GENEVA: Amid a proliferation of brutal armed conflicts, Red Cross chief Mirjana Spoljaric decried the disregard shown for the internationally agreed laws of war, with disastrous consequences on the ground, in an interview.

“What we see are constant violations of international humanitarian law in a fast-rising number of compiling conflicts,” Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said this week.

“We need to come back to acknowledging that the key to bringing peace is respect for humanity.”

But that respect appears to be in short supply amid a record number of armed conflicts — more than 120 raging around the world, the ICRC chief said.

In numerous conflicts, including the crushing civil war in Sudan, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and Israel’s escalating wars targeting Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, there seems to be little effort to spare civilians.

“The numbers of civilian casualties that we see today (and) that high and fast-rising number of displaced people are unacceptable,” Spoljaric said.

“Better compliance with international humanitarian law ... is urgently needed.”

Known as the laws of war and enshrined in the Geneva Conventions, international humanitarian law consists of a set of rules that seek, for humanitarian reasons, to limit the effects of armed conflict, protect civilians and civilian objects and impose limits on the means and methods of warfare.

This is “a very practical set of norms,” Spoljaric said, including requiring “the respect for medical facilities” and proper treatment of prisoners of war.

“It also requires that when civilian populations are requested to evacuate, that they can do so in safety, (and are) provided with the possibility to go to places where they will find security (and) access to food and water, to shelter and medical assistance,” she said.

“There are a lot of measures enshrined in the humanitarian treaties that allow for the reduction of unnecessary and senseless suffering of the civilian population in times of armed conflict.”

The ICRC, the caretaker of the Geneva Conventions, will co-organize an international conference with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to focus heavily on boosting compliance with international law.

It should be “a no-brainer,” Spoljaric said, pointing out that “all states have ratified the Geneva Conventions and committed to preserving humanity when things become very complicated.”

“Unfortunately, that is not the reality on the ground.”

In line with the ICRC’s mandate to act as a neutral intermediary between belligerents in a conflict, Spoljaric did not point fingers.

But she voiced severe concern about a growing tendency in conflicts, including in the Middle East, Sudan, and Myanmar, where there has been a “collapse of entire health systems.”

“Why is this necessary in achieving military goals?” she asked, stressing that this raises serious questions about how parties interpret the “principles of distinction and proportionality in the conduct of military operations.”

She slammed the “undermining and hollowing out (of) international humanitarian law to the extent where it allows you anything in the conduct of hostilities to achieve your military goals.”

She said one of the biggest challenges was “the notion that the enemy has to be completely defeated and that the enemy can be completely defeated.”

“It’s against the spirit of international humanitarian law to assume that you are allowed to dehumanize the other in the interest of your safety and security and preserving the safety of your people,” she insisted.

She pointed out that the Geneva Conventions were adopted in 1949 to help avert a repeat of the brutality witnessed during the Second World War.

“We don’t want to go back there,” Spoljaric said.

“We don’t want to go back to a situation where you can destroy the other no matter how much it costs.”

TALISAY, Philippines: The number of dead and missing in massive flooding and landslides wrought by Tropical Storm Trami in the Philippines has exceeded 100 and the president said Saturday that many areas remained isolated with people in need of rescue.
Trami blew away from the northwestern Philippines on Friday, leaving at least 81 people dead and 34 others missing in in one of the Southeast Asian archipelago’s deadliest and most destructive storms so far this year, the government’s disaster-response agency said. The death toll was expected to rise as reports come in from previously isolated areas.
Dozens of police, firefighters and other emergency personnel, backed by three backhoes and sniffer dogs, dug up one of the last two missing villagers in the lakeside town of Talisay in Batangas province Saturday.
A father, who was waiting for word on his missing 14-year-old daughter, wept as rescuers placed the remains in a black body bag. Distraught, he followed police officers, who carried the body bag down a mud-strewn village alley to a police van when one weeping resident approaching him to express her sympathies.
The man said he was sure it was his daughter, but authorities needed to do checks to confirm the identity of the villager dug up in the mound.
In a nearby basketball gym at the town center, more than a dozen white coffins were laid side by side, bearing the remains of those found in the heaps of mud, boulders and trees that cascaded Thursday afternoon down the steep slope of a wooded ridge in Talisay’s Sampaloc village.
President Ferdinand Marcos, who inspected another hard-hit region southeast of Manila Saturday, said the unusually large volume of rainfall dumped by the storm — including in some areas that saw one to two months’ worth of rainfall in just 24 hours — overwhelmed flood controls in provinces lashed by Trami.
“The water was just too much,” Marcos told reporters.
“We’re not done yet with our rescue work,” he said. “Our problem here, there are still many areas that remained flooded and could not be accessed even big trucks.”
His administration, Marcos said, would plan to start work on a major flood control project that can meet the unprecedented threats posed by climate change.
More than 4.2 million people were in the path of the storm, including nearly half a million, who mostly fled to more than 6,400 emergency shelters in several provinces, the government agency said.
In an emergency Cainet meeting, Marcos raised concerns over reports by government forecasters that the storm — the 11th to hit the Philippines this year — could make a U-turn next week as it is pushed back by high-pressure winds in the South China Sea.
The storm was forecast to batter Vietnam over the weekend if it would not veer off course.
The Philippine government shut down schools and government offices for the third day on Friday to keep millions of people safe on the main northern island of Luzon. Inter-island ferry services were also suspended, stranding thousands.
Weather has cleared in many areas on Saturday, allowing cleanup work in most areas.
Each year, about 20 storms and typhoons batter the Philippines, a Southeast Asian archipelago which lies between the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea. In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest recorded tropical cyclones, left more than 7,300 people dead or missing and flattened entire villages.