Statement by Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia at a UN Security Council meeting on Ensuring Safety of Civilians in Armed Conflict
Mr. President,
We thank the briefers for their contributions to the discussion. Civilians around the world continue to bear the brunt of armed conflicts. In 2024, the UN registered 36,000 civilian deaths in 14 armed conflicts around the world.
It is notable that we were not given a country-specific breakdown. However, an analysis of open sources suggests that about half of those people were killed in Gaza and the West Bank, where the bloody conflict goes on.
Last year, at a similar meeting, we discussed the famine in Gaza. This year, according to the Secretary-General's report, 86 per cent of the people of the Strip live in conditions of acute food insecurity or artificially created famine, and they are dying from it. 19 out of 36 hospitals there have been destroyed. Children have been out of schoool for almost two years now. Attacks on humanitarian workers are ongoing.
The question arises as to why there has been no progress in the protection of civilians in Gaza for all the time of the conflict. The answer is obvious – this is because the peace settlement is stalled, which does not allow to improve the situation of civilians, including women, children, the elderly and the disabled.
Mr. President,
What we find relevant in the Secretary General's report is the conclusion that the evaluation whether an action is legal or illegal in terms of international humanitarian law is something that in the modern world depends largely on political preferences.
Indeed, this is precisely what we are regularly witnessing at the Council. However, it is totally unacceptable when some political preferences become a basis for UN reports.
For example, the Secretary-General’s report prepared for today’s meeting, in its part dealing with Ukraine, mentions Russian civilians affected by the conflict only once, and solely in the context of displaced persons. At the same time, it is not explained there that this is about hundreds of civilians abducted by the Ukrainian armed forces in the Kursk region who are now being used as hostages. The following question arises – Are there are no killed and wounded among Russian civilians, according to the Secretariat? Are there no attacks on civilian objects and civilian infrastructure? Why is this information completely missing in the report?
Last year, in the course of a similar statement, we provided all the necessary statistics covering the whole year. And we do provide the UN with this kind of information in writing regularly. If you do not believe us, look at the open sources, and you will see that in 2024, according to the most minimal estimates, the number of affected Russian civilians is approaching 5,500 people, more than 800 of whom were killed. About 300 underage children were injured and maimed, 51 children died. Civilian casualties were mostly caused by “shelling of civilian infrastructure using explosive weapons, small arms and light weapons, most of them are foreign-manufactured.” Just look at the issue of Ukrainian drone operators tracking civilian vehicles in frontline areas. The report also mentions the ICJ's appeal to states not to supply arms to parties to armed conflicts that violate international humanitarian law. Yet, there is no mention whatsoever of the continued supply of weapons to the Kiev regime.
What the report does mention are the alleged three hundred attacks on energy infrastructure in Ukraine. But it fails to explain that these are infrastructure facilities serving military units, and the figures are taken at face value from the Ukrainian side. The report even stoops to the unacceptable dissemination of Western fakes about children being separated from their parents and forcibly removed from the country, with no details provided to underpin those assertions.
Mr. President,
Another important item on the agenda under discussion today is the issue of the safety of journalists in armed conflicts. Kiev has been terrorizing Russian media professionals – those who are carrying out their professional duty covering what is happening in the area of the special military operation. A number of those killed and wounded since February 2022 is in double digits: since the beginning of this year alone, as a result of targeted attacks by the Ukrainian armed forces, including using precision missile weapons, five Russian media workers have been killed and many more have been injured to different extents.
And yet again, despite our regular appeals, all these crimes do not receive the slightest condemnation from the UN. A glaring manifestation of this cynical approach is the biennial UNESCO Director General’s Report on the Safety of Journalists and the Danger of Impunity covering 2022-2023 – this report completely ignores the numerous facts of Russian correspondents being killed by the Ukrainian armed forces. The UNESCO data on journalists killed is in turn something that the UN Secretary-General refers to in his report; thus, neither here is there any objective information.
The report notes the fight against impunity in Ukraine. I wonder what this conclusion is premised on given that even the ICC Rome Statute was ratified by this country with a reservation exempting its troops from the responsibility for war crimes?
We believe that the report’s description of the situation in Ukraine is something that merits an official investigation. How can we be talking about protecting civilians after such blatant lies and fact-twisting? First, we need to find out what is happening within the Secretariat itself and bring to account the authors for attempting to mislead the Security Council.
Mr. President,
The duty to ensure accountability for violations of international humanitarian law lies with every State. It is the efforts of national justice that form the foundation of the fight against impunity.
We cannot understand the reason why every year the report persistently covers the activities of the ICC, which is a separate entity that has nothing to do with the United Nations. The ICC is mired in politicization and double standards and is notorious for its ineffectiveness. The report's call for States to accede to the statute of this “puppet tribunal” is totally inappropriate. The ICC ineffectiveness can only be rivaled by the Residual Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, which was also praised in the report. This body and its predecessor, the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, cost the United Nations billions of dollars and became a byword for double standards and selective justice.
It is hard to understand why the document is praising the trials conducted in a number of Western countries on the basis of universal jurisdiction. Let me recall here that Western States have long been abusing the notion of universal jurisdiction exploiting it to interfere in the internal affairs of developing countries, including through ignoring the norms of international customary law. These were wrongful acts, which was confirmed by the International Court of Justice. And African countries, who are very unhappy with the abuse of universal jurisdiction, initiated a specialized discussion in the Sixth Committee of the GA, which reflects the substantial divergence of views on this issue.
Mr. President,
On a separate note, we would like to dwell on the issue of protecting civilians as part of peacekeeping mandates. The protection of civilians is a temporary measure which is needed to buy time to come up with a political and diplomatic solution to the conflict. It is also important to understand that this is the area of responsibility for national Governments and their security bodies.
When peacekeeping missions have a mandate to protect civilians, it must be implemented comprehensively and in close cooperation with national authorities, local communities and relevant humanitarian organizations.
However, the main role in the protection of civilians is to be played by UNPKO military and police contingents, who ensure the direct protection of the most vulnerable groups, sometimes at the cost of their own lives.
What also needs to be done in this regard is advancing the reform in the security sector and providing professional training for its personnel, since without strengthening them and ensuring their professional growth, it will be impossible to arrive at sustainable results. This area has not always received enough attention.
Further thought needs to be given to the issue of whether it is realistic to include protection of civilians in peacekeeping mandates, which already embrace human rights monitoring, gender issues, prevention of sexual violence and etc. This may lead to an unjustified interlinkage between the political, human rights and humanitarian action. To what extent this improves overall effectiveness is a big question, but what it does do is clearly increase the expectations of people, which are not always fulfilled. Furthermore, in a number of cases, the monitoring of the human rights situation is being used to exert political pressure on the relevant government, which is completely unacceptable. Nor do we see how special political missions or UN humanitarians on their own can actually protect civilians under the threat of violence.
Mr. President,
In conclusion, we would like to draw your attention to another finding in the Secretary-General's report, which states that the situation with regard to the protection of civilians has been deteriorating for the past 150 years after the relevant norms were created. We cannot agree with that statement.
However difficult the situation of civilians in armed conflicts may be today, it cannot be compared to what happened more than 80 years ago during the Second World War on the territory of the USSR. During the 3 years of the occupation of Soviet territory by the German Nazis, more than 13 million civilians were killed. At the same time, despite the Nuremberg Tribunal verdict, a significant part of the most abhorrent Nazis remained at large. Western countries, which are so much in favor of fighting impunity today, looked at this situation very calmly, they sheltered them and allowed numerous Nazi criminals to escape punishment.
Thank you.
