 kind words and thank you all for joining us again on this particular occasion and I'm really glad of this opportunity to be able to speak about this area and I say this is an area of the law that until recently received far less attention than other rules of IHL in particular the rules regulating conduct of facilities but also deprivation of liberty and this is really unwarranted because in most modern conflicts more civilian there are more civilian deaths and suffering as a result of humanitarian crises either caused or exacerbated by conflicts than from the actual hostilities however until recently this area of law really received very little attention as Maria said I used to work for ICRC and for 10 years not for 10 years sorry for seven years I was responsible for the access file as a legal advisor in seven years I did not have a single question and that's why because it was not considered so much of a legal topic there were obvious constant challenges to humanitarian access but they were addressed as an operational concern and it was only with the conflict in Syria that we were prompted to look more closely at the key aspects of the rules regulating humanitarian relief operations and it was in fact the conflict in Syria that led to the elaboration of the Oxford guidance that that you have so what I propose to do today is to present key elements of the law regulating relief operations zooming in on the points that have proved particularly challenging in recent conflicts but as Maria said I'm keen to answer your questions I think that in addition to a question and answer session at the end there are two clear moments where I'm happy to to interrupt to stop a moment to pause and say is everything clear up to now so the first point we need to start off with is clarity on what constitute humanitarian relief operations for the purpose of IHL and these are include but are not limited to operations to provide food water medical supplies clothing bedding means of shelter heating fuels and other supplies and related services essential for the survival of the civilians population so that's the focus it's really what's essential for the survival we're setting a pretty low threshold it's not operations more broadly and for the rules of IHL to apply the operations need to be exclusively humanitarian in character so their purpose must be solely to assist people in need and they must be impartial and this has a particular meaning in international humanitarian law humanitarian principles impartial humanitarian action means that they need to be carried out without adverse distinction so no discrimination and importantly that priority be given to those in greatest need this is what the term impartiality means possibly different to what you understand it in other areas of law where impartial actually means neutral I'm not taking science now a variety of actors in theory can carry out relief operations states can do so international organizations and also private actors like NGOs again in order to benefit from the rules that I'm going to outline the activities need to be exclusively humanitarian and carried out impartially what do we see in practice it is principally intergovernmental organizations such as the UN and its very specialized agencies the components of the international red cross and red crescent movements and NGOs that actually conduct relief operations states the EU tend to fund them again it's important to understand the allocation of response who actually carries things out now luckily for us let's move now to the rules the rules regulating humanitarian assistance are simple the essence is pretty simple and they are essentially the same in international and non-international armed conflict I think they differ in one key aspect and I'll look at that in a moment so four elements to bear in mind first primary responsibility for meeting the needs of civilians lies with the party to the conflict in whose control they find themselves can either be the state or unorganized armed groups this sounds pretty straightforward but it's something that I frequently have to remind my humanitarian colleagues and I say hold on step one is to responsible eyes the party that is in control of the population second step is if this party is unable or unwilling to meet the basic needs and again we're talking very basic needs of civilians and other people entitled to assistance and I'm not going to go into it it's people deprived of their liberty the wounded and sick are of course also entitled to assistance I'm going to focus on civilian populations more generally so if this party with primary responsibility is unable or unwilling to meet the basic needs states and humanitarian organizations may offer and make offers to carry out relief actions again that are impartial and conducted with adverse distinction in the majority of situations and I'll come to this in a moment the consent of the affected states is required so you offer to carry out services but you need the consent of the state to actually operate consent is required but may not be arbitrarily withheld and I'll park these elements unpack them in a moment so that's step one you a conflict has broken out and needs are unmet an organization can't just rock up they've got to ask for authorization to operate step one step two once this consent has been obtained once relief actions have been authorized then significantly all parties to the armed conflict and also relevant neighboring states must allow and facilitate the rapid and unimpeded passage of relief consignments equipment and personnel but may prescribe technical arrangements measures of control regulating such passage so the important things to bear in mind and I ease that there are two stages there is the initial authorization the initial consent to come and operate and it is in relation to this that we look at is it arbitrarily withheld and then the second stage once your yes come you can come and work here then the obligation is different it's allow and facilitate and what I always tell people is hold on a moment in applying the law you need to stop and think and say at what stage am I am I at the initial stage where I want to go and operate in country X or am I at the second stage I've been allowed to operate I'm there and it's a question of the obligation to allow and facilitate so if you remember one thing from this presentation it's stop and think at which stage you are now in let's look at the question of initial authorization and this is something that caught a lot of attention in relation to Syria why because we were in a situation that was essentially a development context war broke out and there were a lot of actors who were trying to come in and operate and that's why the whole question of consent became very relevant but let's take a step back as I said consent is required not to be arbitrarily withheld the first question is hold on a moment who's consent now in situations of armed conflict the law is pretty quick looking at article 70 of additional protocol one and it says that um um relief operations shall be undertaken subject to the agreement of the party's concerned so it's clear we need the agreement who are the parties concerned well very clearly the state in whose territory you want to conduct the operations the consent of the enemy state is not required unless you need to transit through territory under its control very straightforward as a matter of law and very intuitive operationally the situation is more complex in non-international armed conflict as always and in particular the question arises and this is what we saw in Syria if we have a situation where there is one part of the territory that is not under government control it's under the control of organized armed groups and relief actions can be conducted there from neighboring states directly without transiting through territory under the control of the state in those circumstances is the consent of the state required as a matter of law and this is exactly what we were looking at in Syria and the law there's divergence of views as to what the law actually says and it's two provisions that we're looking at and common article three two of the Geneva conventions provides that an impartial body may offer its services to parties to the conflict full stop so yes it's possible to go to the state go to the organized armed group but the provision doesn't say um whose consent is required it just doesn't address the question of okay is it enough that I get the consent of the organized armed group or do I also get need the consent of the state some like MSF for example have said fine this implicitly means that if I don't have to transit through the territory of the state article three two implicitly states that it is enough for me to get the consent of the organized armed groups um taking a more traditional public international law perspective others have said look going into the territory of the state without its consent actually violates its sovereignty and territorial integrity it could be that the law foresees this but we feel uncomfortable accepting this from the silence from a provision that doesn't address this at all so divergence of views as to common article three the effect of common article three at best common article three even if it could apply in this way would only cover activities by impartial humanitarian bodies NGOs maybe the UN and I can tell you how the UN's interpreters Syria later but definitely not actors that are not impartial humanitarian bodies like state the second relevant provision is article 18 to of additional protocol two and you think it's clear on this because it expressly requires and the consent of the high contracting party concerned now to me that would indicate it's very clear that you need the consent of the state that's who the high contracting party is and this is what some of the interpretations at the time of the negotiations and also subsequently by some states have indicated however again divergence of view in relation to Syria and there were some people who said no no no a high contracting party is only concerned by relief operations if it's in control of the territory if it's not it's not concerned and therefore its consent is not required again I took a as you'll see the Oxford guidance took a more conservative approach if you want and said look it's very difficult to consider a state not concerned by activities that taking place in its territory all the more so in territory not under its control and also this interpretation and if you look at article 18 to it refers to the consent of the high contracting party concerned and it would be odd to to somehow say well this isn't relevant this express reference isn't relevant so I have to say divergence of views on this on whether as a matter of law the consent of the state is required for all activities that are conducted in areas under its control that don't need to transit sorry areas not under its control that can be reached directly divergence of views it was very live in relation to Syria because factually it was something that that was arising there and what happened at the UN took a very conservative or predictable approach and said as far as the UN is concerned the consent of Damascus is required so no UN operations no operations funded by the UN could go in without the consent of Damascus understandable we can discuss Syria later in a way we came out of this impasse because for the first time ever the Security Council actually imposed operations on a country essentially sidestepping the rules of IHL so this is about I think it's important to bear in mind that for the most part these problems don't arise it's not at this initial moment that problems arise it's at the second stage that they come up that they arise but it's important to know what the law says now back peddling whose consent is required sorry another important point to bear in mind is I'm talking about whose consent is required as a matter of law now operationally it is clear that in order to operate to even transit through territory safely it's important to obtain the authorization the green lights of all the parties that have presence or that have authority over a particular territory that's as a matter of practice and if you were to speak to humanitarian agency it would say yes of course we obtain safety guarantees from all the parties that are present state and non-state but that's operationally now as I said while the consent let's take the conservative approach or the legally correct approach and say the consent of the state is always required there are two situations where states yes we need their consent but they have no latitude not to give the consent that's the first is in situations of occupation that's something that's expressly addressed by the fourth Geneva Convention which states which requires the responsibility for meeting needs is on the occupying power because it has control and the law states very clearly that if there are unmet needs it must accept offers to carry out relief operations it needs to accept them obviously it's not that everyone can come in it can regulate who comes in as long as the needs are met so that's the first situation where there is no latitude to withhold consent and the second is the rather exceptional one where the security council has imposed relief operations which is what we see we saw in Syria and we've discussed now so in all other situations the consent is of the state is required in the sense of you need to get authorization however consent may not be arbitrarily withheld and that's the other the second legal question that we were floundering a bit when it came to this area because okay what does it actually mean and this isn't although central to the rules regulating relief operations this wasn't something that was addressed in any treaty in fact if you actually look at the relevant provisions they don't mention arbitrary withholding of consent but it's very clear from all the travel that this is what was understood that's how you reconcile the relief operations shall be conducted subject to the agreement that's how they reconciled it but nowhere had this notion been unpacked it hadn't been addressed by any court any manual any treaty body so this is what the Oxford guidance was initially instructed to do tell us tell us what it means so what we had to do um with um a number of experts was okay what does it actually mean to arbitrary withhold consent and so we had a look at the notion of arbitrariness under a number of different bodies of international law to try and distill some elements of it and what we did was identify three circumstances three sets of circumstances in which consent would be held arbitrarily the first is um if consent is withheld in circumstances that would result in a violation by a state of its obligations with respect to the civilian population so let me give you some examples of this consent would be held arbitrarily in in situations where doing so would lead to a violation of IHL for example withholding um consent in situations where the purpose of doing this is to cause contribute or perpetuate starvation of the civilian population because this would violate the prohibition of starvation of the civilian population as a method of warfare another example would be withholding consent to medical relief operations for example and again something that we saw in Syria because medical supplies could treat wounded enemy combatants now that's clearly in violation of the foundational rule of IHL that the wounded and sick civilians and fighters alike are entitled to medical care so what we were seeing in Syria was a systematic withholding of consent this is really what we're talking about to medical operations for this reason clearly um clearly arbitrary another example would be for example selective withholding of consent with the intent of discriminating against a particular group or a section of the civilian population for example systematically rejecting offers to conduct operations in areas populated by groups perceived as favoring the enemy this would be contrary to the prohibition on discrimination so this is the first type of heading the second heading would be withholding consent in violation of the principles of necessity and proportionality as understood under human rights law not IHL proportionality but human rights law proportionality what does that mean and we're looking at human rights law for a measure and not to be arbitrary it must be necessary no more than necessary and proportionate to the end sort so let's apply this to relief operations where consent is withheld for a valid reason it'll nonetheless be arbitrary if it exceeds what's necessary in the circumstances so limitations in terms of time duration locations and types of affected goods must not go beyond what's absolutely necessary to legitimate aim and then the third heading of arbitrary is withholding consent in a manner that's unreasonable or that might lead to injustice or lack of credibility and this is focuses on the manner so not so much the reasons and the substance but the manner in which consent is withheld whether it's unreasonable or could lead to injustice so a possible example would be a total failure to engage at all like people our organization is asked can we come can we come can we come total silence that would be arbitrary because there's no way of assessing whether the reasons for withholding consent are or are not legitimate so that's what the the Oxford guidance did was try to provide these three elements of arbitrariness to to to try and guide us a bit and it was interesting i mean as part of the exercise of elaborating the guidance it was really interesting because until then the focus had not been on determining what is arbitrary withholding of consent but the converse saying in these circumstances you can withhold consent and as we were elaborating that and we were taking that route Valter Cailin who some of you might know said well and Bashir is really going to thank you for that manu because you're giving him the list of examples that you can rely and it was one of those moments that you go on then absolutely right thank you so much and we flipped it and said okay this is what would make it arbitrary and i think this is also interesting in terms of the process of elaborating instruments be strategic so i'm going to stop here for a moment because in a way this is a natural moment for questions again on the first stage of the rules any questions please if you have any questions you can take the floor here just uh you can raise your question briefly or maybe otherwise we can proceed and take it as a whole i don't know manu whatever you um yes no i'm happy i mean if there's no like if there's no question you know how good i am with technology but i don't appear to be any questions so i'm going to to proceed again let's remember where we are so far we've discussed situations where an organization wants to come into the country to operate now we've got to the stage where they've got the green light they've got their memorandum of understanding with the relevant part of the kind of the government and want to actually start implementing their operations now what does the law say here um we have a very clear statement that once um consent has been obtained all parties to an armed conflict so although it's a matter of law it was only the consent of the state that was required it's all parties to an armed conflict must allow and facilitate rapid and unimpeded passage of relief supplies equipment and personnel throughout the territory under bank control and this obligation covers both initial entry into the country so looking at visas customs and so on and so forth but also movement within it so there's this clear obligation to allow and facilitate but an entitlement to prescribe technical arrangements for some passage for this passage so this is usually when problems arise the the greatest number of problems arise at this stage and something that's important i mean i think there's two elements to to bring out the first is that the law says there's this obligation but doesn't actually elaborate very much in terms of what it actually entails i'll tell you this i'll show you this in a moment so the law doesn't give us very much and also what's important to bear in mind is that not every impediment to humanitarian action is a violation of this obligation it just isn't that's not how the law works it's not that hey you're stuck at a checkpoint for two hours violated it's not that clear cut there is this general obligation to allow and facilitate but it allows considerable discretion so apart from circumstances where specific conduct is required this obligation to allow and facilitate rapid and unimpeded passage can be discharged in a number of ways and so parties really have considerable discretion in its implementation so ihl only um prescribes a small number of specific measures that that must be taken so parties must not divert relief supplies from their intended purpose or delay their forwarding in case apart from the case of urgent necessities second restrictions may be imposed on activities and importantly on freedom of movement of relief personnel only in the event of imperative military necessity such as in the case of military operations and even then the restrictions may only be temporary and then in situations of occupations all the relief consignments must be exempt from charges taxes all customs but this is all we have as you can see it's really not very much at all now when i was working with archery while elaborating all kinds of good practice based on measures taken in natural disasters that could be helpful to allow and facilitate simplifying and expediting entry visa procedures waving or reducing customs inspections granting permits for the free passage of relief operations all the way down from capital importantly all the way down to field level it's no good if it's just capital that knows this it's got to be the person at the checkpoint um reducing administrative procedures and other formalities as possible you can see there's lots of things that can be done but they're not required as a matter of law and that's a vis the challenge of this particular area of law that there's really so much technical so much um discretion that's left what's also important to bear in mind is that there is a quid pro quo as always and this is understandable yes parties are required to allow and facilitate the passage but they are entitled to impose measures of control or technical arrangements for such passage what they can serve a variety of purpose for example they allow parties to the conflict to assure themselves that the the relief consignments are exclusively humanitarian that there's no med there's no military equipment in them they can prevent relief convoys from being endangered by ongoing um facilities or from hampering the facilities they can ensure that um the the supplies meet minimum health and safety standards we don't think about this much but it is a live issue examples can be searches of consignments to check that they don't contain weapons or military equipment um requiring convoys to use particular routes at particular times to ensure that they don't tamper and are not endangered by military operations um another issue that arises frequently are concerns about diversion of the relief of the goods so they relief um so parties can actually say no you need to have measures to ensure that the distribution that the goods are only provided to the intended beneficiaries so again a number of possibilities for them to specify how relief operations are to be conducted and again it's it's understandable particularly in situations of active fighting it is understandable that the parties don't want this don't want relief operations to be abused don't want them to be endangered don't want them to hamper military operations so again an understandable desire of IHL as always to balance humanitarian response a humanitarian side of things with the military realities of where they're taking place now my final point for now perhaps is a question that arose a lot again in relation to Syria um and is relevant I forgot that this was the the war crimes um course sorry so I wasn't going to talk about war crimes but I'm going to start the conversation there I think what's very difficult as a matter of law but also practice is determining when the rules of IHL on on relief operations have been violated you know clearly if you've got prohibition on on torture very clear any moment someone's torture it's a violation prohibition on sexual violence very clear then there are rules such as those on conduct of facilities where it's much harder to particularly from the outside to determine where there's been a violation and I'd say the rules on humanitarian relief operations are particularly difficult why I think we've got a bit I think we can say they're violated when consent is withheld arbitrarily in a way that's that's easy we've got a framework of analysis it's much harder as I said to determine at what point um the rules the obligation to allow and facilitate has been violated um just because there is so much discretion and my suggestion is the way I look at it is that you mustn't look at it in terms of the bilateral relationship between one particular humanitarian organization and say I'm making it up the obligation MSF has been unable to operate you said you can come but essentially you haven't allowed and facilitate its operations therefore violation of the rules regulating humanitarian relief operations no you mustn't look at it in terms of the bilateral relationship with a particular organization instead the starting point is once again the position of the civilian populations or the particular populations that we're looking at and say have they been deprived of the objects indispensable to their survival as a whole so to continue with the example of MSF if the populations in need have managed to get medical assistance from other sources from other NGOs then you can't say that the obligation to allow and facilitate has been violated just because MSF can't operate so again you've got to look at it the starting points was are the needs of the civilian population being met yes or no that was the starting point of our analysis and it's also the starting point for making the determination of violation are there segments of the population that are being deprived of particular goods necessary for their survival if so that's when we could say violation of the rules to allow and facilitate that's the framework of analysis I feel like stopping here there's a further segment if we want which kind of goes to war crimes I'm just I could flag it and also fine what happens operationally if there is this if the the the obligation to allow and facilitate or if the rules have been violated but let's stop here again thank you very much Manu that was wonderful in the sense that it was it was very very clear human you addressed an extremely complicating topic in a very clear but also very nuanced way because you highlighted discretion grace areas controversies and things that we cannot simply explain to to to laymen and I would say that I found very very interesting two things you highlighted in particular one was about how strategic your mindset was you know when Dapo said okay great which says a lot how you you frame the issues of legal imagination how you frame normative tools which is a big lesson but also very much the the the nature of IHL you know which is always balancing humanitarian consideration with with military with a military conflict with military necessity and it's something which is very very difficult and sometimes it comes very annoying to people to to fully grasp so I stop here I would like to start giving the floor to people who have raised topics and they encourage you to to even raise your hand I can I can I can read I can see the first here I saw there was something else maybe Liz I can I can see the first in your experience how significant that's how the the delays in a delivery caused by feed dragging on the side of the party that should provide consent can you thank you thank you so much I can I can I can't read the name properly though I'm sorry I'm not going to thank you for that question and again um let's break it apart because you're asking me how significant are delays in aid delivery um on the side that should provide consent I'd say that in terms of providing initial consent Sirius really made us look at it for the most part states either we are in situations of ongoing conflict and humanitarian actors have been there forever um that you don't need the initial consent or it's not at this point that we have problems I think the problems in in feed dragging as you say tend to be caused at the second stage so every so it's not a question of consent but it's the parties that should be allowing and facilitating and usually the state that should be doing this that's really when as you say most of the delays occur I would say most of the challenges occur and it's usually it's not usually intentional but quite frequently you can start seeing when it's quite intentional there's a really good it's a bit old now there's a piece called I think death by a thousand paper cuts in relation to to South Sudan I think and it was really showing how administrative impediments that's what they're called administrative impediments so delays in granting visas delays in letting stuff in delays in authorizing movements and ideally they shouldn't be authorizing movements but that was also part of the process all of these delays were in fact and the request for additional paperwork it was these kinds of impediments that were the ones that were really slowing the capacity to respond search arrangements and I'd say very as I keep on saying as lawyers we get fascinated with consent just because it's legal but operationally it's at this stage um that all the problems tend to arise and it's a it's a war of attrition there to try and and get everything through is there shall I keep going yes yes excellent question oh dear so is there a distinction between cross border and cross line in terms of legal consent of the parties thank you for the question because in a way everyone has become rather obsessed with these two terms cross border and cross line and well in fact the question is consent the modality doesn't really matter because assistance always needs to come in cross border somehow like it's not there um but the problem is who is on the other side of the border is it the state or like in situations like Syria is it an organized armed group and then that's when we have the question of is the consent of the state required um for operations in such area so I would say don't don't focus on the modalities cross border or cross line instead look at look at it in terms of who has control over that particular area of land and then say fine is it enough to get its consent or do I also need the consent of the other party and as I said there's two analysis I mean this arises most as a matter of law essentially the question is is the consent of the state required even in situations where I can operate in areas under the control of the organized armed group that's the question you need to ask yourself now I think just because we're having a good chat in Syria it was um it was interesting because at some point we the whole legal analysis was is Damascus is concerned required for operations in opposition held areas so geographically they were cross border but then what we also saw particularly now in the conflict as there should be more cross line operations so operations coming from areas under Damascus is controlled to those under the opposition control what we are now saying is that the opposition the opposition the organized armed groups is saying no we're not going to let um assistance come in cross line now as I said as a matter of law their consent isn't required funnily enough but operationally they're in control so if they don't let it in it's not coming in so it's one of those areas where yes it's important to know the law but knowing the law isn't enough because you've got the practical realities on the ground can I speak about the current situation in Sudan well funnily enough funnily enough um that came up in my emails just yesterday and I'm scrolling up because we heard Sudan is a very similar situation to Syria I understand factually in the sense of that until recently apologies I'm scrolling through my emails to try and get it correct here we go here we go until recently Sudan and correct me if I'm getting it wrong um was allowing assistance to come in from chat it was saying yep it come in it can come in from chat until very recently and then what it has said now is no it can no longer come in from Chad because the areas of the border neighboring Chad are not under its control and it's saying that the assistance that's coming in is and I'm sorry I haven't got the details here ah they're saying something along the lines that the assistance that's coming in includes military assistance so I am not allowing assistance to come in through there instead it needs to come in through Port Sudan so rather similar to the situation we saw in relation to Syria with the government now saying no it's only got to come through area under my control and then I will allow it to move on um so interesting with no security council involvement yet you have three questions uh the first one is about sanctions to what extent sanctions have any bearing on humanitarian aid um there is a question about Gaza uh are you able to provide an overview uh I was going to ask as well but Katie uh asked that of how this applies in Gaza presently with regards to difficulties in regulated humanitarian if I want to ask you also about to what extent the provisional order uh of the ICJ uh if if there is something else you know if if there is something additional and oh my god you have many many questions of course do you want to start with this too and and let me say yes absolutely now I'm happy to have a different session on sanctions because I think it's something very topical across context and why can they cause yes they can cause tension with humanitarian assistance in a nutshell why um it's principally restrictions in financial sanctions they prohibit making funds or assets available directly or indirectly to persons or groups that are designated under sanctions at times these are for example in non-international armed conflicts these are groups that are parties to non-international armed conflict and there is a concern that assets that might end up in their hands payments that need to be made for them Hamas Hamas was designated under the um EU CT sanctions Hamas was running Gaza you had to pay taxes licenses to Hamas clearly inconsistent with the prohibition in sanctions we have seen that progressively there's been a willingness of states to adopt exceptions for humanitarian action so in appeal oh that's where it is happy to have a session specifically on sanctions Maria how um announcer on Gaza perhaps does that should I go for Gaza now Maria yes and so I with regard to Gaza first primary responsibility for meeting the needs lies with the occupying power so that's where primary responsibility lies second um in such circumstances the if there are unmet needs the occupying power has no latitude to withhold consent now whatever we might think of the status of Gaza pre October the 10th pre whatever um humanitarian action was always being allowed within Gaza there was no there was no question of consent being withheld there's so in a way we can park that part of the law that wasn't the issue the issue is whether the rules regulating um the part of the rules that require parks to allow and facilitate rapid and unimpeded passage are being violated and as I said here we've got to to look at the realities yes there is this obligation to allow and facilitate but also there is this entitlement to impose technical arrangements for such passage and as always we need to look at the context so what was an acceptable technical arrangement pre uh end of October so whenever the fighting started in Gaza what was an acceptable arrangement in terms of searches and obviously there is an entitlement to carry out searches what was an acceptable arrangement in terms of regulating passage and for the most part there weren't problems to the extent that they were delays it was about um searches and the types of items that were going in but we were clearly moving well beyond the types of assistance that was necessary for humanitarian action we were looking at development activities if before it was um the searches of the items coming in we're in a very different operational reality now where searches are still necessary from what I understand Marie and I were kind of scrolling through recent emails to try and see what the impediments are the types of impediments are today I think for the most part the sticking point isn't the searches to bring items in anymore the sticking point is the very clear reality that there is ongoing fighting within Gaza I mean we I don't think we forget it in any way but that means that it is dangerous for convoys to transit and so we're looking at the rules that relate to specifying the routes and times but also we're looking at the rules that protect humanitarian relief operations that are you know the staff are civilians the goods are civilian in nature so they need to be respected and protected at all times by all the sides fighting you know what I as you say often we're making uncomfortable statements as lawyers but it's a statement that we need to constantly say is there are two sides fighting in Gaza so there is fighting going on and both sides have this obligation to allow and facilitate and to respect and protect at all times does it surprise me that humanitarian movements are limited no absolutely not it's an area of active hostilities I think an additional problem that was came out very tragically today is that there's no one there to manage the distributions you can imagine that a WFP distribution in September was something that ran very very smoothly with staff on the ground with with well-established arrangements for it the situation today is is dramatically different in terms of the limited capacity of WFP to be there and the reality that there's no one actually responsible for public order and safety in in Gaza today and the number the density of the people looking for the limited assistance that's coming in so again to me I'd say you know it's not a question of the law not regularly regulating it it is the very extreme situation within Gaza today that we're looking at so we're in that allow and facilitate measures of control breakdown of law and order so it's it's tragic in terms of the amount of needs and the challenges of actually providing it in this situation of breakdown and law and order thank you manu I think there was there are three more questions which are related actually to responsibility I would say yes so I think Jude refers to particular example in for Gaza and then Anna when they are not facilitating these two questions I would say they're related and then David has raised another question which is more about the legal thinking the legal rationale on the okay let me just try and deal perhaps with them I don't know whether it's well you do you do well it's sorry um it's true yeah it's true okay thank you I would say that I mean deliberate attempts to stop aid from getting in as I said from what my understanding of the situation at the moment although obviously that is extremely the attempt is extremely problematic and it's something that must be taken care of I actually don't think it is having a particular effect in terms of assets going in the problem today is not the searchers the problem is once within Gaza moving the goods and managing to distribute them in a manner that's safe the next question is a proceedings against the party's responsible and thank you so much so how do we deal with violations of these rules and I think it's important for us to look at it in terms of accountability and then in terms of fine consent has been withheld arbitrarily can I go in anyway which is how it arose in relation to to Syria and in a way but as always the the legal side is actually easier on here what are the consequences well as always I start with let's not let me focus on international criminal law there are obligations on parties state and non-state have there been proceedings no we don't actually see very much of this at all I'm not aware of any legal proceedings for example in in ICJ or I don't think this issue has been addressed by any other compensation commissions like Ethiopia Retreya so not yet what we have seen though is the imposition of sanctions so sanctions have been imposed on particular groups and individuals for having um impeded access or I'm paraphrasing now the different terminology has been adopted so we have seen a number of instances where impeding access has been a basis for the imposition of sanctions so in a way that's not accountability it's a way of trying to promote compliance but that's where we have seen it and the other dimension of this is of course individual criminal responsibility and the statute of the ICC as originally adopted only included a relevant war crime for international armed conflict and it was formulated as intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival including willfully impeding relief supplies as provided for under the Geneva Conventions so we could have a whole conversation about this because it's actually linked to starvation of the civilian population the threshold the challenges of determining as a matter of factor and law when we have willfully impeded relief supplies and also why refer to the Geneva Conventions when it's the additional protocol standards anyway but that's what the crime said only in relation to international armed conflict um in 2019 the statute was amended and we now have a similar war crime for non-international armed conflict framing slightly different but again it's internationally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival including willfully impeding relief supplies so we've now got these two war crimes it's a difficult war crime just that it's linked to starvation and we haven't discussed the prohibition of starvation today but that's a really complicated provision it's really a mess so if you were to ask me do i think that these crime it's important that they're there as a matter of policy do i think they're ever going to be the basis for prosecutions probably not because the violations that we're looking at would probably and far more easily be prosecuted as other crimes but that's what we have so in a way that's the accountability framework another question was okay fine forget that but let's say i have a situation where a state has arbitrarily withheld consent does that mean i can go in without its consent again a very live question in relation to syria and predictably a question in relation to which there are divergences of view and it's something that's addressed in the oxford guidance and and we need to look at other areas of public international law and the answer will depend according to who would be conducting these unauthorized relief operations why if it is a state that's conducting them and it's rarely a state or an intergovernmental organization such as the as the un un agencies funds and programs these bodies states and the un must comply with public international law directly and entering into the territory of a state without its consent as i said violates territorial sovereign integrity territorial integrity and sovereignty so even though syria has violated international law that does not entitle you as a state as an international organization to go in without its consent you would be violating this sovereignty and territorial integrity arguably that some who argue okay it would be a violation but it might fall within the heading of countermeasures permissible countermeasures so grounds justifying unlawful acts i'm forgetting the term right now any grounds justifying violations it's it's it's tenuous an argument that could be made it would be a permissible countermeasure it's permissible it's questionable i know that the un did not like this approach at all so this is why it's in fact called the oxford guidance and not the ocher guidance because the officer of legal affairs said no you've included countermeasures we completely disagree with that that cannot be a your own document the argument is different if we're talking about NGOs because an NGO is a private actor it's not directly bound by a hl so an NGO doesn't violate a state's territorial integrity integrity and sovereignty by entering it's like i don't violate a state's territorial integrity by entering i'm a private actor however i might be violating its criminal law i might be committing a violation of domestic law and again this is what we saw in Syria we saw that Syria criminalized entry without a visa and therefore the staff of NGOs who came in without a visa without its consent were prosecuted and it's problematic because NGOs do not have privileges and immunities so we saw a number of the staff of NGOs in this before the domestic courts so i think you kind of touched upon on the final question yeah but maybe you would like to elaborate no and david i think this is in a way what we were looking at when you said self-help i think this is the the question that you were asking circumstances precluding wrongfulness that's what i was trying to say uh is there any other final comment question uh we we exceeded a little bit our time because it was so rich so uh full so thought provoking while you were talking man was singing about Yarmouk in Syria the the palestinian refugee camp and this emblematic picture where people showed up uh uh when humanitarian assistance was was given to them and also i thought other things like last year's earthquake in turkey and northern syria and the question where it was required in addition security council resolution for humanitarian relief to enter northern syria uh there are so don't get mistelted maria we could stay here all day yes yes there there are so many things Gaza as it unfolds today the last month but also as it unfolds today um very very interesting also i want to wrap up here to tell us about the limits of law you know at the end of the day that yes we have law but knowing the law i wrote down what you say is not enough and this is also something that i'm trying to communicate to students you know that we are talking about a different reality thank you very much thank you really very much that was a wonderful webinar so uh uh full i insist on saying that thank you for clarifying all these issues related to the role of regulating humanitarian relief operations of introducing us to this great picture a nuanced picture that not it's it's as you say i really understand that the second state are low and facilitate is the key states uh where most of the problems um have um rose and on that note i would like to thank you very much and i hope we will host you in london in person uh soon uh to continue the discussion on other issues related to civilian protection this is very important thank you very much it was a great pleasure to have thank you for going forward and thank you all it was a great session i like lots of questions thank you very much for your questions thank you very much man we thank you very much lease our pd researcher who once more facilitated this wonderful webinar until next time have a nice afternoon thank you all bye bye thank you thank you very much