Select committee: International Development Committee

Conclusion 1

5th Report - Protection not permission: The UK’s role in upholding international humanitarian law and supporting the safe delivery of humanitarian aid Published 12 Jun 2025 Addressed to Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office

International Development Committee Humanitarian access and adherence to international humanitarian law All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗

Conclusion (the committee's words)

Numbers of aid worker deaths are rising year on year and the situations where access to aid is deliberately impeded are also increasing. This violates the purpose of IHL: to protect civilians in a time of war. We see growing examples of where IHL is ignored or used to justify the restrictions to aid delivery. This has to stop. Furthermore, we have concerns that there is a trend of breaches of IHL being ‘traded off’ by implicated parties who can be seen to justify breaking IHL as a result of the other party or parties doing the same. This apparent ‘race to the bottom’ is extremely worrying and demonstrably contrary to the spirit of IHL which sets high standards to ensure citizens and humanitarian workers are appropriately protected in conflict zones. The short-term impacts of IHL trade-offs by belligerents is having stark and deadly consequences. (Conclusion, Paragraph 7)

From: International Development Committee, 5th Report - Protection not permission: The UK’s role in upholding international humanitarian law and supporting the safe delivery of humanitarian aid (HC 526), 12 June 2025

Government response

The government responded to the whole report on 5 September 2025 (deadline 12 August 2025).

Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.

The government states that it "remains steadfast in its commitment to upholding international humanitarian law", agrees with many recommendations, partially agrees with others, and disagrees with the proposals on universal jurisdiction and binding due diligence for arms exporters.

On military training, the government agrees that mil-mil training on IHL "is an effective approach to promoting compliance", and describes existing training for foreign forces.
On sanctions, it is "committed to introducing a tailored humanitarian exemption" across UK autonomous sanctions "when parliamentary time allows".
It disagrees with amending the International Criminal Court Act 2001 to provide for universal jurisdiction, stating: "We do not believe that legislative change is required at this time."
It disagrees with new legislation placing additional requirements on arms exporters, citing a "robust assessment process" under the Strategic Export Licensing Criteria.

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