Protection of Civilians
Expected Council Action
In May, the Security Council will receive the Secretary-General’s annual report on the protection of civilians (PoC) in armed conflict and hold its annual open debate on the topic. Greece, the Council president in May, is convening the debate as one of its signature events. The expected briefers are Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Tom Fletcher, UN Women Executive Director Sima Sami Bahous, and International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) President Mirjana Spoljaric Egger. A civil society representative may also brief.
Key Recent Developments
The Secretary-General’s most recent report on PoC, dated 14 May 2024, provides an overview of the general state of PoC in 2023. The UN observed a significant increase in civilian casualties that year, with over 33,400 recorded deaths, constituting a 72 percent rise from 2022. The proportion of women and children killed doubled and tripled, respectively, while incidents of sexual violence increased by 50 percent. Over two-thirds of recorded deaths occurred in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and Israel, primarily among women and children, making it the deadliest conflict for civilians in 2023. Civilians in other ongoing conflicts, including in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Myanmar, Sudan, and Ukraine, also suffered from significant violence. In light of these trends, the Secretary-General’s report described the state of PoC in 2023 as “resoundingly grim” and “overwhelmingly tragic”.
Since then, humanitarian conditions in these and other conflict situations around the world have continued to deteriorate. According to numbers cited by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), as of 22 April, the total death toll in Gaza has surpassed 51,000 as the territory “likely” faces what OCHA calls its worst humanitarian crisis since the current war began in October 2023. Over 420,000 people have been newly displaced, and humanitarian operations are being “stifled by a combination of expanded military activity, the Israeli government’s blockade on the entry of humanitarian aid and commercial supplies [since 2 March], killing of aid workers and attacks on their premises, and severe movement restrictions”. The escalating security situation in eastern DRC—where the Mouvement du 23 Mars (M23) rebel group has significantly expanded its territorial control since January—has reportedly resulted in over 1,000 civilian deaths, serious human rights violations and abuses, and mass displacement. The conflict in Sudan entered its third year in April and has continued to have catastrophic consequences for civilians: on 11 April in North Darfur province, the Rapid Support Forces—the paramilitary group fighting the Sudanese government—launched a large-scale assault on the city of El Fasher and two displacement camps that killed over 100 people, including over 20 children and at least nine humanitarian personnel. In Myanmar, a massive earthquake that struck in late March exacerbated already dire humanitarian conditions for the civilian population caught in ongoing fighting between the military junta and opposition groups, which impeded subsequent emergency relief efforts. The limited ceasefire agreements that the US announced in March between Russia and Ukraine were not implemented, and Russia has continued what Secretary-General António Guterres described in a 13 April statement as the country’s “devastating pattern” of assaults on Ukrainian cities, in which hundreds of civilians were killed and more than 20,000 people displaced in the first two months of 2025 alone.
Violence has also increased against civilians performing protected functions in armed conflict. At the Security Council’s 2 April briefing on the implementation of resolution 2730 of 24 May 2024, which concerns the protection of UN and humanitarian personnel, Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Joyce Msuya noted that 2024 was the deadliest year on record for aid workers, with 377 killed across 20 countries—100 more casualties than in 2023, which had seen a 137 percent increase from 2022. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CJP), a non-profit organisation, 2024 was also the deadliest year for journalists since the CJP started keeping records over 30 years ago, with 124 reporters killed across 18 countries, constituting a 22 percent increase from 2023. Both surges in fatalities were largely driven by the war in Gaza, where over 400 aid workers and 175 journalists have been killed since the beginning of the conflict.
Widespread impunity for violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) appears to be a key driver of the increasingly prevalent and flagrant targeting of civilians in armed conflict. While the international legal and institutional structures governing the conduct of war have grown increasingly robust since the introduction of PoC as a stand-alone item on the Council’s agenda in 1999, the implementation of these frameworks has become more inconsistent, selective, and politicised as geopolitical tensions have intensified in recent years. In a February 2024 policy brief, OCHA identified non-compliance with IHL as a growing challenge to the PoC agenda, exacerbated by a lack of effective accountability mechanisms, and observed that the gap between the agenda’s expanding normative framework and the realities experienced by civilians in specific contexts has “remained, if not widened,” over the past five years. Similarly, the Secretary-General’s 2024 PoC report refers to a range of contemporary conflict situations in which “compliance with [IHL] and human rights law is often lacking; and in which the demands of the Council’s [PoC] resolutions of the past 25 years have gone largely unheeded”. More recently, during his 8 April Council briefing on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine, Fletcher bemoaned the discrepancy he had observed between the Council’s mandate to uphold IHL and recent trends in Ukraine, as well as in other conflict situations such as Gaza, Lebanon, Myanmar, and Sudan. In these places, Fletcher said, the Security Council and the international community are not only failing to “stand robustly for international law, but in some cases [are] supporting its debasement”.
Against this backdrop of soaring civilian needs and harm, recent budget cuts by member states have exacerbated the chronic underfunding of humanitarian operations. Notably, the US—the world’s largest humanitarian donor—has slashed its aid contributions since President Donald Trump took office in January. As a result of the austere funding environment, OCHA faces a budget shortfall of $58 million and announced on 10 April that it would reduce its workforce by nearly 20 percent—from 2,600 to 2,100 staff—while scaling back operations in Cameroon, Colombia, Eritrea, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Türkiye, and Zimbabwe. During her 2 April Council briefing, Msuya said that the funding shortfalls are forcing humanitarian organisations to “make impossible choices between our mandate to serve the most affected people and the safety of our teams”.
Key Issues and Options
The overarching protection challenge for the Security Council is the continued erosion of IHL and the normative framework on which it rests, as civilians increasingly bear the brunt of armed conflicts worldwide. Attacks either perpetrated or supported by Council members themselves have contributed to this trend.
Strengthening accountability for IHL violations—including through sanctions, referrals to the International Criminal Court (ICC), or the establishment of ad-hoc tribunals and investigative mechanisms—remains a key option to counter impunity and deter future abuses. Geopolitical divisions within the Council, however, have often hindered such measures. To address this gap, Council members could consider establishing a standing reporting mechanism to notify it of conflict situations in which there is a documented pattern of IHL violations and signal its intention to consider such reports, similar to the mechanisms established by resolution 2730 on the protection of UN and humanitarian personnel and resolution 2417 of 24 May 2018 on conflict-induced food insecurity.
Another option is to expand the Council’s engagement on certain drivers and methods of civilian harm. Explosive weapons in populated areas (EWIPA) have caused the majority of civilian casualties in conflicts such as Gaza, Myanmar, Sudan, and Ukraine. Council members could reiterate the Secretary-General’s call for states to endorse and implement the 2022 Political Declaration on EWIPA and take measures to reduce the use of these weapons in particular contexts, such as by imposing arms embargoes to prohibit or limit their transfer to conflict parties with an established pattern of EWIPA-related IHL violations.
Attacks on humanitarian and UN personnel also remain a serious concern. As requested by resolution 2730, the Secretary-General issued recommendations in November 2024 for preventing and responding to such attacks. The Council’s follow-up of these recommendations—which included embedding safety and security considerations in mission mandates, countering misinformation and hate speech, and promoting survivor-centred responses—could be discussed in the Council’s Informal Expert Group on the Protection of Civilians.
To maintain momentum after May’s open debate, Greece could consider producing a chair’s summary outlining key proposals and recommendations made during the meeting.
Council and Wider Dynamics
Council members still express broad rhetorical agreement that protecting civilians in armed conflict remains a core component of the Council’s mandate to maintain international peace and security. Deep divisions persist, however, over how the Council should implement the PoC agenda in both thematic and country-specific contexts.
One recurring area of divergence concerns the frameworks guiding humanitarian assistance. While Western members typically invoke the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, others—particularly China and Russia—emphasise the General Assembly’s 1991 resolution on the UN’s guiding principles for humanitarian assistance, which stress state sovereignty and host-country consent. These tensions have typically affected Council negotiations on PoC language across mandates and resolutions.
Similar disagreements have emerged in peacekeeping contexts. China, Russia, and some African members underscore the primary responsibility of the host state to protect civilians, whereas other members stress that the Council has an obligation to act in contexts where state authorities are unwilling or unable to ensure protection. This debate has taken on renewed salience as several UN peace operations with PoC mandates—such as those in the Central African Republic, Mali, and Sudan—have drawn down or transitioned amid worsening security conditions, often at the request of host governments.
Council members also differ in their views on the scope of the PoC agenda. Some have expressed concern that linking PoC to other thematic areas, including emerging threats such as climate change or artificial intelligence, could dilute the agenda or exceed the Council’s mandate. Others view such linkages as necessary to reflect contemporary protection challenges.
Geopolitical tensions have further strained discussions of accountability. Western members have condemned IHL violations by Russia in Ukraine, while Russia and many Arab states have criticised Israel’s conduct in Gaza and alleged Western double standards. These dynamics have contributed to accusations of selectivity in the Council’s engagement on PoC and have complicated consensus on country-specific outcomes.
Finally, shifting US positions since Trump’s return to office have fractured the traditional consensus among Western members on several of these issues. While the US under former President Joe Biden joined its allies in criticising Russia’s targeting of civilian infrastructure in Ukraine and in expressing cautious concern about the humanitarian impact of the war in Gaza, the Trump administration reportedly blocked a G7 statement that would have condemned Russia’s 14 April attack on the city of Sumy—where two missiles struck a crowded street during Palm Sunday celebrations, killing at least 34 people—and it has expressed full support for Israel’s resumption of military operations in Gaza, which has sparked renewed international concern. The US has also adopted a more confrontational stance toward international accountability mechanisms such as the ICC, re-imposing sanctions against the court similar to the ones it had issued during Trump’s first term, which Biden later lifted.
| Security Council Resolutions | |
| 24 May 2024S/RES/2730 | This was a resolution on the protection of humanitarian personnel and UN and associated personnel and their premises and assets. |
| 24 May 2018S/RES/2417 | This was a resolution on the link between armed conflict and food insecurity. It condemned the use of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare and the unlawful denial of humanitarian access. |
| Secretary-General’s Report | |
| 14 May 2024S/2024/385 | This was the Secretary-General’s annual report on the protection of civilians in armed conflict. |
| Security Council Letter | |
| 22 November 2024S/2024/852 | This was a letter from the Secretary-General transmitting recommendations on measures to prevent and respond to attacks, violence, and threats targeting humanitarian personnel and UN personnel, as requested by resolution 2730 of 24 May 2024. |
