ABSTRACT
Third States have an important role to play in ensuring respect for international humanitarian law (IHL) as it relates to humanitarian activities. First, IHL directly addresses the role of third States in allowing humanitarian activities. Moreover, third States may take additional steps to enable humanitarian activities, whether by ensuring respect for IHL or as a matter of policy and good practice aimed at enabling humanitarian activities. As this chapter illustrates, third States have taken such steps through diplomacy, advocacy and dissemination. Those sitting on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) have adopted a number of resolutions recalling the rules of IHL as they relate to humanitarian activities and urging parties to an armed conflict and other third States to take a range of actions. This broad collection of State practice forms a robust catalogue of measures that all States can take to ensure respect for IHL with a view to enabling humanitarian activities.
