Geneva Call
Who we are
- Neutral, impartial humanitarian organisation.
- Follows UN principles.
- Engages armed groups & de facto authorities (AGDAs).
- Focus: civilian protection.
- Hundreds of million leave outside of state control, they are losing their grasp on many places.
- The lives of these people depend on the behaviour of actors such as armed groups, Geneva Call talks to them to understand them and protect civilians.
- Tools: dialogue, training, monitoring.
- Not concerned with political reasons, no will to constrain the behaviour of these groups further than protecting civilians.
- Normative instruments (Deeds of Commitment).
- Dialogue is structured, at a certain point a public statement has to be made to state commitment.
- The idea is to make them aware of certain rules.
- No mandates, or at least not named like this. It’s more like a mission to fill a gap. Having an official mandate isn’t completely the point, it’s just engaging with actors that want to.
- Limited funding and no mandates. Zones with the most violations are prioritised. But some funds are given not with flexibility but to work on a certain zone.
- 70% of funding by the US, better to diversify. Not very cool to say US is cool until they remove all your budget. It’s better to go away from government funding, no state is fully pure and good.
- Limited funding and no mandates. Zones with the most violations are prioritised. But some funds are given not with flexibility but to work on a certain zone.
Engaging Non-State
- Armed Groups - Dialogue or negotiation?
- A blind spot in international relations?
- Dealing with informality, hybridity, fluidity.
- Many different ones, terrorists such as Hamas or ISIS but also rebels that we traditionally see as good. But classifying them morally is difficult, sometimes they rape, use children soldiers, etc…
- Some groups are de facto authorities such as Hamas or the Taliban that control territory. They behave kind of like a state.
- It’s not pertinent to look at them from a moral standpoint.
- The legitimacy challenge.
- Does negotiating with these groups legitimate them? Some states don’t like this.
- Opening channels as a key outcome.
- Geneva Call has worked for 25 years and opened many.
IHL as a negotiation compass
- Shared reference, even when violated.
- Has been part of humanity from the beginning, just like war. From the Hammurabi code.
- Is very useful to talk to armed groups and have a reference to know which directions to take.
- Helps frame expectations and agenda.
- Groups don’t trust outsiders so much, you can just say you are here to talk only about IHL. Sets boundaries.
- Some groups are not interested at first but in the end when they really see it’s not political they can accept.
- If it takes a lot of time maybe there is resignation. But negotiating access can take years.
- Guides dialogue on civilian protection.
- Anchors negotiation in norms.
Setting up an ecosystem of influence
Geneva Call is weaker than these groups, asymmetry.
- Armed groups shaped by influence networks.
- Mobilise them to reduce asymmetry.
- Elders, religious figures, diaspora, communities.
- Many groups are just there to fill the holes of protecting a community left by a state. If you talk to the community you can influence the group→influence the influencers.
- You can also use Islam, since it’s the norm of reference for many groups, through which religious leaders can shape groups.
- Also States and external patrons.
- Multi-layer approach = more leverage.
- Ecosystem shift → behaviour shift.
Entering the antechamber of formality
- Engagement introduces rules & responsibility.
- You kind of engage a transformation of a group that can be informal at first.
- No political recognition but a first step in engaging internationally.
- Transforms the war, even if the group doesn’t become a state instantly.
- Focus on accountable and rules based behaviour.
- Understanding what the rules are and what happens if you violate them.
- Not basing behaviour on emotions, impulses or power.
- South Sudan was founded in 2011 and at first was just a part of Sudan, in a conflict.
- They became a government, they need to be informed to be formalised.
- GC didn’t help become a state but them signing treaties such as the Ottawa Convention gives then formalisation.
- In Syria group takeover was smoother than thought.
- They respected rules thanks to GC, now the army of Syria.
Some groups are really structured with advisers and everything, really knowledgeable in IHL. Others not so much.
In practice : GC’s deeds of commitment
Basically a legal document that mirrors a treaty but for armed groups so that they respect certain things, such as not poisoning crops. They also have to explain how they are going to let GC monitor. It’s symbolic.
- Voluntary unilateral humanitarian commitments.
- Behavioural, not political.
- Monitoring + accountability.
- Unique normative mechanism. Done in the room where the geneva conventions were signed. The canton and R of Geneva is present even though they have no foreign policy prerrogatives. This makes groups see it’s important.
If they are not respected public denunciation can happen. Never been necessary, but threats have been sent.
A sequence of diplomacies?
An open question. GC operates from a humanitarian diplomacy perspective, diplomacy is indeed about solving problems. Here we help classical political diplomacy, violence is reduced and negotiation processes are easier to engage in. Some like South Sudan help new states such as Syria after the takeover, they engage in humanitarian issues now.
In the UNSC, with it’s history of blockage on Palestine (specially Gaza recently)→the dynamics don’t work anymore, the peaceplan of the USA isn’t great… even dirty, etc… There is a negative tendency with satisfaction in humanitarian diplomacy, trucks can now get in so we go home. But no, it’s made to help classical diplomacy but never enough.