The European Union has warned that the international humanitarian system is reaching a critical point as warring parties violate the laws of war with growing impunity across conflicts from Ukraine and Sudan to Gaza, Myanmar and Yemen.
Speaking at a United Nations side event on humanitarian diplomacy on Monday, an EU representative, Kaja Kallas said civilians were being killed, hospitals and schools targeted, and humanitarian access deliberately blocked.
“The law is not being enforced,” the official said, arguing that the central challenge facing international humanitarian law is not a lack of legal frameworks but the absence of accountability.
The remarks highlighted the worsening situation in Ukraine, where Russia was accused of deliberately targeting civilians and destroying infrastructure critical to global food supplies. The EU official said **90% of Ukraine’s food-storage capacity had been lost**.
The speaker also pointed to the fall of El Fasher in Sudan as evidence of shrinking humanitarian access and declining international capacity to protect civilians. There are now limits, the official said, not only on what aid workers can do but also on the United Nations’ authority to save lives.
The EU outlined a two-track response: strengthening respect for international humanitarian law through diplomacy and public awareness, while pursuing accountability through courts and investigative mechanisms.
The official strongly defended the International Criminal Court, which is facing mounting pressure, warning that attacks on the court and its judges threaten the broader international legal order established after the Second World War.
“The ICC is the world’s promise that victims of the gravest international crimes will not be forgotten because accountability has become politically inconvenient,” the official said.
The EU also backed the creation of new justice mechanisms when existing institutions prove inadequate, citing the tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, as well as plans for a special tribunal on the crime of aggression against Ukraine.
The remarks stressed the importance of preserving evidence of alleged crimes. In Gaza, the official said, efforts to clear rubble must not destroy material that could be used in future war-crimes investigations.
The EU also called for sustained funding for a UN-led investigation into Afghanistan and pointed to earlier support for documentation of torture and other crimes in Syria.
“Accountability cannot be selective,” the official said. “Otherwise, the entire system is called into question.”
Despite the mounting violations, the EU representative ended on a note of determination, invoking the legal scholar Hersch Lauterpacht’s belief that international law remains “a chance for progress”—provided governments are willing to defend it and enforce it in practice.
