(AGENPARL) – Thu 22 May 2025 Logo ICRC EN.jpg      International Committee of the Red Cross
Speech given by Mirjana Spoljaric
President of the International Committee of the Red Cross
UN Security Council Open Debate on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict
22 May 2025
Mr. President,
I will not repeat the horrors being inflicted on civilians because of widespread violations of international humanitarian law. This Council is briefed—week after week—about civilians being maimed and murdered, about civilians being detained, tortured, raped, starved, and forcibly displaced.
And yet, we have to ask ourselves: where is the political courage to stop the killing?
Today, we face not only a crisis of compliance with the rules of war, but one of our collective conscience. The precedent being set on battlefields today will haunt us for a long time.
There are no excuses for double standards. Every State has a stake in this.
Last September when I last briefed this Council, I called on you to turn rhetorical support for IHL into action. Specifically, I urged you to call your allies when they violate the rules of war and demand that they stop. The moment to pick up the phone is now.
No one wants to live in a world where the rules of war apply only to your enemies—and not to yourself and to your allies. Civilians will suffer less when all sides commit to the basic principles of humanity in war.
Ignoring these rules is a race to the moral bottom—a fast track to chaos and irreversible despair.
This is exactly how the contagion of conflict spreads. The impacts of “total victory” or “because we can” reverberate far beyond war zones. Unrestrained violence breeds even bigger security threats that can strike when and where we least expect.
Your state may not be at war today. Your family may be far from frontlines. But tides turn. New conflicts erupt. And if you do not defend the rules of war today, you are accepting a world where wars are fought with increasing barbarity and disregard for our shared humanity.
Today, the ICRC counts about 130 armed conflicts across the world—more than we recorded a year ago, and more than six times what we saw 25 years ago.
Many of these conflicts are deeply protracted.
In many parts of the world, armed forces or non-state armed groups represent the only viable source of income. This does not support hope for stability, let alone sustainable economic growth.
Most importantly: the world of today is more interconnected than ever. In today’s conflicts, you do not have to pull the trigger to be complicit in the consequences.
Mr. President,
The Geneva Conventions were born out of the smoldering ruins of war—out of genocide, out of mass suffering—to sear into public consciousness that wars must have limits. The horror inflicted on civilians in World War II rallied the world to expand international humanitarian law to provide protections to civilians in times of armed conflict.  
This led to the creation and adoption of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which provides clear, unambiguous protections for civilians in times of armed conflict to which all states are bound.
International humanitarian law prohibits torture, sexual violence, and hostage-taking. It requires hospitals, homes, and schools to be spared from hostilities. It demands that all those who are captured and detained in conflict be treated humanely. It specifies that the wounded and sick must be cared for, and that civilians have a right to receive humanitarian aid.
International humanitarian law also places special emphasis on the vulnerabilities of civilians living in occupied territories: they must have access to food, water, and medical care. IHL forbids the forcible transfer or deportation from occupied territories. It specifies that if conditions are made unbearable—through indiscriminate military operations, denial of food, water, medical care, or safety—any movement of civilians would still be considered involuntary.  
Protecting civilians means upholding these protections. The survival of these lifesaving rules cannot be taken for granted. They must be defended. They must be prioritized.
I am calling on this Council to prevent any permissive signals that IHL can be ignored, that lifesaving aid can be denied, and that principled humanitarian action can be replaced. This sets a dangerous precedent – especially when conflict is the greatest driver of the very needs that are being ignored as I speak.
Mr. President,
This Council was created to promote international peace and security. Your responsibility—to find ways to de-escalate, to reconcile, to build a more stable and prosperous world—will be far harder if we allow the rules to be trampled with impunity.
The way wars are fought influences how they end. The path to peace starts in a prison cell. It starts with treating prisoners with the very same dignity that you would demand for yourself. Peace starts with treating the wounded, reconnecting separated families, ensuring the provision of lifesaving aid, and sparing civilians and civilian infrastructure from harm.
But it is possible to protect civilians in war.
Thank you.
About the ICRC
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is a neutral, impartial and independent organization with an exclusively humanitarian mandate that stems from the Geneva Conventions of 1949. It helps people around the world affected by armed conflict and other violence, doing everything it can to protect their lives and dignity and to relieve their suffering, often alongside its Red Cross and Red Crescent partners.
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