PROTECTION IN THE HUMANITARIAN WORLD
The
concept of protection was central to the development of international humanitarian
law (IHL), the first component of the concept of protection, which initially
stemmed from the need to protect soldiers who were wounded, captured, or
otherwise hors de combat.
ICRC
also has moved to respond to new forms of warfare and has played a leadership
role in the campaign to ban antipersonnel land mines. In other words, over the
past 150 years or so, IHL has expanded its original remit to protect prisoners
of war and wounded soldiers into a broad range of activities designed to
protect civilians who are affected by but are not direct participants in
conflicts.
Protection
meant not only physical protection of people from violence and legal protection
of refugees from deportation but also protection from hunger, illness, and
discrimination. Similarly, one can trace the expansion of protection in the
humanitarian field from protection of soldiers (hors de combat) to
protection of refugees, to protection of children in armed conflict, to
protection
of
internally displaced persons, to protection of women against sexual and
gender-based violence, to protection of civilians.
The
intersection of the concepts of protection, humanitarian response, and human
rights is a close and mutually reinforcing one, although the actors in these
three spheres often seem to function in their own particular “territories,”
with few genuinely collaborative efforts.
Development.:
The concept of economic development has expanded from the emphasis on national economic growth in the 1950s to include concerns about equitable distribution of resources; community empowerment; rule of law; environmental issues; and, most recently, human security. Human
security moves away from the focus on national security to consider what causes individuals to feel secure. Although the concept remains a bit ambiguous and is interpreted in different ways, it generally refers to “freedom from threat to the core values of human beings, including physical survival” but also to community, economic, environmental, food, health, personal, and
political
security5 and to health and access to education. The concept of
human
security, it is important to recall, originated with the United Nations
Development
Program, but it parallels the expanded notion of protection
evident
in both the humanitarian and human rights worlds.
Security. Military approaches to
security have broadened dramatically in
recent
decades, from launching interstate wars to responding to insurgencies,
failed
states, and terrorism. The U.S. military’s current emphasis on stabilization
operations
recognizes that issues such as rule of law and humanitarian
response
is as important to security as combat operations. Security
is
not just about fighting and winning wars any more, it is about embracing
a
whole range of actions that are actually quite similar to those incorporated
in
the expanded notions of human security and human rights.
International
Accountability. The
movement to bring perpetrators of war
crimes
and other atrocities to justice gathered momentum in the 1990s, with
the
establishment of international tribunals in the former Yugoslavia and
Rwanda,
the prosecution of war criminals by domestic courts in other countries,
and
the adoption of the Rome Statute in 1998, which was the basis
for
the establishment of the International Criminal Court. Such measures to
increase
accountability and establish new judicial mechanisms were not only
intended
to punish those guilty of war crimes, genocide, and crimes against
humanity
but also to deter combatants from committing mass atrocities and
hence
to protect civilians.
