Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict: Annual Open Debate
Tomorrow (22 May), the Security Council will hold its annual open debate on the protection of civilians (PoC) in armed conflict. Greece, the Council president for May, is convening the meeting as one of its signature events. It will be chaired by Greek Minister for Foreign Affairs George Gerapetritis. The expected briefers are Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Tom Fletcher, UN Women Executive Director Sima Sami Bahous, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) President Mirjana Spoljaric Egger, and President and Chief Executive Officer of Save the Children US Janti Soeripto.
The concept note (S/2025/301) that Greece prepared for the meeting highlights the changing nature of contemporary armed conflicts, marked by the widespread use of explosive weapons in populated areas, the deployment of new military technologies, cyber operations, and the increasing prevalence of misinformation and disinformation. These developments have compounded the risks to civilians and posed mounting challenges to humanitarian access and the safety of humanitarian, UN, and media personnel.
Tomorrow’s debate is intended to assess these evolving threats, consider how international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHRL) can be more effectively implemented in conflict, and explore ways to strengthen accountability mechanisms and advance a more comprehensive approach to PoC. The concept note poses several questions to guide tomorrow’s discussion, including:
- How can the Security Council and UN member states strengthen compliance with and implementation of Council resolutions pertaining to PoC?
- How does the changing nature of conflict impact civilians, especially the most vulnerable groups such as women and children?
- How can the UN system and member states address the targeting of civilians performing protected functions in armed conflict, including humanitarian and UN personnel and journalists?
At tomorrow’s debate, Fletcher is expected to brief member states on the Secretary-General’s latest annual report on PoC, which is dated 15 May and covers the state of civilian protection in 2024. Over 36,000 civilians were killed across 14 conflicts that year—an increase of approximately 7.5 percent from 2023, which itself had seen a rise of 72 percent compared to 2022, largely due to the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war. Heavy use of high-yield explosive weapons in urban areas—including in Gaza, Lebanon, Myanmar, Sudan, Syria, and Ukraine—remained a major driver of casualties. Gaza was especially affected: nearly 70 percent of all structures were damaged or destroyed by the end of 2024, and 1.9 million people—about 90 percent of the population—were internally displaced. Large-scale displacement also occurred in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Myanmar, and Sudan, with global conflict-related displacement reaching 122.6 million by mid-2024—an increase of 5 percent from the end of 2023.
The report documents widespread damage to civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, and water systems. In Ukraine, over 300 attacks on energy infrastructure left millions without power, while in Yemen and northeast Syria, similar incidents impaired access to electricity and water. In Lebanon, fighting disrupted farming across 130,000 hectares of land and damaged more than 45 water facilities. Such incidents also contributed to food insecurity: in 2024, more than 280 million people faced high levels of acute food insecurity—defined as Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) phase 3 and above—in 59 countries and territories. Many of these were situations of armed conflict, with food insecurity persisting in the Central African Republic (CAR), Colombia, the DRC, Mali, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nigeria, the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere, often alongside water scarcity.
At tomorrow’s debate, Fletcher may express alarm about the growing erosion of respect for IHL that fuelled the increase in civilian harm in 2024. The Secretary-General’s report notes that parties to conflict are increasingly engaging in conduct that strikes at the core of international legal and normative frameworks, including attacks on civilians and civilian objects, indiscriminate strikes with inaccurate or heavy weapons, and the use of prohibited methods such as torture, hostage-taking, and sexual violence. The report warns that some actors are distorting IHL—through permissive interpretations of concepts such as military necessity and proportionality—in ways that justify, rather than minimise, civilian harm. It also criticises the politicised application of IHL standards, cautioning that selective assessments of legality based on political alignment rather than evidence threaten to undermine the universality and legitimacy of the law. Additionally, the report says that the production, use, or transfer of long-stigmatised and widely prohibited weapons such as chemical weapons, cluster munitions and antipersonnel mines, as well as the first-ever withdrawal from a humanitarian disarmament treaty, have “raised serious humanitarian concerns, pushed beyond legal boundaries, set dangerous precedents, and propagated the dangerous and outdated idea that exceptional threats and military necessity could outweigh [IHL]”.
The report also describes a continued rise in the incidence of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV), with the UN verifying approximately 4,500 cases in 2024, the vast majority of which (93 percent) affected women and girls. Survivors continued to face significant barriers to healthcare, psychosocial and legal services, and access to justice due to limited service-provider capacity, fear of retaliation, and social stigma, among other factors. In her briefing tomorrow, Bahous may express concern about this trend—which the Secretary-General’s 2025 annual report on CRSV is expected to cover in detail—and she is also expected to describe other gendered harms in armed conflict, such as reproductive violence, targeted violence against women in public roles, and psychological trauma. In light of a recent UN Women report indicating that funding cuts may force half of frontline women’s organisations in crisis contexts to shut down within the next six months, Bahous is also likely to call for increased support to such organisations.
Soeripto is expected to focus on the situation of children in armed conflict. The Secretary-General’s report refers to numerous conflict situations in which children were killed and injured in 2024—including Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, the CAR, the DRC, Lebanon, Myanmar, the OPT, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Ukraine—notably by use of explosive weapons in populated areas. In her briefing, Soeripto may stress that children bear distinct vulnerabilities in conflict, including a greater susceptibility to blast injuries, malnutrition, and trauma. She may urge member states to adopt a more child-sensitive interpretation of IHL and to confront attacks on norms meant to protect children in war. She additionally may call for credible and independent investigations into grave violations against children, the use of accountability mechanisms to prevent further harm, and the full implementation of international instruments such as the Safe Schools Declaration and the Political Declaration on Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas. Soeripto may also underscore the importance of adequately resourcing and politically supporting the Security Council’s children and armed conflict (CAAC) mandate and its Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism (MRM), as well as promptly appointing a chair to the Council’s CAAC Working Group to allow it to resume its vital work. (For more information about the Council’s delay in appointing subsidiary body chairs this year, see the In Hindsight in our May 2025 Monthly Forecast.)
Spoljaric may provide more information about threats and challenges to humanitarian action in armed conflict. Humanitarian personnel experienced record levels of violence in 2024, making it the deadliest year ever recorded for aid workers. In her briefing, Spoljaric may detail the international legal provisions relating to PoC and reiterate that compliance with IHL—including respect for humanitarian principles, the protection of humanitarian space, and the facilitation of safe, sustained, and unimpeded access—is essential to safeguarding civilians and the personnel who serve them. She may also echo the Secretary-General’s concern about growing attempts by conflict parties to undermine principled humanitarian action for political or military gain, including by pressuring neutral and impartial humanitarian providers to align with the objectives of conflict parties. As she did during last year’s debate, Spoljaric may call on states to strengthen the independence of humanitarian operations, ensure the humane treatment of detainees, and uphold obligations to account for persons reported missing in conflict. She may further urge member states to comply with resolution 2730 of 24 May 2024 on the protection of humanitarian and UN personnel and to support the implementation of the recommendations that the resolution requested the Secretary-General to submit to prevent and address attacks on such personnel.
Many member states are likely to echo the Secretary-General’s concern about the continued erosion of IHL in armed conflict. They may join his call on states to uphold their international legal obligations and promote accountability for violations, including through public statements, arms transfer controls, military training, joint operational planning, and the prosecution of international crimes in both international and national courts. Some may call for greater political support and financial resources for international accountability mechanisms, while encouraging the development of national protection policies that assign institutional responsibility for minimising civilian harm.
Speakers may also address contemporary challenges to the protection of civilians stemming from disinformation, hate speech, and the misuse of new technologies. Some may underscore the need to defend independent, fact-based information and strengthen coordination among the UN system, member states, and civil society. Others may express alarm at the trend identified by the Secretary-General regarding the growing use of emerging technologies—such as autonomous weapons systems, cyber operations, and artificial intelligence—which risk blurring the lines between civilian and military targets, enabling harm without human oversight, and further eroding IHL protections. In this regard, some may support the Secretary-General’s call for the prohibition of unpredictable autonomous weapons and for greater regulatory efforts to address these risks. In line with the report’s recommendations, several participants may also highlight the need to move beyond a minimalist compliance-based approach to IHL and endorse the Secretary-General’s proposed paradigm of “full protection”—a more comprehensive PoC framework that seeks to anticipate, prevent, and respond to the full range of civilian harm, including long-term and indirect effects of armed conflict.
