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Concept
Humanitarian protection
Summary
Humanitarian protection is the act of promoting and ensuring the legal rights of people affected by humanitarian crises.
The concept of humanitarian protection was established by the 1949 Geneva Conventions and responsibility to ensure protection was mandated to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Outside of times of crises, national governments tend to have responsibility to ensure that people's rights are protected, but during humanitarian emergencies aid agencies often perform the task. Humanitarian protection by non-governmental agencies is coordinated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
A growing unmet need for humanitarian protection was identified in 2015, exacerbated by a major gap in donor-funding of humanitarian protection activities.
In the aftermath of the Second World War, the 1949 Geneva Conventions made clear that combatants must protect civilians from harm, although the conventions did not explicitly define protection as a humanitarian activity. Protection as a humanitarian concept was introduced in the 1952 Statutes of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement which categorised all humanitarian activities into assistance or protection.
Until the 1990s, protection was considered predominately a legal issue, but after the legal mechanisms and United Nations peacekeepers both failed to protect people from atrocities in Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, humanitarian agencies began to consider protection to be part of their mandate. Humanitarian protection was subsequently debated at the United Nations, and the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir in response to his government's killing of civilians. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1296 of April 19, 2000 noted that most victims of armed armed conflict were civilians and introduced steps to enhance their protection.
In 2008, the International Committee of the Red Cross's (ICRC) Protection Policy categorised protection into four types: political protection, military or security protection, legal and judicial protection, and humanitarian protection.
Official source
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