Civil-Military Relationship in Complex Emergencies - An IASC Reference Paper

This paper was endorsed by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee Working Group (IASC-WG) as an IASC Reference Paper at its 57th Meeting of 16-17 June 2004. It complements the "Guidelines on the Use of Military and Civil Defence Assets to Support United Nations Humanitarian Activities in Complex Emergencies" of March 2003.

The paper was drafted by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in collaboration with members of the IASC, the UN's Executive Committee for Humanitarian Affairs (ECHA) and the Advisory Panel of OCHA's Military Civil Defence Unit (MCDU-AP), as well as academic reviewers and field colleagues in a number of organizations.

The paper will serve as a non-binding reference for humanitarian practitioners, assisting them in formulating country-specific operational guidelines on civil-military relations for particular complex emergencies. It will be updated as the environment in which we workchanges and as new guidance on related issues becomes available.

Part 1 of the paper reviews in a generic manner, the nature and character of civil-military relations in complex emergencies. Part 2 lists the fundamental humanitarian principlesand concepts that must be upheld when coordinating with the military, and Part 3 proposes practical considerations for humanitarian workers engaged in civil-military coordination.