The seminar was organized by Brazil’s foreign ministry and the ICRC’s regional delegation for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay, with the support of the National Committee for the Dissemination and Application of IHL. Opening the seminar, the head of the regional delegation, Alexandre Formisano, spoke of the importance of complying with the Geneva Conventions and reaffirmed the need for all states to vigilantly defend IHL, based on the universal recognition that even wars have limits.
Formisano referred to the images people see of suffering and devastation caused by armed conflicts and remarked that, even during a war, the law must be upheld. “By making the people affected by armed conflicts the focus of the Geneva Conventions, they protect all such people and guarantee that everyone – even the enemy – is recognized as a human being, including wounded combatants, sick and shipwrecked people, prisoners of war and civilians,” he said.
Formisano reaffirmed the need for all states to vigilantly defend IHL.
Credit: M. Altino / ICRC
Brazil’s secretary of multilateral affairs, Ambassador Carlos Márcio Cozendey, representing his foreign minister, Ambassador Mauro Vieira, said that Brazil had met its obligation to “respect and ensure respect” for IHL. “For the last 75 years, the Geneva Conventions have helped preserve our humanity and minimize human suffering, including in the darkest times. Today, the great challenge facing us is not a lack of rules but compliance with those rules. We are witnesses – increasingly alarmed witnesses – to a rise in attacks against the civilian population and civilian infrastructure, and against health and humanitarian workers. Some of the means and methods of warfare that are being used clearly violate the principles of distinction, precaution and proportionality,” he said.
Humanity
The first discussion was on the theme “Preserving humanity: How to make compliance with IHL a political priority nationally and internationally”. The panel of speakers included Ambassador Gilda Motta Santos Neves, the president of the National Committee for the Dissemination and Application of International Humanitarian Law and director of the Department of International Organizations in the Brazilian foreign ministry; Romina Morello, the ICRC’s regional legal adviser for the Americas, and Professor Tarciso dal Maso Jardim, a legal adviser to the Brazilian Senate.
The new technologies of war and the challenges they pose to IHL was the theme of the second panel discussion of the day. Cyber operations, autonomous weapons and the consequences of the use of weapons in space are considerable challenges for states and international humanitarian agencies. On the panel were Ambassador Marcelo Câmara, the director of the Department for Strategic Affairs; Romina Morello; Carlos Alberto Ferreira Lopes Cora, the representative of the defence ministry on the National Committee for the Dissemination and Application of IHL; and Professor Emiliano J. Buis, the director of the Observatory for International Humanitarian Law of the Faculty of Law at the University of Buenos Aires.
The third panel discussion was on the theme “IHL and peace: Respecting IHL as preparation for a return to peacetime”. Taking part were Ambassador Carlos Márcio Cozendey and Sophie Orr, the ICRC’s director of operations for the Americas. “The ICRC,” she said, “can establish and maintain vital channels of communication so that parties implement the first decisive measures to preserve peace when it is endangered or to support the cessation of hostilities when a conflict has broken out.”
The seminar came to a close with a photographic exhibition entitled “Dialogues on humanity”, in which photographers from several countries took part. The exhibition was attended by Brazil’s first lady, Janja Lula da Silva; the general secretary for foreign affairs, Ambassador Maria Laura da Rocha; and the Swiss ambassador to Brazil, Pietro Lazzeri.
Janja Lula da Silva said that dialogue and politics should prevail over wars, as all the parties involved in the end finished as losers. “In general, wars are championed and stoked up by men, and it is women who have the considerable potential to build dialogues for peace. When armed conflict becomes inevitable, it is the rules laid down in international humanitarian law that must be applied everywhere,” she said.
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