Extracting Lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War to Improve Civilian Protection
30 January 2025
Authors: Lauren Spink
Nearly three years of war in Ukraine have taken an immense toll on civilians. Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the armed forces of the Russian Federation have committed a range of international humanitarian law (IHL) violations that have inflicted immediate and reverberating harms on civilians. Spink observes that, while not without fault, human rights reporting and IHL monitoring mechanisms show that the Armed Forces of Ukraine have demonstrated more commitment to respecting IHL and have undertaken initiatives to protect civilians under their territorial control. These initiatives, which include creating notification systems to inform civilians about incoming airstrikes and supporting evacuations to remove civilians from frontline areas, have helped the Ukrainian military maintain a high degree of trust with the civilian population. Spink argues that, to prevent backsliding on IHL obligations inside and outside of Ukraine, monitors must continue documenting IHL violations and pursuing accountability for all violations committed, regardless of the perpetrator.
About the Beyond Compliance Blog Symposium
The Beyond Compliance Symposium has been developed within the framework of our research programme on Building Evidence on Promoting Restraint by Armed Actors. It brings together scholars and practitioners across the humanitarian, human rights, development and security sector fields to reflect on the conceptualisation of everyday negative lived experiences of armed conflict.
Understanding the personal, material, temporal and spatial scope of (civilian) harm and (humanitarian) need, as well as the characteristics and motivations of actors experiencing, causing, and exercising protective agency in relation to harm + need, represent crucial first steps in articulating effective responses. Contributions to the symposium also include reflections on legal and extra-legal strategies to prevent, reduce and redress harm + need, including through promotion of compliance with international humanitarian law and international human rights law and efforts aimed at generating restraint from violence and abuse.
Photo credit: © Daniel Brown. Destroyed Russian armored vehicles and damaged homes line and clog a residential road in Bucha, Ukraine on April 2, 2022.
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