Protection of Civilians
Haidi Willmot, Ralph Mamiya, Scott Sheeran, and Marc Weller
Abstract
The protection of civilians is a highly topical issue, which has been at the forefront of international discourse and taken a prominent role in many international deployments during recent years. It has been at the centre of debates on the NATO intervention in Libya; UN deployments in Darfur, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo; and the failures of the international community in Sri Lanka and Syria. Variously described as a moral responsibility, a legal obligation, a mandated peacekeeping task, and the culmination of humanitarian activity, it has become a high-profile concern ... More
The protection of civilians is a highly topical issue, which has been at the forefront of international discourse and taken a prominent role in many international deployments during recent years. It has been at the centre of debates on the NATO intervention in Libya; UN deployments in Darfur, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo; and the failures of the international community in Sri Lanka and Syria. Variously described as a moral responsibility, a legal obligation, a mandated peacekeeping task, and the culmination of humanitarian activity, it has become a high-profile concern of governments, international organizations, and civil society, and a central issue in international peace and security. The Protection of Civilians is an edited collection offering a multidisciplinary treatment of this important topic, harnessing perspectives from international law and international relations, traversing academia and practice. Moving from the historical and philosophical development of the civilian protection concept, through relevant bodies of international law and normative underpinnings, and on to politics and practice, the volume presents coherent cross-cutting analysis embedding the realities of diplomacy and mandate implementation in the academic discourse. In doing so, it engages a series of current debates, including on the complementarities and conflicts within the foundational bodies of law, the role of politics and diplomacy in what has often been characterized as a humanitarian endeavour, and the challenges and impacts of the use of force.
Keywords:
protection of civilians,
international relations,
international law,
armed conflict,
diplomacy,
use of force,
peacekeeping,
humanitarian,
human rights,
development
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2016 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198729266 |
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: June 2016 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198729266.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Haidi Willmot, editor
United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations
Ralph Mamiya, editor
Formerly Protections of Civilians Policy Adviser at the United Nations
Scott Sheeran, editor
Senior Lecturer, Director of the LLMs and MAs in International Human Rights, School of Law and Human Rights Centre, University of Essex
Marc Weller, editor
Professor of International Law and International Constitutional Studies, at the University of Cambridge, and the Director of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law
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