In May 2022, several dozen civilians left the Azovstal plant areas in Mariupol following a five-day safe passage operation coordinated by the ICRC, the parties to the conflict and the UN. A convoy of buses and ambulances accompanied by ICRC and UN teams was joined by families and individuals in private vehicles along the way. More than 100 people, including some wounded, reached Zaporizhzhia.
3.1 What are they?
Evacuations are arrangements to remove people protected by IHL from locations where they are insecure, either because they face risks from military operations or because they cannot access adequate food, water and other basic goods and services.
The expression is used colloquially to cover at least three different ways in which such relocations can take place:
- Evacuations expressly foreseen by IHL, which either requires parties to armed conflicts to relocate particular categories of protected people in specific circumstances (wounded and sick members of states’ armed forces, and prisoners of war), or strongly encourages them to do so (in the case of categories of particularly vulnerable civilians in besieged or encircled areas).
- Situations where civilians move autonomously from areas affected by hostilities (autonomous evacuations).
- Situations where humanitarian organizations conduct organized relocations of civilians and other protected people.
In addition, IHL treaties use the term ‘evacuation’ to refer to exceptions to the prohibition on forced displacement of civilians.
It is important to distinguish between these different types of evacuations because the underlying legal obligations are different, and they raise different operational and policy challenges.
As far as autonomous evacuations and those conducted by humanitarian organizations are concerned, the humanitarian arrangements discussed in other chapters of this paper – in particular, humanitarian corridors and humanitarian ceasefires – play a central role in ensuring that the relocations can occur safely.
3.2 What does the law say?
IHL expressly addresses only certain types of evacuations: those of wounded and sick members of states’ armed forces, prisoners of war and certain particularly vulnerable civilians from besieged areas. It does not say anything specifically about autonomous evacuations or those conducted by humanitarian organizations. However, the people participating in them, and the humanitarian personnel concerned, benefit from the general rules of IHL protecting civilians.
3.2.1 Evacuations foreseen by IHL
IHL refers to the evacuations of certain categories of protected persons. The nature of belligerents’ obligations, and, in particular, whether they are required to conduct the evacuations, or are merely encouraged to endeavour to do so, depends on the categories of people in question.
Wounded and sick members of states’ armed forces
The First Geneva Convention requires belligerents to search for and collect wounded and sick members of the armed forces, and to remove them from battlefields and other areas where military operations are being conducted, so that they can be provided with the medical attention they require in a more appropriate and secure setting. This is an aspect of the obligation to respect and protect the wounded and sick. The obligation covers all wounded and sick members of states’ armed forces – those belonging to the belligerent and those belonging to enemy armed forces.
Belligerents are also encouraged to conclude agreements to suspend military operations to allow these evacuations to be conducted in safety. Ceasefires for this and other purposes are discussed in Chapter 5. IHL does not specify who should conduct the evacuations. Ordinarily, it is the party to the armed conflict with control of the wounded and sick, but this does not have to be the case. It could be another state, a member of a coalition, that did not participate in the engagement that led to the injuries. There may also be circumstances when wounded and sick members of the armed forces are evacuated alongside wounded and sick civilians, and at times humanitarian organizations conduct these movements.
Prisoners of war
The Third Geneva Convention requires states that have captured prisoners of war to remove them, as soon as possible, to areas far enough from the combat zone for them to be out of danger.
The underlying rationale is the same as for all evacuations: removing persons who are hors de combat from areas where they face risks from military operations. Evacuations are a way for the detaining power to discharge its obligation to protect prisoners under its control.
The dynamics of evacuations of prisoners of war are different from those of other evacuations. It is the detaining power – or possibly a member of a coalition – that conducts these evacuations. Most significantly, prisoners are unlikely to transit through territory under enemy control, and there should therefore not be any need to enter into arrangements with the enemy to ensure the safety of the movements. All responsibilities remain with the detaining power, which is responsible for conducting the evacuation and ensuring humane treatment throughout.
Evacuations from besieged or encircled areas
While IHL lays down clear obligations for the evacuation of wounded and sick members of the armed forces and prisoners of war, it only strongly encourages – but does not require – belligerents to take similar measures for the benefit of civilians.
The Fourth Geneva Convention requires belligerents to ‘endeavour’ to conclude evacuation agreements; and even then, only for certain particularly vulnerable categories of civilians – wounded, sick, infirm and aged persons, children and maternity cases – from besieged or encircled areas. The First Geneva Convention similarly encourages belligerents to conclude agreements to evacuate wounded and sick members of the armed forces from such areas.
Agreements may also be reached to allow medical personnel and equipment into the besieged areas. This is not an alternative to allowing the evacuation of the wounded and sick. The law does not specify who such medical personnel should be: they could be military medical personnel or members of humanitarian organizations. This and other issues, such as how long the medical personnel should remain in the besieged areas, must be elaborated in the agreements between the belligerents.
Civilians’ departure from besieged areas must be voluntary, informed and conducted in safety, both during the actual evacuation and in the subsequent arrangements for shelter.
Civilians who do not participate in evacuations and who remain in besieged areas do not forfeit their status and protections. Hostilities cannot be conducted on the presumption that anyone who chooses not to be evacuated is a fighter: the rules regulating humanitarian relief operations continue to apply for the benefit of civilians who have remained.
The First and Fourth Geneva Conventions encourage belligerents to reach agreements for evacuations, but do not prescribe the form such agreements should take, nor what issues should be addressed. This gives belligerents and other actors who may be involved in the elaboration and implementation of the arrangements, such as neutral intermediaries or humanitarian organizations, considerable leeway – including, importantly, to expand the scope of evacuation arrangements beyond the categories of people mentioned in the First and Fourth Geneva Conventions, to cover all civilians.
Similarly, there is no reason why evacuations should only be conducted from besieged or encircled areas. Civilians can also be at risk if they are caught up in areas of fighting as front lines advance and shift, and may need to be removed from danger and deprivation caused by military operations. For example, in the weeks immediately following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian authorities reportedly led and carried out evacuations of some 300,000 civilians.
Non-international armed conflicts
Treaty rules applicable in non-international armed conflicts expressly address evacuations of only two categories of people. The first category comprises those deprived of their liberty in relation to the conflict, who must be evacuated if the locations where they are held become particularly exposed to danger arising from the conflict, provided their evacuation can be carried out under adequate conditions of safety. The second category is children.
IHL also covers evacuations by implication. Common Article 3 to the Geneva Conventions requires the wounded and sick to be collected and cared for. This obligation covers civilians and fighters. Arguably, the duty to care for the wounded and sick includes evacuating them from places of danger.
More generally, Common Article 3 also encourages parties to non-international armed conflicts to conclude special agreements to give effect to the full range of rules applicable in international armed conflict. As in international armed conflicts, where IHL leaves it to belligerents to agree arrangements for evacuations of civilians and other protected persons, the position in non-international armed conflicts is essentially the same, with agreements playing the key role in regulating the evacuations. The kinds of issues addressed in the agreements and how they are dealt with are also likely to be similar in both types of conflict.
Evacuation of children
States parties to armed conflict have frequently taken special measures for children in view of their particular vulnerability. IHL mirrors this approach by granting children priority access to food and other life-saving commodities and medical care.
When it comes to evacuations, a balance must be struck between the clearly protective value of removing children from locations where military operations are taking place and the risk that such arrangements may be abused to sever the connections between children and their families, community and cultural identity. Accordingly, while IHL treaties mention the possibility of conducting evacuations of children, they include specific conditions that must be met when children are removed from their state of nationality by states of which they are not nationals.
These considerations are brought out clearly in two very different evacuations of children conducted in recent years: the ICRC evacuation of 300 children and their carers from an orphanage in Sudan, and the removal by Russia of children from the areas of eastern Ukraine that it had occupied.
Additional Protocol I specifies that such evacuations must be temporary, and require the written consent of the parents, legal guardians or – if they cannot be found – the persons with primary responsibility for the care of the children. Evacuations must be supervised by protecting powers with the agreement of the state that is removing the children, the state receiving them, and the state of nationality of the children. In relation to non-international armed conflicts, Additional Protocol II requires measures to be taken, if necessary, and whenever possible with the consent of their parents or guardians, to remove children temporarily from areas where hostilities are taking place to a safer area within the country. During such movements, children must be accompanied by people responsible for their security and well-being.
The concerns just referred to are additional to those that arise in relation to all evacuations concerning safety during movements.
Evacuations as an exception to the prohibition on forced displacement
The term ‘evacuation’ is also used to refer to the exceptions to the prohibition on forced displacement in IHL. In situations of occupation, the Fourth Geneva Convention allows the occupying power to undertake the total or partial evacuation of an area if this is required for the security of the population or imperative military reasons. These displacements are temporary, and displaced people must be transferred back as soon as hostilities in the area have ceased. In situations of occupation, the total or partial evacuation of an area must not lead to the displacement of protected persons outside the occupied territory, except when for material reasons it is impossible to avoid such displacement. A similar exception also exists in situations of non-international armed conflicts. These evacuations are not consensual – the civilians involved are not required to agree to the relocation.
IHL does not specify who should be conducting the evacuations. However, it does require that to the greatest practicable extent such displacement must be conducted in satisfactory conditions of hygiene, health, safety and nutrition; proper accommodation must be provided to receive the displaced persons; and members of the same family should not be separated.
As for all evacuations, precautions must be taken to avoid endangering civilians. Ideally, belligerents should reach agreements to suspend hostilities to allow the movement to take place. Regardless of whether agreement has been reached, civilians must not be targeted, and their movement must not be used to shield or impede military operations.
3.2.2 Autonomous evacuations
More frequent than the types of evacuations foreseen by IHL, outlined in section 3.2.1, are situations when civilians autonomously leave their homes to escape the dangers associated with military operations and the impairment of access to livelihood opportunities and essential goods and services.
These movements are usually not organized. Civilians move autonomously, relying on public transport if it exists, or otherwise using their own vehicle or travelling on foot. To enhance their security, civilians might move during temporary cessations of hostilities that may have been agreed to, or use routes on which belligerents have agreed not to conduct military operations. These arrangements are discussed in chapters 5 and 4, respectively.
There may be circumstances when the party to the conflict in whose territory the movements are taking place, while not itself conducting the evacuations, arranges transport for people leaving their homes. For example, in April 2022 Ukraine arranged additional trains to evacuate civilians from Donbas as Russian forces advanced.
All such movements benefit from the general rules of IHL that protect civilians. These include the prohibition on directing attacks against civilians and civilian objects; the rule of proportionality; and the obligation to take constant care in the conduct of military operations to spare civilians. Importantly, civilians must not be prevented from leaving in order for their presence to be used to shield military objectives or to favour or impede military operations.
During the battle to retake Mosul in 2016–17, civilians were trying to move autonomously but faced numerous hurdles. The Iraqi government issued conflicting instructions as to whether they should remain in place or leave. The US-led coalition attempted to facilitate their movements by suspending hostilities in the proximity of the exit points from the city, but Islamic State (ISIS) mined the routes and shot at civilians trying to flee.
3.2.3 Evacuations by humanitarian organizations
At times, evacuations may be carried out by humanitarian organizations. These evacuations can take many different forms, ranging from small numbers of wounded and sick from particular areas to large-scale relocations of civilian populations from areas of active fighting.
While IHL requires belligerents to carry out evacuations of certain categories of people, it does not address evacuations conducted by humanitarian organizations, let alone require them to conduct such operations. Should humanitarian organizations decide to carry out evacuations, they benefit from the general rules of IHL protecting civilians – along with the wounded and sick, should they be included in the movements. They may also benefit from any arrangements relating to evacuations that belligerents may have concluded, as well as from ceasefires and humanitarian corridors.
As discussed below, deciding whether to conduct an evacuation can raise difficult policy and operational questions for humanitarian organizations.
3.3 Operation in practice – challenges, good practice and recommendations
3.3.1 Evacuation agreements
Key to the safety of evacuations that cross enemy lines or that transit through areas of active hostilities are agreements between belligerents. As already noted, while IHL encourages parties to endeavour to conclude such agreements, it does not require them to do so; nor does it indicate what form the agreements should take, or what issues they should address.
As far as the format of the agreements is concerned, a written agreement is preferable as numerous different issues must be addressed in detail. This allows all elements to be accurately recorded and transmitted to those responsible for their implementation.
Provided all the elements are agreed and captured, precisely how the agreement is recorded is not important. It could be a single document accepted by both parties, or separate identical documents signed by parties individually.
As belligerents frequently only have limited direct contact, neutral intermediaries play a central role both in encouraging parties to agree to the evacuations and in facilitating reaching agreement on details.
Essential to the operation of the evacuations is ensuring that the elements that have been agreed to are communicated to all those who can affect their implementation – including field personnel present along the routes that will be taken, and those conducting air operations and other activities that could endanger them.
Evacuations agreements should be as detailed as feasible, and address key issues including:
- Which categories of people will be evacuated. This could be all civilians, or just the most vulnerable and the wounded and sick.
- If wounded and sick fighters are evacuated, there should be clarity as to what will happen to them. They are likely to be detained, and to the extent possible the precise arrangements for this should be made clear to them before they agree to being evacuated.
- Whether measures will be taken to ensure that people participating in the evacuations are not fighters. If so, who will be conducting such screening; the basis for making the determination; and what will happen to people who do not meet the criteria. Even in situations where humanitarian organizations are participating in evacuations conducted by armed forces, they will not conduct screening or remove any weapons.
- The locations from which people will be evacuated and those to which they
will be taken.
- The date, times and routes of the evacuation.
- Who will be transporting the evacuees.
- What evacuees will be allowed to bring with them; and, who, if anyone will search their property. In the vast majority of cases, evacuations must be demilitarized – i.e. they should not include active fighters, and weapons must not be transported. This is essential to the security of evacuees, but requires searching and removal of any weapons. As in the case of screening, humanitarian organizations will not be willing to undertake this.
- A suspension of hostilities and military operations for the time and route of the evacuation.
Consideration should also be given to identifying an actor to monitor compliance with the agreed elements of the evacuation, and/or to act as the go-between to resolve any problems that may arise during the evacuation.
The party conducting the evacuation, or a neutral intermediary (which could be a humanitarian organization with access to the affected communities) should engage with the people eligible to participate in the evacuation to communicate the basic elements of the evacuation. This allows civilians to make an informed decision on whether to join the evacuation, and also ensures they are aware of the precise details. It also allows the identification of particular needs that must be taken into account in the arrangements. For example, there may be particularly frail people who need additional assistance to move.
3.3.2 Well-being during evacuations
The party conducting the evacuation should have measures in place to ensure that the evacuation is conducted in satisfactory conditions of hygiene, health, safety and nutrition; as well as to avoid the separation of family members during the evacuation, and to restore family links if necessary. Particular consideration should be given to the needs of vulnerable people, including pregnant women, the elderly and people with disabilities.
3.3.3 What measures should states put in place in peacetime to facilitate evacuations in of armed conflict?
Although the precise arrangements for evacuations must be elaborated on a case-by-case basis, in peacetime states’ armed forces should elaborate general doctrine and policies on evacuations. These should address both situations when the state is conducting the evacuations itself, and also when it is carrying out military operations in a context when other actors are conducting the evacuations. Obviously, the two situations raise different issues.
It may be that some states already have doctrines for evacuations of prisoners of war and wounded fighters. These could be expanded to address situations when civilians are being evacuated, which raise the additional issues highlighted above – i.e. safety and well-being during the evacuations, family unity, accommodation during displacement, and arrangements for return. They should also address coordination issues when other actors are conducting evacuations.
In addition, policies on targeting and military operations should expressly include, among the issues to be taken into account, evacuations conducted by other actors.
These provisions could form part of the thematic doctrines and materials that some states are elaborating in order to minimize civilian harm in armed conflict, like the UK’s Human Security in Defence Policy and the US’s Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Instruction. To the extent possible, states that already have such materials could share them to assist in the elaboration of good-practice documents. These could be elaborated during thematic civilian–military discussions with humanitarian actors.
In addition to military doctrines, some states have national legislation that establishes procedures for evacuations in their territory, assigning responsibilities and establishing coordination arrangements. Such instruments could provide helpful good practice.
3.3.4 Evacuations by humanitarian actors
In addition to the operational challenges that all evacuations pose, humanitarian organizations face additional dilemmas when deciding whether to conduct evacuations or participate in those carried out by military actors. As noted, although IHL does not require humanitarian organizations to conduct evacuations, in certain situations they may be the only actors in a position to carry them out, and to provide some respite to affected populations.
This must be balanced with numerous other considerations, including whether it is possible to conduct the operations in a manner that is safe for civilians and humanitarian personnel. They will also need to consider whether by moving people, humanitarian organizations might inadvertently be putting them at greater risk, contributing to violations of IHL by belligerents, such as policies of ethnic cleansing, or assisting belligerents to attain their military or political objectives.
Even evacuations conducted by armed forces in which humanitarian organizations are involved can raise concerns. Such cooperation may undermine humanitarian actors’ capacity to operate in accordance with humanitarian principles in terms of impartiality and independence of response. It may also affect perceptions of their neutrality.
These are not new problems. Much has been written about them and detailed discussion is beyond the scope of this paper. Humanitarian organizations have had to tackle these issues for decades in multiple contexts. Some have adopted internal guidance specifying the criteria that would have to be met in order for them to conduct evacuations or participate in those conducted by other actors. However, despite repeated calls, general inter-agency guidance on evacuations by humanitarian actors still does not exist, and decisions continue to be taken in an ad hoc manner, often without sufficient coordination between the actors present on the ground.
The absence of such general guidance also means that UN leadership at field level – i.e. Resident and/or Humanitarian Coordinators or Special Representatives of the Secretary-General – can be unprepared to provide adequate leadership when issues arise.
The role of humanitarian organizations in relation to evacuations is another topic that would benefit from focused civil–military discussions.
3.4 In conclusion
Arrangements to facilitate the departure of civilians from areas where they are at risk can clearly play an important role in sparing them from the effects of hostilities. Such arrangements can pose security risks, however. For evacuations to occur in a manner that is as safe as possible, they need to be planned extremely carefully, including in peacetime. The precise challenges differ, depending on how the evacuations are conducted – whether they are autonomous movements by civilians or organized evacuations by humanitarian actors.
In most cases, autonomous evacuations should be able to take place in relative safety, if belligerents agree to suspend hostilities. Evacuations organized by humanitarian organizations are likely to be larger in scale, and often take place in tense and politicized contexts. They raise additional challenges, and agreement between all parties on the details of the arrangements is essential for these evacuations to be conducted in a manner that is safe for the evacuees and humanitarian personnel. They are therefore frequently considered a measure of last resort.
