A Comment on the Responsibility to Protect

 By Robin Halliday, Special Officer for Peace and Security

 The United Nations Association of New Zealand as part of its monitoring of UN Reform has great expectations on the concept of the Responsibility to Protect.  Indeed it is seen as a new international norm – the acceptance of an international responsibility to intervene within a State to protect its citizens from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This can include military intervention.

 With its genesis in the genocide in Rwanda, its analysis in the Canadian sponsored International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, (ICISS) its sponsorship by the High Level Panel on Threats Challenges and Change followed by its emphasis in the Secretary General's report it was finally endorsement by the World community at the UN Summit in September 2005.  The Security Council has since reaffirmed this in a resolution passed on 28 April 2006.

 Each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.  The international community, through the United Nations, also has the responsibility... In this context we are prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the Charter, including Chapter V11, on a case-by-case basis and in cooperation with relevant regional organisations as appropriate, should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

 To quote Gareth Evans (Co chair ICISS and member HLP) in the G8 Summit publication July 2006 (1)

 

“The security issues that preoccupy the major powers these days involve a heady mix of international terrorism, nuclear proliferation, Islamist extremism, resurgent nationalism and, linking most of them global energy security and nw a Middle East crisis. Which doesn’t leave much room for addressing the great security problem that most worried us throughout the 1990s: what to do about genocide or other mass killing, or ethnic cleansing or other crimes against humanity, committed within the boundaries of a single state.

 

But this problem is now staring us in the face all over again in Darfur, and we know all too well that it's only a matter of time before it comes at us once more from somewhere else in the world.

 The formal embrace by the international community of the new concept of 'the responsibility to protect'  - moving away in the process from the incredibly divisive contest between those for and against a “right of humanitarian intervention” - has to be a major breakthrough, and a fascinating piece of intellectual history in its own right”.

 He then went on to note that there are still at least three areas of unfinished business that need to be concluded before any such intervention under R2P (as it is now come to be known) can be made.

 The first is the need to persuade the Security Council to embrace a set of guidelines for responding. The recommendation is that there be five basic “criteria of legitimacy” to test the validity of any case made for a coercive humanitarian intervention. It is reasonable to assume that if agreed criteria were systemically addressed every time force was proposed a consensus could be reached with less chance of the Security Council being bypassed.

 The second is the problem of capacity to deploy and issues of training, command, control and communications capability, transportability and general logistic support. And the third is the on going problem of lack of political will especially when it maybe hard, expensive and long term

 There is much wringing of hands and criticism of the UN when such issues feature on our Television screens but less understanding and support for the involvement of the international community to accept responsibility to protect the most vulnerable. We may be seeing this now with the dangers of stationing an international force on the Lebanon and Israel even after a ceasefire and the difficulties of delivering and protecting those most in need  

 There are reasons to act, not reasons not to act. Those people in Darfur could be you or I and we would expect to be protected. It must become not just a matter of principle but of operation practice.

 

Sources

(1).“The Responsibility to protect: Unfinished Business” Gareth Evans in G8 Summit 2006 : Issues and Instruments  St Petersburg 15-17 July 2006