Page 16 - Coespu Magazine 2017-2

seen among weapon
bearers. To make
matters worse, control
over the population is
often one of the major
issues at stake in
confrontations. The
development of this
situation can be
attributed to the rise of
religious and ethnic
hatreds, the collapse of
State structures, the
battle for control of
natural resources, the
vast availability of
weapons, the
proliferation of acts of terrorism, and the spread of so-called asymmetric conflicts.
Girl asks for help to UN in a refugees camp in South Sudan
The PoC became a central concern in the international community in the late 1990s, accompanying
an upsurge in humanitarian action and peacekeeping. Especially in the last decades, the PoC in
armed conflicts has become an increasingly necessary and more complex issue.
Even if much has been done, today the biggest misunderstanding involves “how to do” protection in
practice. In fact, the challenges of ensuring physical protection and normative development in war
zones have dictated that
protection is no longer
the exclusive domain of
humanitarians.
In practice, it requires
the coordination of
multiple actors such as
UN bodies and
governmental and non-
governmental
associations, an issue
which is not always
possible and simple.
Human rights and
International
humanitarian law have
not always been Kitchanga aid camp - Democratic Republic of Congo
respected, causing even more war crimes, affecting mostly children, women and other civilians:
violence against civilians continues to rise, including the use of explosive devices in urban areas,
sexual violence as a weapon of war and systematic targeting of people along ethnic or religious
lines, and, as a matter of fact, in today’s asymmetric-armed conflicts almost all of those killed,

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