- MENU
- HOME
- SEARCH
- WORLD
- MAIN
- AFRICA
- ASIA
- BALKANS
- EUROPE
- LATIN AMERICA
- MIDDLE EAST
- United Kingdom
- United States
- Argentina
- Australia
- Austria
- Benelux
- Brazil
- Canada
- China
- France
- Germany
- Greece
- Hungary
- India
- Indonesia
- Ireland
- Israel
- Italy
- Japan
- Korea
- Mexico
- New Zealand
- Pakistan
- Philippines
- Poland
- Russia
- South Africa
- Spain
- Taiwan
- Turkey
- USA
- BUSINESS
- WEALTH
- STOCKS
- TECH
- HEALTH
- LIFESTYLE
- ENTERTAINMENT
- SPORTS
- RSS
- iHaveNet.com
By Gareth Evans
'Responsibility to Protect' was supposed to prevent a repetition of the horrors of Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo. How?
At the turn of the century there was a lack of international consensus about how to respond to genocide and other mass atrocity crimes, which had long led either to indefensible inaction or controversial military action taken without
The 'Responsibility to Protect' (R2P) was an idea born in 2001. The intention was to recast the language and substance of the debate: to change prevailing mind sets, so the reaction to these catastrophic human rights violations taking place behind sovereign state walls would be that they are everyone's business. The emphasis was on prevention rather than reaction, and on coercive military action as a last resort, not a first. After some diplomatic arm-wrestling, the concept was endorsed unanimously by the
But wasn't this just old 'humanitarian intervention' in a new guise?
Absolutely not! R2P is primarily about prevention, whereas humanitarian intervention is only about reaction.
R2P is about a continuum of responses by a whole range of actors, not just those able and willing to apply military force. R2P commits the different actors to three distinct 'pillars' of responsibility. The primary responsibility is for the sovereign state not to perpetrate or allow atrocity crimes on its territory. The second pillar is the responsibility of others in the international community to assist states in discharging that primary responsibility. The third pillar is the responsibility of the wider international community -- if prevention fails, and a state is manifestly failing to protect its own people -- to provide that protection by every means prescribed by the UN Charter.
Fine words, but what has it meant in practice?
From 2005 until March last year, steady progress was made -- conceptually, in refining the scope of the new norm; institutionally, in building support mechanisms within governments and intergovernmental organizations; and politically, in consolidating UN member support and isolating the spoilers trying to undermine it.
As new atrocity crises arose, R2P increasingly became the reference point. It was, for example, the basis for Kofi Annan's successful defusing -- through diplomatic mediation, not military threats -- of the explosive outbreak of post-election ethnic violence in Kenya in early 2008. But it came of age with Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973 on Libya in February and March 2011, both specifically invoking R2P. The first condemned Gaddafi's attacks on civilians, and applied targeted sanctions and other late-stage prevention measures. When that failed to halt the violence, and civilians in Benghazi were at imminent risk of massacre, the second resolution, with no dissenting voices, authorized the use of 'all necessary measures' to protect them.
In the NATO-led airborne military operation that followed, many thousands of lives were saved. It all seemed at the outset a textbook example of R2P working as it was supposed to, using military force but only as a last resort, and decisively cutting across centuries of state practice treating sovereignty almost as a licence to kill. If the
Why did that consensus so quickly evaporate? If Libya, why not Syria?
From the high point of that agreement there has been a rapid descent, with the
Part of the reason is a very different geopolitical environment: complex internal sectarian divisions with potentially explosive regional implications; anxiety about the democratic credentials of many of those in opposition; no
But there's more to it than that. Consensus has collapsed amid recrimination about how the NATO-led implementation of the
So who was right?
The BRICS complaints were not about the initial military response, but what came shortly after, when it became clear that the US, Britain and France were set on regime change. Their argument is that the intervening powers rejected ceasefire offers that may have been serious, attacked fleeing troops that posed no immediate risk to civilians, targeted locations that had no obvious military significance (such as the compound in which Gaddafi relatives were killed) and supported the rebel side in what rapidly became a civil war, ignoring the explicit arms embargo in the process.
The United States, Britain and France have some answers. If civilians were to be protected house-to-house in areas such as Tripoli under Gaddafi's direct control, they say, that could only be achieved by overturning his whole regime.
If one side was taken in a civil war, it was because one-sided regime killing sometimes
leads -- as now in Syria -- to civilians acquiring arms to fight back and recruiting army defectors. Military operations can-not be micro-managed with a '1,000-mile screwdriver'. And a more limited 'monitor and swoop' concept of operations would have led to longer and messier conflict, politically impossible to sustain in the US and Europe, and likely to have produced many more civilian casualties.
Are you convinced?
These arguments all have force, but the US, Britain and France resisted debate on them in the
Is there any way to rescue consensus?
There is a way forward, and it has been offered by Brazil. The proposal is that the R2P concept needs supplementing -- not replacing -- by a set of principles and procedures that it labels 'responsibility while protecting' (RWP). The two key proposals are for a set of criteria to be fully debated before the
The criteria on the table include: Last Resort -- has every non-military option been fully explored and the judgment reasonably made that nothing less than military force could halt or avert the harm in question? Proportionality -- are the scale, duration and intensity of the proposed action the minimum necessary to meet the threat? Balance of Consequences -- will those at risk ultimately be better or worse off, and the scale of suffering greater or less?
Such criteria were proposed a decade ago by my own
Surely the Libya backlash is so powerful that it has set your agenda back to 2001?
I don't accept that. Even at the height of the concern about perceived over-reach in the implementation of the Libyan mandate, there was still overwhelming support evident for the R2P norm, in all its dimensions, in the
It's true that there is a long way to go to re-establish consensus at the sharp end of the R2P response continuum: the hard cases where tough measures have to be considered. The initial response of the US, Britain and France to the Brazilian 'RWP' proposal was dismissive -- 'they would want all these delaying and spoiling options, wouldn't they' -- but it has begun to soften, as it must. It is beginning to dawn on the Western powers that if an un-vetoed majority vote is ever going to be secured again for strong action, the issues at the heart of the backlash against the implementation of the Libyan mandate simply have to be seriously addressed.
So what hope for Syria?
It's too late now for such renewed consensus to help much now in Syria. But I don't think there is any policymaker in the world who fails to understand that if the
© Tribune Media Services, Inc.
WORLD | AFRICA | ASIA | EUROPE | LATIN AMERICA | MIDDLE EAST | UNITED STATES | ECONOMICS | EDUCATION | ENVIRONMENT | FOREIGN POLICY | POLITICS
'Responsibility to Protect' After Libya | News of the World