Mapping the Gap: Between the Promise and Reality of the Security Council’s Protection Agenda
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Over 25 years since the Security Council adopted resolution 1265 in 1999, establishing the protection of civilians (PoC) as a distinct agenda item, the long-observed gap between the protection framework that it has built and the reality experienced by civilians in armed conflict has never been wider. The Council has at its disposal well-established legal standards, operational tools, and reporting mechanisms developed through a substantial body of thematic and country-specific decisions. What it increasingly lacks is the political will and cohesion to apply them in the situations where they are most urgently needed. As civilian harm in armed conflict surges, the credibility of the Council’s protection framework—and its role in maintaining international peace and security—will be judged not by the norms it articulates but by its willingness to act on them.
This report—Security Council Report’s (SCR) first thematic research report on PoC since 2015—assesses the Council’s civilian protection efforts at this moment of acute geopolitical polarisation and proliferating civilian harm. It draws on SCR reporting, analysis of Council products, and interviews with UN officials, diplomats, and civil society actors. After tracing the evolution of the agenda’s institutional and normative framework over its first two decades, the report analyses recent trends and challenges since 2020, examining the Council’s practice in key protective areas: accountability, humanitarian access, peacekeeping, and cross-cutting threats to civilians, including urban warfare, conflict-induced food insecurity, climate-related security risks, and new and emerging technologies.
The picture that emerges is of a PoC agenda that is no longer supported by the political foundations required to realise its ambition. An increase in armed conflicts worldwide and in violations of international humanitarian law—sometimes committed or supported by Council members themselves—has contributed to deepening patterns of civilian harm, while the Council’s responses have steadily declined in frequency and scope and are increasingly contested or ignored by conflict parties. Against this backdrop, the report proposes 20 recommendations to reinvigorate the Council’s PoC agenda and narrow the persistent gap between its commitments and its conduct.
