Press Release
Jean-Louis Schiltz: "Everything must be done to ensure the implementation and compliance with humanitarian law"

Date of release : 14-03-2005

Policy area : General Affairs and External Relations

Jean-Louis Schiltz, Luxembourg’s Minister for Development and Humanitarian Affairs spoke at a roundtable on international humanitarian law, held on 14 March 2005 at Neumünster Abbey in Luxembourg.

Distinguished experts attended the humanitarian law roundtable: Jakob Kellenberger, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Eric David, Professor at the Université Libre of Brussels and Paul Tavernier, Professor at Université de Paris XI, Dean Spielmann, Judge at the European Court of Human Rights, and Michel Arrion, head of the EC’s directorate-general for humanitarian aid (ECHO).

Jean-Louis Schiltz drew the audience’s attention to a two-fold requirement: on the one hand, "everything must be done to ensure the implementation and compliance with humanitarian law and, on the other hand, we must further raise public awareness of the existence and importance of international humanitarian law. We have to fight to ensure compliance with international humanitarian law and the values that result from it. This issue must become an everyday concern so that international humanitarian law is implemented and observed." Jean-Louis Schiltz invited to this colloquium to "raise the profile of humanitarian law because it does not occupy the place it deserves in our preoccupations."