Remarks by Ambassador Samantha Power at the UN Security Council Open Debate on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict

Watch Speech

Thank you, Mr. President, and I thank Uruguay for its leadership on protection of civilians – both here by convening this debate but also in peacekeeping, where you’ve taken such a strong regional and international role. I thank the Deputy Secretary-General, Ms. Beerli, and Ms. Rooijmans for their briefings. And let me offer my profound respect and admiration for the heroic life-saving work that Oxfam and the ICRC and their volunteers do every day in Syria and in other conflict areas around the world.

Last Thursday, UNICEF’s Syria representative, Hanna Singer, got into the besieged area of Madaya and was brought to the basement of a makeshift hospital. Two teenage boys were sharing a bed. Singer recalled that their bodies were “skeleton-like.” A UNICEF doctor approached one of the teenagers, named Ali, who was 16 years old. He looked particularly weak, and when the doctor checked his pulse it turned out there was none. The doctor started trying to resuscitate him but saw that it was hopeless. According to Singer’s account to AFP, the other young man lying next to him became frantic, “Did he die? Did he die?” he asked.

Ali’s family, themselves malnourished, sitting nearby, wept silently. They didn’t even have the energy to wail out loud upon realizing that their boy had died.

Ali was one of at least 35 people who have starved to death in the town of Madaya since December 1st – eight of them in the last nine days alone. Um Sultan, a resident of Madaya, told Amnesty International, “Every day I hear that someone I sick and unable to leave the bed. My husband is now one of them. He can’t leave the bed, and when he does he faints. I don’t recognize him anymore; he is skin and bones. I have asked for help with food but no one can help. We are all in the same mess.” We are all in the same mess.

Convoys of food and medical assistance have – just recently – been permitted to reach the 40,000 people suffering in Madaya, and the 20,000 people besieged by armed opposition groups in Foah and Kefraya, and evacuations of some of the hundreds of people reportedly near death have finally begun. It goes without saying that this is absurdly overdue. These aid convoys must of course continue, these evacuations must be urgently allowed to proceed, but above all, the sieges – the daily sieges of these communities – must be lifted.

I speak of Madaya, as others have done today, because the crisis there is far from over for the people living there. As we entered the UN today – all of us – we experienced the first, truly bitter cold day of the winter. Now, imagine burning the wooden fixtures and fittings in one’s home for some respite from that bitter winter. Imagine burning plastic, as those who have run out of wood to burn have started to do. Imagine surviving for weeks on leaves and grass, and then imagine winter coming and taking with it the leaves and grass on which you rely. Imagine being the mother or the father of a teenage boy, like Ali, and watching your child die without the means of helping him or her.

We have to try to put ourselves here in the shoes of others. We have to. These families love like our families love; they are human beings and they need us to do more than we have done up to this point. They need the medical evacuations that the UN has asked for, that are being agreed to at a trickle. That is unacceptable.

There are 15 besieged areas: two of them besieged by armed opposition groups, one besieged by ISIL, and the rest – 12 of the 15 besieged areas – besieged by a Member State of the United Nations. Think of that. The United Nations was created to prevent crimes against humanity, to prevent atrocities, to prevent images of emaciated children and civilians from being projected out of areas in need. Twelve of 15 by a Member State of the United Nations.

Now I speak of Madaya also because it exemplifies what this debate is about. It reminds us of the human stakes when we talk about protection of civilians. And it shows why we have to talk about protection of civilians regardless of whether or not peacekeepers are deployed in a particular area. And it reminds us, above all, of the growing disregard for granting humanitarian access – which used to be a principle that was observed as a general rule, even though there were always exceptions – the disregard for international humanitarian law, and most fundamentally and most disturbingly, the apparent disregard for human life. That is what we’re dealing with – a numbing that would allow people to inflict that kind of harm willfully on civilians and on children.

More than 4 million Syrians now live in areas where the UN struggles to deliver assistance. Time and again, the Syrian regime has promised to uphold its most basic responsibilities to its citizens. Time and again, they’ve agreed to allow life-saving aid to reach starving people. And time and again, the Syrian regime has failed to follow through. Throughout last year, Damascus did not even bother to respond to more than half of UN requests to deliver assistance across conflict lines. And those countries in the UN who have influence over the Syrian regime, who are partnering with them now in the conflict, who are coming in some places to their rescue: please use that influence to get them, in the first instance to respond to UN requests, and above all to grant those requests.

The UN estimates that if the regime approved the outstanding requests – those are the requests outstanding just today – 1.4 million people would receive assistance. And it bears stressing that while we all have rightly talked about the use of starvation as a weapon of war here today, that use of food as a weapon of war is happening right alongside other horrific tactics – barrel bombs, chemical weapons use, and systematic torture against civilians by the regime. Of course, when it comes to ISIL, some of the most barbaric and gruesome tactics that we have ever seen employed – including the use of children to execute their parents; including the summoning of civilians, as we saw over the weekend in Deir Az Zour – somewhere between 100 and 300 people executed in cold blood; the sexual enslavement of women like Nadiya, whom we heard from in December at our session on human trafficking.

Where is the sanctity of life? Where is the respect for the human dignity of the person in conflict today? Yemen, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Burundi, the list goes on and on. Civilians are not just going unprotected, but are often coming under deliberate attack.

Let me briefly suggest three areas in which we – and by we I mean the Security Council, the UN, and we each as Member States – can and must seek immediate improvements.

The first should be straight forward, it is on the transmission of information. When UN staff, leaders, and experts – or when any of us as Member States, through our partners on the ground – recognize looming threats or anticipate potential crises, they or we must immediately inform the Council. When something shocks the conscience – of someone who works for an NGO or for the UN or for a Member State – come forward. Again, jump up and down, sound the alarm. The Council must also hear immediately from the Department of Peacekeeping Operations when peacekeeping contingents that are tasked with protecting civilians do not fulfil that component of their mandate, as has been documented happens too often. In that instance, we in the Council can try to use our leverage – our leverage in capital in terms of our bilateral ties, and our leverage as a Council – to ensure that appropriate action is taken. Building upon the Secretary-General’s Implementation Report on the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations, DPKO should also work to more systematically bring to the Council’s attention the most pressing protection challenges and strategies needed to address them. Shine the spotlight back on us rather than internalizing the constraints that may well exist, but put it back on the Council where it belongs.

The second area is peacekeeping performance and accountability. With nearly all peacekeepers now mandated to protect civilians, they represent one of our most powerful tools in this effort, even if they can’t be and aren’t everywhere. It is incumbent upon the Council to ensure that all contingents are appropriately prepared and sufficiently trained and equipped, and that they are held accountable if they fail to uphold their mandate. From the outset, we must ensure that the mission planning process takes full account of the protection of civilians; this priority should inform strategy development and resource allocation. We must also ensure that the troops being deployed are adequately prepared.

Others have touched upon the importance of the Kigali principles and we share the appreciation for the initiative taken by Rwanda. The United States is prioritizing support for troop-contributing countries that have committed to the Kigali principles or who have otherwise demonstrated a commitment to fully implementing mission mandates. Once deployed, the UN’s leadership must be prepared to replace any contingents that are not effectively protecting civilians – and certainly also any that would harm civilians, including through sexual exploitation and abuse. The additional 50,000 soldiers and police pledged at the September peacekeeping summit give the UN new choices and the ability to replace failing units – this option must be exercised. And in this regard we welcome the UN decision to remove the DRC peacekeepers from the Central African Republic as an important signal of zero tolerance on abuse. Full accountability is needed across this and other missions for all the allegations that have surfaced.

Third and finally, Mr. President, this Council and this organization must also recognize that its responsibility for the protection of civilians is not limited to those countries hosting peacekeeping missions. From Madaya to Burundi, when civilians come under threat, the Council must consider every appropriate action at its disposal. We may disagree on what the perfect tool is, but we must agree that we need to open up the toolbox and try to put as many tools in place as have a chance at achieving influence. This could include sustained bilateral pressure, the development of mediation and peacekeeping options, the consideration of sanctions against those who are perpetrators or organizers of attacks against civilians or attacks against peacekeepers. Think of how many peacekeepers were attacked in 2015 and ask how many of those who attacked UN peacekeepers – the very people sent by this Council – were ever held accountable. Ever. And look at that record over a decade. The answer is a show of the impunity that the perpetrators against peacekeepers feel, and you can imagine if that is the case for those coming from Member States of this United Nations sent by the Council, what it is like for the average civilian that has been attacked.

We can also increase, as I think we’ve been doing lately, Security Council engagement with regional organizations consistent with Chapter VIII of the UN charter. Individual Member States, each with their particular bilateral relationships and capabilities, must also consider all relevant tools in our respective toolboxes.

Member States and all parts of the UN must also embrace the Secretary-General’s Human Rights Upfront initiative. This means recognizing once and for all that mainstreaming human rights across the organization is not a luxury, it is a necessity. It is not something that is “nice to do,” as some have suggested – some Member States and some within the organization. It is an absolute need to do if we are serious about protecting civilians.

Let me conclude. Today’s open debate is an opportunity to discuss how to better protect civilians. This is an urgently needed conversation. But through it, I hope we also send an equally urgent message: no matter how frequent, heinous, or blatant the assaults on civilians, whether in Syria or elsewhere, this Council will never accept them as the new normal, as somehow inevitable. Starving civilians, burning villages, sexually enslaving women – these are not the costs of war or the inevitable consequences of war. These are heinous, willful, barbaric acts and they are the acts that this organization was created to prevent. This Council must remain committed to combatting them, it must do more to combat them, and we must do better at ensuring accountability for those who inflict harm upon civilians or those tasked with aiding civilians. I thank you.

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