Posted by Rob Grace on November 10, 2011  |   Comment  |   Subscribe

Earlier this week, Portugal, which currently holds the presidency of the UN Security Council (UNSC), convened the UNSC’s open debate on the protection of civilians in armed conflict.  Regular UNSC engagement on this issue began in 1999, when the UNSC requested that the UN Secretary-General draft a report to recommend:

…ways the Council, acting within its sphere of responsibility, could improve the physical and legal protection of civilians in situations of armed conflict. The report should also identify contributions the Council could make towards effective implementation of existing humanitarian law. The report should examine whether there are any significant gaps in existing legal norms, through the review of recent reports in this regard.

The UN Secretary-General has since produced biennial reports for the UNSC addressing the issue, and the UNSC regularly engages in open debate on the topic.  (For links to the biennial UN Secretary-General reports and relevant UNSC resolutions, see here.  For summaries of UNSC open debates on protecting civilians in armed conflict, see here.)

In this week’s open debate, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon reiterated five core challenges he has expressed in previous reports: 1) enhancing compliance with international humanitarian law and international human rights law (including UNSC measures to initiate commissions of inquiry and refer relevant matters to the International Criminal Court); 2) engaging more effectively with non-state armed groups to enhance compliance; 3) properly training and resourcing peacekeeping missions to enhance the protection of civilians; 4) enhancing humanitarian access to affected populations; and 5) enhancing accountability, including consideration of the recommendations of last week’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) workshop (see here for information on the workshop).

Summaries of additional remarks from this week’s debate — including statements from Navanethem Pillay, High Commissioner of Human Rights; Catherine Bragg, Assistant-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs; and Philip Spoerri, Director of International Law and Cooperation at the International Committee of the Red Cross — can be found here.