Thank you, Mr Chair.
President Spoljaric, welcome to the Permanent Council, and thank you for your address.
The UK strongly supports the unique mandate of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and its neutral, impartial and independent humanitarian action. We pay tribute to your courageous personnel, who work in some of the world’s most dangerous environments. Your Remembrance Wall brings home the human cost of this work, honouring staff members who lost their lives while helping others. We join you in demanding that humanitarian workers be protected.
At a time when respect for international humanitarian law is under acute pressure, the ICRC’s mandate is more important than ever.
Every week, this Council discusses Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Multiple independent international organisations, including the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, have reported widespread violations of international law by Russia in its conduct of this war. One disturbing example is its treatment of Ukrainian prisoners of war. The 2025 OSCE Moscow Mechanism report documented a pattern of torture and ill-treatment, sexual violence, executions and deaths in custody.
The ICRC recently confirmed that it has had no access to Ukrainian prisoners of war held in Russia since 2024. Russia must grant the ICRC immediate, safe and unfettered access to every Ukrainian prisoner of war and every place where they are held. We recognise the sustained efforts made by the ICRC under exceptionally difficult circumstances. We encourage it to continue raising this urgent issue at the highest levels.
Access to detainees is part of a wider humanitarian imperative. Aid must be allowed and facilitated and those delivering it must be protected. This year, strikes have destroyed humanitarian warehouses containing food, medical equipment and emergency supplies. This has directly reduced the assistance available to vulnerable and frontline communities. In September, the World Health Organization reported that three warehouses it used in Ukraine had been destroyed or damaged by air strikes in three months.
The need for access is particularly urgent in temporarily occupied Oleshky. As we discussed in this Council last week, ODIHR has recorded testimony describing life without electricity, water, food, medical care or a safe way to leave. We urge Russia to meet its obligations under international humanitarian law.
Mr Chair, the rules of war were forged from humanity’s darkest experiences. They cannot prevent all the horrors of war. But they seek to limit those horrors, preserve human dignity and protect those who are not, or are no longer, fighting.
If we allow those rules to be eroded through obstruction, indifference or impunity, the consequences will reach far beyond this war. We will leave future generations a world in which conflict is even more brutal, civilians are less protected and suffering has fewer limits. We must not permit that inheritance.
President Spoljaric, thank you again for joining us today. You and your staff can count on the United Kingdom’s continued support as you work to promote respect for those rules and alleviate suffering.
Thank you, Mr Chair.
Source: www.gov.uk
