Croatia
Despite several positive developments in the Council, Croatia remains extreme...
Despite several positive developments in the Council, Croatia remains extremely concerned about the severity and prevalence of attacks on civilians, especially women and children. The Council has a responsibility to respond to situations of armed conflict where humanitarian assistance is being deliberately obstructed, not merely by calling on the parties involved to allow unimpeded passage to relief, but also by imposing targeted measures in grave instances of the wilful impediment of the delivery of such supplies. The Council needs to provide strong and effective leadership on this issue, including by taking concrete action when necessary, with the ultimate aim of ending mass atrocities. We thus support the international community's increased preparedness to take collective action through the Security Council when national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations from violations of humanitarian law.
In our opinion, the question of the protection of civilians in armed conflict...
In our opinion, the question of the protection of civilians in armed conflict deserves more consistent attention from the Council. Statistics over the past 20 to 30 years clearly show that civilian casualties in conflict areas have consistently outnumbered military casualties and continue to do so. In the twenty-first century we are still witnessing gross violations of international humanitarian law in which civilians are increasingly and deliberately becoming a primary target of armed groups. It is evident that the nature of contemporary conflict has changed. Nowadays, in the conduct of armed conflict, civilians more often than not become the targets of armed attacks and atrocities that include murder, deportation and ethnic cleansing, as well as rape and sexual violence, which have thus become weapons of war.