Ordinary civilians are assumed to panic or freeze in crises, but research has shown that this is a myth. In many crises, civilians provide life-saving help to those in need. They may even form emergent groups, which are temporary organizations that are involved in crisis response activities. Their actions can be of major importance to the crisis response efforts, but professionals are often reluctant to include volunteers in formal crisis structures out of distrust and because it requires considerable adaptation. By excluding volunteers, responders are sure that trained professionals provide high-quality support to affected communities. The attitude of frontline responders to volunteers poses a dilemma. It is important to anticipate the presence of well-intentioned volunteers and build relations with them, so that their skills and intentions can be rapidly identified and potential coordination can be established early on. Civilians can be given a variety of tasks, depending on the crisis, but it should not foreclose the recognition of their possible victimhood. Open engagement enables the adaptive incorporation of civilians in frontline crisis response efforts.

The chapter discusses the application of the principle of distinction to combatants and civilians, the consequences of that distinction and the issue of those civilians who directly participate in hostilities both in IACs and NIACs. It then discusses the application of the concept in cyber warfare. The chapter then considers the positions of members of private military security companies, unlawful combatants and UN peacekeepers.

Continuing with Lina’s story, this chapter looks into the various ways in which the FARC victimhood frame is contested. Starting with the government, and drawing on interviews with soldiers, psychologists, police officers, and other disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration experts, this chapter outlines the government’s main contestation of the guerrilla victimhood frame: specifically, that they are perpetrators against their own comrades, especially the female ones. But the paramilitaries – illustrated by stories from various former AUC members – also contest the guerrilla victimhood frame with frames of their own, saying that they are the true self-defense forces and that they never would have had to take up guns if not for the guerrillas. This chapter shows the complexity and blurred lines between perpetrators and victims and analyzes the problematic outcomes of such contentious and highly gendered framing contests when ex-combatants demobilize and try to become civilians alongside each other.

This chapter deals with the concept of the civilian as it manifests in the study of war writing from the early twentieth century onwards. The category of the civilian has particular significance for the development of war literature studies, as both the figure which provides a foil to the hegemonic combatant, and as the repressed or forgotten ‘other’ in constructions of revisionist, non-patriarchal histories and canons. That this is not initially obvious has much to do with the persistent privileging of the combatant subject as a source of, and relay of, testimony about the reality of war. War literature studies, in focusing on the twentieth-century combatant (with the Great War infantryman the default paradigm case), has reproduced explicit and tacit constructions of the civilian. Explicitly, in the rhetoric of protest, civilians as referents of war literature are outsiders, ignorant of war; implicitly, civilians are the audience of war writing.

This chapter investigates British sack atrocities to civilians during the Napoleonic era. It analyses how British soldiers represented this violence in their memoirs, especially through the lens of sensationalist gothic horror; and the challenges of estimating the scale of atrocities. It adopts a multi-contextual and multi-causal framework for understanding these atrocities, from situational rage and the brutalising experiences of war to the cultural and political contexts in which sack violence could operate. Whilst most British soldiers participated in the plundering of stormed towns, the murder and rape of civilians during sacks was perpetrated by only a minority. Across soldiers’ writings, we find horror, shame, and moral outrage at such acts; empathy towards the suffering civilian; and a moral duty to bear witness. And despite lamenting the inevitability of such atrocities, this did not prevent individuals, especially officers, from intervening to protect civilians, especially women, acts framed by chivalric and humanitarian ideals.

This chapter spans the history of European siege warfare across the long eighteenth century, from the age of Louis XIV to the Napoleonic Wars. It lays out the key thematic groundwork and siege case studies explored in later chapters. The first half outlines the nature of ‘the siege’ as the classic form of old-regime positional warfare – its operational forms, temporal and spatial dimensions, and rituals and customary laws of war – and charts the relative historic decline of breach assaults and siege related massacres of garrisons and civilians in the eighteenth century. The second half shifts to the Revolutionary-Napoleonic era. It identifies the continuing importance of siege operations beyond their earlier high point in European military affairs; the regional and chronological shifts in sieges across the Napoleonic Wars; the nature of British siege operations in Continental Europe and the colonial sphere (India and South America); and ends with an overview of British and French sieges in the Peninsular War – the epicentre of Napoleonic siege warfare and of the storming and sack of besieged towns.

The Introduction discusses key terms and concepts in the protection of civilians – ‘civilian’ and ‘protection’ in particular – while illustrating their unsettled and complex character. Key moments in history in international law, policy, and practice over the last century and a half are also considered. Key actors in the protection of civilians are identified setting the scene for the more detailed assessment of their roles of responsibilities in the remainder of the book.

With respect to the protection of civilians, the African Union has largely focused on elaborating guidelines for its own peacekeeping operations. ‘Draft’ Guidelines were concluded in 2010 and published in 2012. Protection is organised into four ‘tiers’: protection through political process; physical protection; rights-based protection; and establishing a secure environment. These ‘tiers’ are broadly similar to the structure of the UN’s Operational Concept of the time. Practice in protecting civilians has been mixed.

The European Union (EU) does not have a single or comprehensive policy document on the protection of civilians. Rather, its interest and involvement in PoC are reflected across a number of standards and policy documents. Its Concept on Protection of Civilians in EU-led Military Operations was elaborated in 2015. When IHL does not apply to EU action, the Union primarily looks towards human rights law as the appropriate standard for the conduct of EU military operations.

Switzerland has a long humanitarian tradition and has been strongly supportive of many initiatives to protect civilians, especially in its central role in the development of international humanitarian law (IHL). It was the first State to conclude a dedicated policy document on PoC, in 2009.

India, the world’s most populous democracy, has, like Brazil, been sceptical about international efforts to protect civilians. India does not have a formal national strategy or policy on the protection of civilians. The issue is, though, of particular concern to India owing to insurgencies within its own borders and the highly politically sensitive issue of Kashmir. India’s stated position is that the protection of civilians is the primary responsibility of national governments.

Norway has been at the forefront of several major initiatives to protect civilians. It hosted the diplomatic conference in September 1997 that adopted the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, and led the elaboration of the Convention on Cluster Munitions in 2008. The Safe Schools Declaration is a joint initiative led by Norway and Argentina and endorsed by governments at the Oslo Conference on Safe Schools in 2015.

Besides Switzerland, the United Kingdom is the only State to have elaborated a national strategy on the protection of civilians. A formal 2010 UK Government Strategy on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict has been supplemented by an August 2020 Policy Paper, UK Approach to Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict. The Policy Paper was the joint work of the Department for International Development, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, and the Ministry of Defence.

In the past, Brazil has been one of the States most concerned that the concepts of ‘responsibility to protect’ and the ‘protection of civilians’ are not used as a cover for regime change by Western nations. This concern was most acute during and following the NATO intervention in Libya in 2011. Brazil feared that the measures approved in Resolution 1973 might have the unintended effect of ‘causing more harm than good to the very same civilians we are committed to protecting’. Brazil argued that protecting civilians, ensuring a lasting settlement, and addressing the legitimate demands of Libyan citizens demanded a political process. Brazil is credited with devising – and then not further pursuing – the phrase ‘Responsibility While Protecting’ (RWP).

South Africa does not have a formal protection of civilians strategy in place although it has played an important role in the elaboration of doctrine and policy on the issue, especially at regional level. Before the responsibility to protect framework was endorsed at the World Summit in 2005, South Africa was ‘active in negotiating the move from non-intervention to non-indifference, the latter regarded as a forerunner of R2P, in Africa’.

The ICRC Policy stipulates that protection aims to ensure that authorities and other actors, such as armed groups and other non-State actors, ‘respect their obligations and the rights of individuals in order to preserve the safety, physical integrity and dignity of those affected by armed conflict and other situations of violence’. The chapter discusses the major challenges the Red Cross faces in seeking to ensure that IHL is respected.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Policy for the Protection of Civilians was adopted in 2016. In 2021, NATO further adopted the ‘Protection of Civilians Allied Command Operations Handbook’, an additional document aimed at advancing the PoC agenda within the Organization. NATO’s aerial intervention in Libya was indirectly authorised by the UN Security Council under Resolution 1973 with the use of force specifically authorised to protect civilians. It remains the most controversial operation NATO has yet mounted – even NATO Member Germany had abstained from voting in favour of the resolution – and is considered to have politicised the notion of the protection of civilians.