Jan 16, 2009 / 09:34 am
During the course of an open debate at the U.N. on protecting civilians during armed conflict, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the permanent of the Holy See, expressed disappointment with situations in which armies do not attempt to take reasonable measures to protect civilians.
On Wednesday, Archbishop Migliore, addressed the U.N. Security Council noting that although the Security Council has been discussing this topic for more than a decade, "civilian security during conflict is becoming more and more critical, if not at times dramatic, as we have been witnessing in these past months, weeks and days in the Gaza Strip, Iraq, Darfur and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to name just a few."
The archbishop told the council that, if civilians are to be protected, the three “vital pillars” that must be respected are: "humanitarian access, special protection of children and women and disarmament.”
"It is sadly clear,” the Vatican observer said, “that political and military designs supersede basic respect for the dignity and rights of persons and communities, when methods or armaments are used without taking all reasonable measures to avoid civilians; when women and children are used as a shield for combatants; when humanitarian access is denied in the Gaza Strip; when people are displaced and villages destroyed in Darfur and when we see sexual violence devastating the lives of women and children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo."