I can try.
There are several reasons, of course. I think one of the reasons is that protection of civilians has often been left to the United Nations civilian organizations and humanitarian organizations, which are not equipped in many of those cases to do so. A good example is the Balkans. Initially, the only organizations that had protection of civilians as a distinct mandate in their organizations were the United Nations High Commission for Refugees--that has protection as a mandate--and the International Committee of the Red Cross. That's it.
Even the NGOs who speak about protection are very limited in what we can do. We can make sure that our activities don't endanger the people, and sometimes they do. We can use our presence as a deterrence, especially in terms of criminal activities and attacks on people in camps and so on, when we are there. When international NGOs are there, it is less likely to happen. And we can expose the perpetrators. But that's basically what we can do.
I think having an International Criminal Court has helped, because there is now an understanding that if you attack civilians, perpetrate war crimes and so on, you may end up being prosecuted for it. So that has been helpful, but it needs to be strengthened, because as good as ICC is, there are no mechanisms for finding those people and ensuring they actually end up being in court. There are still elements missing in that respect.
The sovereignty issue is a big, big problem, because it centres everything on the state, and the state is responsible for protecting its civilians. But in more and more cases where we have internal conflicts, the state is the perpetrator. The state itself is allowing the violation of human rights and war crimes, or the state itself is perpetrating crimes. And because of the nature of the conflict as internal within the states, you have non-state actors that basically are not bound by international norms, international humanitarian law, and cannot have sanctions put on them by the United Nations Security Council, or be even engaged by the international community very often.
The United Nations mission in Croatia in 1991 was called the United Nations protection force. They had no protection mandate. They were not allowed to intervene. In 1995, when Croatian forces entered the area that was held by the Serbs, I think it was a Canadian general who allowed civilians to enter the UN barracks, against the rules of the United Nations and against what New York was telling them.
So the people who maybe had the power to protect civilians didn't have the mandate and still don't have the tools and resources and so on to do so. This is why we think you think the military, like the Canadian military, which does have respect.... In the Balkans, you would always trust a Canadian soldier more than you would a local policeman. There was no question about that. You think that for them to distribute food parcels is a waste of credibility, experience, expertise, and capabilities.