRIN. “Terror and terrorist method of war are included in the IHL regulations. But the whole IHL system relies on the distinction between civilians and combatants,” she said. “If you contest the definition of combatant by calling people terrorists, you also endanger the category of civilians.” The concept of an open-ended war on terrorism “opens up a time of long lasting war, while refusing to respect the legal framework for wartime,” said Bouchet-Saulnier. “It’s very tricky to try to create a new kind of war: ‘the war against terrorism’, which is a non-existing body of law. That creates an empty space, rather than creating a framework for action.” Terrorism had to be “condemned without reservation” and energies had to be focused on combating it effectively, Kofi Annan told the Security Council in November. But every effort to strengthen the international protection of civilians was a victory against terrorism, which was an attempt to undermine civilian status and weaken the institutional frameworks through which they were shielded from violence, he added. “Collective will is required to address the profound challenges to civilian protection posed the commercial exploitation of conflicts, the sexual exploitation of civilians in conflict and the global threat of terrorism,” Annan said. [This article is one of a series of reports and interviews that comprise a new Web Special on Civilian Protection in Armed Conflict. In it, IRIN explores International Humanitarian Law and principled humanitarian action, the provisions for civilian protection, the problems encountered in achieving this, and the prospects for the future. See web special at www.irinnews.org]