Biased Protection? Civilian Agency, Stigmatization and the UN Security Council’s (Re-) Construction of Identity

"Arguably, the last century has been marked by the ‘humanization of humanitarian law’. In the wake of the 65th anniversary of the bedrock of International Humanitarian Law—the Geneva Conventions—the movement seems in full swing. Since the end of the Cold War, the fate and protection of war-affected populations has (re)gained a prominent spot on the international agenda: In what one might consider the latest move in the extension of the civilian protection norm, the UN Security Council has since 1999 developed its own take on the issue through a set of resolutions. However, despite its overlaps with R2P, the Council’s take on the protection of civilians (PoC) has sparked much less debate or criticism. Such scrutiny is however necessary to further any protection agenda. Based on a qualitative text analysis of the Security Council’s seven resolutions on the issue, I argue that the Council’s PoC framework is biased in three ways: first, the Council moves away from the Geneva Conventions’ proscriptive to a set of ascriptive criteria that link to proxy categories (women, children, elderly, journalists, refugees, UN personnel etc.) in order to identify who is to be protected. The shift mainly pushes able-bodied, draft-aged men who haven’t fled the theatre of war out of the scope of protection. Secondly, by portraying civilians mainly as ‘vulnerable’, ‘passive’ and in ‘need of protection’, they become the ‘objects’ of outside intervention. By purporting a ‘salvation’ approach to civilian protection, the Council ignores civilians’ agency and self-protection strategies—often to their overall detriment. Thirdly, the Council’s interpretation of the main causes of civilian insecurity reveals a deep reliance on ‘new war’ narratives—mainly focusing on situations of failing statehood and rising dominance of non-state armed actors. In order to account for these biases, I turn to identity politics and argue, that these biases point to underlying processes that redraw boundaries of the community of states and reassert the very identity of its members. In the end, the Council’s protection of civilians may thus be as much about the protection of war-affected populations, as it may be about the protection of the state and the community of states."