The protection of civilians concept first arose in the Secretary-General’s report on the Situation in Africa of 13 April 1998 (S/1998/318 or A/52/871), in which he identified protecting civilians in situations of conflict as a “humanitarian imperative”. This stemmed from the reality that, in recent years, civilian populations have become increasingly the main targets of fighting between hostile armies rather than chiefly indirect victims.
The Security Council heeded the Secretary-General’s recommendation that more attention must be paid to the monitoring and reporting of respect for human rights during armed conflicts and, by Presidential Statement on 12 February 1999 (S/PRST/1999/6), requested that the Secretary-General prepare a report with recommendations for how the Council could improve the physical and legal protection of civilians in situations of armed conflict (POC). Since then, the Secretary-General has presented five reports to the Security Council on POC, (S/1999/957, S/2001/331, S/2002/1300, S/2004/431 and S/2005/740) and, in turn, the Security Council has issued four resolutions in 2006 (S/RES/1738), 2006 (S/RES/1674), 1999 (S/RES/1265) and 2000 (S/RES/1296) and as well as six further presidential statements in 1999 (S/PRST/1999/6), 2002 (S/PRST/2002/6), 2002 (S/PRST/2002/41), 2003 (S/PRST/2003/27), 2004 (S/PRST/2004/46) and 2005 (S/PRST/2005/25). ‘Protecting the Vulnerable’ and developing a ‘Culture of Protection’ were also identified as priorities in the Secretary-General’s Millennium Declaration of September 2000, which noted the need to ‘expand and strengthen the protection of civilians in complex emergencies in conformity with international humanitarian law.’
The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has been at the forefront of developing the policy framework for this culture of protection, in close collaboration with other UN departments, humanitarian partner agencies and interested Member States. Indeed, the protection of civilians is rapidly becoming a core element of OCHA’s role, and is well underway to becoming firmly established within the Security Council and key Secretariat Departments. Among its activities, OCHA’s Policy Development and Studies Branch (PDSB) has developed an “Aide Memoire” on POC as a diagnostic tool or framework to assist the Security Council and associated departments, such as DPA and DPKO, in defining threats that arise to the protection of civilians in country situations, in drafting resolutions that better safeguard civilians and in reviewing peacekeeping operations and threats to international peace and security. The Aide Memoire was adopted by the Council in March 2002 as an annex to Presidential Statement S/PRST/2002/6, with the understanding that it would be updated periodically to reflect new trends. The first updated version of the Aide Memoire was adopted by the Security Council in December 2003 (S/PRST/2003/37), reflecting emergent issues and important new language.
OCHA has also undertaken, with the support of the Security Council and interested Member States, a series of regional workshops on POC in an effort to broaden the audience for protection policies and mainstream them within Member States’ decision-making processes, particularly those that contribute peacekeeping troops or experience conflict directly or indirectly. Thus far, seven regional workshops have taken place in Southern and West Africa, Europe and the Balkans, East Asia-Pacific, the South Pacific, South Asia and the Latin America. Two country-specific workshops have also been coordinated in Uganda (Sep 2004) and the Russian Federation (Mar 2005). The protection framework is also being furthered through the development and distribution of a variety of resource tools on POC, including a glossary of humanitarian terms, a bibliography, which are all distributed both within the UN system, including field offices, and outside to Member States, NGOs and other interested parties.
Together, these measures support the integration of the protection framework within the United Nations’ work, as well as that of the broader international community, thereby strengthening the culture of protection for civilians.