Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Tom Fletcher today (22 May) called on the Security Council to act, as “the scaffolding built last century to protect us from inhumanity is crumbling,”

Fletcher noted that last year, the United Nations recorded “more than 36,000 civilian deaths in 14 armed conflicts,” warning that the real number is “much higher.

The humanitarian official said, “some parties to conflict have committed flagrant violations of the rules of law. Some have justified immense civilian harm through permissive interpretations of the law, loosely defining who is a lawful target, what constitutes a military objective, or what level of civilian harm is proportional.”

Some states, he continued “consider the law selectively, depending on the parties concerned or the interests at stake, stressing that “all this undermines the very purpose of the rules of war, to limit human suffering in armed conflict,” and “jeopardizes the protection architecture that took decades to build.”

Fletcher said that “another path” was possible, “provided that this Council and Member States take action to salvage what they have built.’

In her briefing to the Council, UN Women’s Executive Director Sima Bahous said, “in war, women and girls are not just caught in the crossfire. They, their bodies, their health, their choices, and their voices are actively targeted. Conflict related sexual violence is a protection crisis that rightfully warrants its own attention.”

Bahous said, “across too many conflicts, women's bodies become battlegrounds, through sexual violence and also through the deliberate denial of reproductive rights and health services. 61 percent of all maternal deaths occur in just 35 conflict affected countries. In the past year we have seen bombed maternity wards, blockaded medical supplies, and massive funding cuts.”

The President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Mirjana Spoljaric Egger, for her part told the Council that “the precedent being set on battlefields today will haunt us for a long time,” and added that “there are no excuses for double standards. Every state has a stake in this.”

Spoljaric Egger said, “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,” and stressed that “civilians will suffer less when all sides commit to the basic principles of humanity and war.”

Ignoring these rules, she said, “is a race to the moral bottom, a fast track to chaos and irreversible despair.”

The President and Chief Executive Officer of Save the Children in the United States, Janti Soeripto, said, “over 470 million children, more than 1 in 6 now lives in live in areas affected by conflict. Grave violations against children are being committed at unprecedent scale and with impunity. Roughly half of the civilian population we seek to protect and assist are children. But children are not small adults. Children are uniquely vulnerable to the effects of war, with a far lower threshold for harm compared to adults.”

Soeripto said, “the laws and norms that humanity has constructed to protect civilians, and in particular children, from harm during situations of armed conflict are being systematically challenged, undermined and attacked.”

She said, “this is not an erosion, but an assault on the values of humanity.”

Outside the Council, before the meeting, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Greece, Giorgos Gerapetritis, read a statement on behalf of 80 Member States.