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	South Sudan peace monitors demand rivals let aid into starvation zones by AFP, Reliefweb, FAO, WFP, agencies   8 February 2016   South Sudan faces unprecedented levels of food insecurity, with 2.8 million people, nearly 25 per cent of the population, in urgent need of aid, at least 40,000 of them on the brink of catastrophe, at a time when the war-torn country is traditionally most food secure, United Nations agencies warned today.   “It is not only areas directly affected by conflict that are food insecure; some 200,000 people in Northern Bahr El Ghazal and Warrap states have also seen their access to food deteriorate, owing to factors such as price inflation and market disruptions that are tied to the conflict," said UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Acting Representative, Serge Tissot, in a press release.   "Prompt implementation of the peace agreement is absolutely critical to improving the food situation," he added of the latest international efforts to end the conflict that erupted between President Salva Kiir and his former Vice-President Riek Machar over two years ago, killing thousands, displacing over 2.4 million people, 650,000 of whom fled abroad, and impacting the overall food security of 4.6 million.   FAO, the UN Children''s Fund (UNICEF) and the UN World Food Programme (WFP) stressed that the current numbers are particularly worrisome because they show an increase in hunger during the post-harvest period, when the country is traditionally has most food.   The numbers are expected to peak during the coming lean season, traditionally worst between April and July, when food availability is lowest. Humanitarian partners project that the lean season will start early this year, and the hunger period will be longer than in previous years.   The three UN agencies noted that the dry season, beginning now, could bring additional hardship to people facing the most severe levels of hunger. Those displaced in conflict-affected Unity State, who have been living on fish and water lilies to survive, are running out of their only remaining sources of food as the floods recede.   Livestock raiding has robbed many people of essential animal products like milk, which were their main means of survival during last year''s lean season. Unless humanitarian assistance can reliably reach them during the dry season, they face catastrophe in the coming months.   For this reason, the agencies are calling for a speedy implementation of the peace agreement signed last year, and for unrestricted access to conflict areas to deliver much needed supplies to the most affected areas.   "During the dry season, we must make a massive pre-positioning effort so that we can continue assisting people after roads become impassable once the rains come," WFP Country Director Joyce Luma said. "Rising insecurity in Greater Equatoria is hampering delivery of humanitarian assistance through major routes, setting back our efforts to prepare and respond to people who are most in need."   Overall prevalence of emergency levels of malnutrition is also an issue of grave concern, due mostly to inadequate food consumption, along with disease, dietary habits, and constrained health and nutrition service delivery.   "Families have been doing everything they can to survive but they are now running out of options," UNICEF Representative Jonathan Veitch said. "Many of the areas where the needs are greatest are out of reach because of the security situation. It''s crucial that we are given unrestricted access now. If we can reach them, we can help them."   12 Jan 2016   Ceasefire monitors in South Sudan called on rival forces Tuesday to allow food into conflict zones where aid workers have warned tens of thousands may be dying of starvation.   "Only a fraction of the emergency food" is in place "because of restrictions on aid convoys and due to insecurity," said Festus Mogae, a former Botswana president who heads the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (JMEC), set up by regional bloc IGAD to ensure a peace deal is implemented.   Last week the UN warned that thousands of civilians have fled fighting and extreme hunger in the past month, as leaders struggle to honour a peace deal on the ground.   In October, UN-backed experts warned of a "concrete risk of famine" in parts of the northern Unity State if fighting were to continue with 30,000 people facing death by starvation outside areas aid workers can reach.   Some aid has been delivered, but civilians report dire conditions and fighting has continued.   "Humanitarian projections suggest things are going to get worse before they get better," Mogae said at a meeting in Juba of the JMEC commission. "The implications are obvious."   Mogae called on both sides to order field commanders to "ensure complete and unconditional cooperation with the humanitarian agencies so that this deficiency can be remedied before it is too late."   * PBS investigative series FRONTLINE has produced an immersive documentary on Facebook 360, transporting viewers to war-torn South Sudan where more than 2,8 million people are suffering a hunger crisis, and near 40,000 are on the brink of starvation, see link below.   http://www.wfp.org/news/south-sudan-3652 http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=53180#.VrkgcU_SPh4 http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/jan/14/south-sudan-children-on-the-brink-very-severely-malnourished http://reliefweb.int/report/south-sudan/ssudan-peace-monitors-demand-rivals-let-aid-starvation-zones http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/article/south-sudan-access-medical-care-dramatically-reduced-due-violence http://reliefweb.int/country/ssd http://forums.ssrc.org/kujenga-amani/ Visit the related web page
	International humanitarian law and the challenges of contemporary armed conflicts by International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)   This is the fourth report on international humanitarian law (IHL) and the challenges of contemporary armed conflicts prepared by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for the International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (International Conference December 2015). The first three reports were submitted to the previous conferences held in 2003, 2007 and 2011.   These reports aim to provide an overview of some of the challenges posed by contemporary armed conflicts for IHL, to generate broader reflection on those challenges and to outline ongoing or prospective ICRC action, positions and interest. The goal of this introductory section is to briefly outline the operational realities in which those challenges arise.   Since the last report in 2011, the spiral of armed conflict and violence has continued in most parts of the world. Political, ethnic, national or religious grievances and the struggle for access to critical resources remained at the source of many ongoing cycles of armed conflict, and have sparked recent outbreaks of hostilities.   A number of conflict trends have become even more acute in the last few years, such as the growing complexity of armed conflicts linked to the fragmentation of armed groups and asymmetric warfare; the regionalization of conflicts; the challenges of decades-long wars; the absence of effective international conflict resolution; and the collapse of national systems.   With few exceptions, almost all of the armed conflicts that have occurred in the past few years are the result of the “conflict trap”: conflicts engendering conflicts, parties to armed conflict fracturing and multiplying, and new parties intervening in ongoing conflicts. Unresolved tensions that have lasted for years and decades continue to deplete resources and severely erode the social fabric and the means of resilience of affected populations.   The turmoil that escalated in parts of the Middle East during the so-called Arab Spring in 2011 – which degenerated into devastating armed conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen in particular – was also felt far beyond the region by countries that began to support the many parties to those conflicts in various ways.   Basic means of survival are becoming increasingly limited for people already struggling to cope with the effects of recurrent upheaval, drought and chronic impoverishment. Countries like Afghanistan, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, Somalia, Libya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo continue to be mired in protracted armed conflicts, causing immeasurable suffering for entire populations. In eastern Ukraine, the outbreak of a new armed conflict has already caused the death of thousands of people, many of whom are civilians, as well as massive destruction, and the displacement of over a million people.   In most armed conflicts, civilians continue to bear the brunt of the hostilities, especially when fighting takes place in densely populated areas or when civilians are deliberately targeted. Thousands of people are being detained, often outside any legal framework and often subject to ill treatment or inhuman conditions of detention. The number of persons going missing as a result of armed conflict is dramatic.   The devastation caused by violence has prompted increasing numbers of people to flee their communities, leaving their homes and livelihoods behind and facing the prospect of long-term displacement and exile. The number of internally displaced persons (IDPs), refugees and asylum seekers uprooted by ongoing armed conflicts and violence worldwide has soared in the past two years. In 2013, for the first time since the Second World War, their total number exceeded 50 million people, over half of whom were IDPs. This negative trend continued in 2014, as conflict situations deteriorated.   The international humanitarian sector is at risk of reaching breaking point. The ICRC and other impartial humanitarian organizations are facing humanitarian needs on an epic scale, in an unprecedented number of concurrent crises around the world. The gap between those needs and the ability of humanitarian actors to meet them is impossible to bridge.   The incapacity of the international system to maintain peace and security has, among other things, had the effect of shifting the focus of international engagement from conflict resolution to humanitarian activities. Thus, much energy has been spent on negotiations about humanitarian access, humanitarian pauses, local ceasefires, evacuations of civilians, humanitarian corridors or freezes, etc. While achieving consensus about humanitarian access and the provision of assistance to those in need is to be welcomed, the political antagonisms that often accompany such debates carry the risk of tarnishing the very notion of impartial humanitarian action and run counter to its object and purpose.   As a background to this report on legal challenges related to armed conflicts, some salient trends of contemporary armed conflicts should be highlighted, since many of the challenges arise as a consequence of new conflict patterns.   The ever increasing complexity arising from the multitude of parties and their conflictual relations is a noticeable feature of contemporary armed conflicts. On the State side, the number of foreign interventions in many ongoing armed conflicts contributes substantially to the multiplication of actors involved.   In many situations, third States and/or international organizations, such as the United Nations (UN) or the African Union (AU), intervene, sometimes themselves becoming parties to the conflict. This intervention – in support of States or of non-State armed groups – poses extremely complex questions concerning conflict classification. These often arise because of a lack of precise information about the nature of the involvement of third parties but also when third parties do not acknowledge their participation in the hostilities at all.   Regardless, it will be important for the ICRC to continue to engage with States in the months and years to come on the humanitarian and legal consequences of the support they provide to parties to armed conflicts.   On the non-State side, a myriad of fluid, multiplying and fragmenting armed groups frequently take part in the fighting. Often, their structure is difficult to understand. The multiplication of such groups poses a number of risks for the civilian population, the first being that it necessarily entails an increase of the front lines with the ensuing risk that civilians will be caught in the fighting.   The multiplication of non-State armed groups also signifies a greater strain on resources, especially natural and financial, as every new party needs to sustain itself. Also, although this is difficult to quantify, as parties multiply and split societies become fractured. Communities and families come under pressure and are divided over their allegiance to different armed groups, people are at higher risk of being associated with one of the many parties, and thus at higher risk of reprisals.   As far as humanitarian action is concerned, the opacity or lack of the chain of command or control of some groups poses a challenge not only in terms of security but also for engaging such groups on issues of protection and compliance with IHL.   In terms of the territorial span, the spillover of conflicts into neighbouring countries, their geographical expanse and their regionalization also appear to have become a distinctive feature of many contemporary armed conflicts – partly as a consequence of the above-mentioned foreign involvements. This is the case especially in today’s Middle East but also in North and West Africa.   In Syria, the split within the armed opposition, the spillover of the armed conflict into neighbouring countries, some of which were already burdened by their own conflicts, and the multiplication of intervening foreign States and armed groups is leading to a regional situation in which some of the conflictual relations are barely comprehensible. In the Sahel region, elusive and highly mobile armed groups are fighting each other as well as a number of governments, affecting already vulnerable populations. Another example of the territorial span is the armed conflict against Boko Haram, which already involves at least four States.   For the ICRC, the brutality and mercilessness of many contemporary armed conflicts is a cause for deep alarm. Egregious violations of IHL are being committed every day, by both States and non-State parties. In many situations, this is linked to a denial of the applicability or relevance of IHL.   On the part of non-State armed groups, there is sometimes a rejection of IHL, which some parties do not feel bound by. In addition to this, recent armed conflicts have seen a rise in the deliberate commission of violations of IHL by some non-State armed groups and their use of media to publicize those violations. The ultimate aim of this may be to benefit from the significant negative impression conveyed by the media coverage in order to rally support, as well as to undermine support for the adversary.   On the part of States, it is often, though not always, the result of counterterrorism measures and discourses, which the ICRC has recently observed to be hardening. It remains the case that some States deny the existence of armed conflicts, rendering dialogue difficult on the humanitarian consequences of the conflict and the protection of those affected by it.   To deny the basic protections of IHL to combatants and civilians is to deny IHL’s core aims of protecting human life, physical integrity and dignity. As has been repeated in all previous ICRC reports on IHL and the challenges of contemporary armed conflicts, the single most important challenge to IHL continues to be that it should be better respected.   It remains the ICRC’s firm belief that in spite of the inevitable suffering that armed conflicts entail, the sorrow and pain of victims of armed conflicts would be lessened if the parties to armed conflicts respected the letter and spirit of IHL.   * Visit the following external links:   http://www.icrc.org/en/document/international-humanitarian-law-and-challenges-contemporary-armed-conflicts http://www.icrc.org/en/what-we-do/building-respect-ihl http://www.icrc.org/en/war-and-law/ihl-other-legal-regmies/ihl-human-rights http://www.icrc.org/en/war-and-law/contemporary-challenges-for-ihl/respect-ihl http://www.icrc.org/en/document/no-agreement-states-mechanism-strengthen-compliance-rules-war http://www.icrc.org/en/document/what-should-we-do-when-world-burning-start-restoring-laws-war http://www.icrc.org/en/war-and-law http://bit.ly/2bDnLYk http://bit.ly/2bNDxW9   * A Practical Guide to Humanitarian Law, from Medicine San Frontiers (MSF) was published for the first time by Françoise Bouchet-Saulnier in 1998. Regularly updated, and translated into several languages, the latest edition has now been developed into a free, publicly accessible website.   Written from the perspective of victims and those who provide assistance to them, the Practical Guide presents the rules of humanitarian law applicable to the protection and assistance of victims of conflicts and crisis in accessible and reader-friendly format.   It analyzes how international humanitarian law has evolved in the face of new challenges to international peace and human security related to the war on terror, new forms of armed conflict and humanitarian action, the emergence of international criminal justice, and the reshaping of fundamental rules in a multipolar world, visit the link below to access the MSF site. Visit the related web page
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