399 Maria Concepción Pérez Villalobos Military advisers for gender and for the protection of children in armed conflicts However, when we look for a similar treatment of the issue of the protection of children in armed conflicts in the area of security and defence, we don’t find any of the measures quoted in the previous paragraph, or at least not with the same level of intensity. This is not coherent with the priority given to both areas of protection – woman and children – by the United Nations, and requires an urgent response to develop actions to the same level for the armed forces. If we compare the current UN framework with the international treaties based on International Humanitarian Law (Geneva Conventions), we can see the different treatment given to women and to children. These differences lie not just in removing these groups from the generic term “civilian population”, but also when designing specific provisions and programmes for women and for children while still recognising that there may be some action areas where they do overlap or complement each other. Keeping these points in mind, and on the basis of International Humanitarian Law, we will now present the general points to do with the protection of civilian populations in armed conflicts. Then, drawing on the regulatory framework developed by the UN, we will separately analyse issues relating to women and the training of gender advisers who have already been incorporated into international military contingents, and those related to children. In this way we will show the differentiated treatment given to the protection of minors in armed conflicts – where there is no plan to train and incorporate child protection advisers into the missions in which our armed forces are active. In order to do this we will study both situations to determine whether the functions of the gender advisers could be transferred to the figure of child protection adviser. We will also consider whether this could serve as a model or reference, and propose measures that should be adopted for its implementation. 2. PROTECTION OF THE CIVILIAN POPULATION IN ARMED CONFLICTS The first point to consider here is International Humanitarian Law. The four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the Additional Protocols of 1977 constitute the basic regulations upon which the protection of victims of armed conflicts is founded. In particular, the Fourth Convention on the protection of civilian personnel in times of war represents an important innovation, as it extends the protection offered to “out of combat” military personnel (injured or sick soldiers and prisoners of war) to civilian personnel8. 8 Article 3 of the IV Convention states that persons taking no active part in the hostilities shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria. The following acts are prohibited with
REVISTA IEEE 2
To see the actual publication please follow the link above