Responsibility to Protect – A Primer

By Meghan Nash, WFI Research Associate

My tenth grade physics teacher tried to teach me about inertia. Once put into motion, an object will maintain that course until it is acted upon by another force. At the time Newton’s first law seemed irrelevant to me; after all I knew I was no burgeoning scientist. It was not until years later that I realized the law of inertia can also be applied to the realm of human rights. Once a government violates or ignores the basic human rights of its people, the situation will continue, or worsen, until it is forced to change course, either by its own people or by an outside force. This theory is the basis for the Responsibility to Protect doctrine (R2P), unanimously adopted by the United Nations at the World Summit in 2005. R2P was designed to resolve situations when a nation fails, intentionally or not, to protect its people against avoidable suffering. At these times, the duty to protect falls to the rest of the world who are morally obligated to step in, with the use of military force if necessary.

Initiated by the Canadian government in September of 2000, the 12 members of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty created a report that details the justifiable reasons for foreign intervention and steps that should be enacted to repair the damage, without essentially colonizing the country. The four objectives of the commission were to establish clearer rules, procedures and criteria for intervention; to establish when military intervention is legitimate; to ensure that military intervention is only used for agreed purposes; and to eliminate, where possible, the causes of conflict entirely to create a chance for durable and lasting peace.

So where did the commission draw the line in the sand when it comes to military intervention? After all, no administration wants to watch foreign troops enter their country and tell them how to govern it. Military force may have the potential to solve domestic crises but it can also create a much larger problem on the international stage. The report creates a very small window where military intervention may be allowed: if the state’s government is neglecting to halt a “large scale loss of life or ethnic cleansing,” then, with the agreement of the United Nations’ Security Council, military force may be employed. Military intervention is deemed to be the last resort, to be used only after diplomacy has failed and only if the Security Council is provided with compelling and accurate proof of the state’s negligence. In order to gain the approval of the Security Council, four main conditions must be met: intervention is proposed with the intention of halting or averting human suffering; it is the last resort; there are reasonable prospects for success; and the means are proportional to the offenses. Only after these four conditions have been fulfilled can the Security Council approve the use of a coalition of military forces. Even then, any permanent member of the Security Council can veto the measure.

Historically, the norm at the United Nations has been a policy of non-intervention. But the report states that there is a vast amount of legal support for the military intervention advocated in the R2P doctrine. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights passed in 1948, Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, the Genocide and Geneva Conventions and a statute of the International Criminal Court all declare that military intervention is justified when preserving human rights and ending abuse. The R2P report suggests that if this policy had been in place during such crises as Rwanda, Bosnia and Sierra Leone, thousands of lives may have been saved.

While in today’s world ending human rights crises is often the only available recourse, the main concern of the international community should be in preventing them from occurring at all. According to the commission, the “responsibility to protect” is three-fold: the world must try to prevent large scale human rights violations before they occur, react with appropriate measures if situations of “compelling human need” occur, and rebuild the countries where these tragedies take place.

A major problem with prevention is securing financial support. To convince people to take out the checkbook once you have shown them a picture of a starving five-year old or of a little girl who was repeatedly abused is easy. But without these pictures, these stories? Virtually impossible. Until visibly confronted by the unpleasant truths the world is all too willing to remain uninformed and uninvolved, believing this will somehow absolve them of their guilt. A bonus, according to the commission, of living in the digital age: the dramatically increased amount of pictures and videos coming out of ravaged areas, such as Darfur and Burma, make it much harder for the world to turn a blind eye. The commission also points to the increasing number of new non-governmental agencies created exclusively to detect and halt potential situations, such as the International Crisis Group, Amnesty International and Human Right Watch, as a positive step towards better prevention.

If prevention fails and military intervention is deemed necessary, the report also lays down rules for rebuilding. These necessary steps ensure that a state’s sovereignty is not permanently intruded upon and that the intervening countries are able to remove their troops and material aid in a reasonable timeframe. The most crucial step the report stresses is the immediate restoration or creation of a legitimate judicial system. Having a court system in place enables the domestic government to prosecute the war criminals responsible for these monstrosities, but it also provides a suitable way for the interveners to slowly remove themselves and hand the country back to its own government. It may be the same government, simply reformed, or it may be an entirely new government, but either way the sovereignty is being restored to the state and to its people. This national government is also best suited for restoring the infrastructure of its state because it understands the subtle differences between the different groups living within its borders. An outside government may try to restructure the society in a fashion that is not accepted, due to religious or ethnic differences.

While crucial that the national government regains its sovereignty, if foreign military aid is present, it can not immediately be removed. The military must remain to bolster the stability of the new government until it is secure enough to stand by itself. Five tasks were assigned to the foreign military by the R2P report for the rebuilding stage. The military must help in protecting minorities, reforming the security sector, disarming, demobilizing, and reintegrating, clearing mines and assisting mine victims, and pursuing war criminals. Only once the domestic government is solidly re-established can foreign military forces be removed without risking a relapse.

The proposals put forth in the R2P report may endow us all with a sense of hope about putting an end to tragedies such as Rwanda. But how effective has R2P been since its acceptance by the UN in 2005? Since that time, several blatant violations of human rights have occurred, for example, in Darfur and Burma. Has R2P done anything to stop the inhumane treatment happening in these countries?

For the past four years, militias across Darfur have brutally murdered, raped, and uprooted their own people in a suspected government-endorsed ethnic cleansing. At this point, over 400,000 people have been murdered and 240,000 are living as refugees in surrounding countries. Despite the signing of the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) by Sudan President Omar El-Bashir and one faction of the Sudan Liberation Army in 2006, the efforts of the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) have had little impact on the events.

The Security Council of the UN authorized the deployment of 17,300 troops to assist AMIS in implementing the DPA in August of 2006. It was not until July of 2007 that they decreed the situation in Darfur fulfilled the requirements of R2P and authorized a deployment of an additional 26,000 troops to Sudan. Despite the united efforts of the world, the crisis in Darfur continues. By January of 2008 only 9,000 of the troops had been deployed, due to the resistance of the renegade militias and lack of co-operation of the Sudanese government.

A lesser known tragedy, the situation in Burma, or Myanmar, includes the systematic raping of ethnic minority women, the abuse of political prisoners, and the forced service of child soldiers. Attempting to stop this situation before it escalated, the UN Security Council voted in 2007 to invoke R2P, but the movement was vetoed by China and Russia. Fortunately for the people of Burma, the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Japan all continued to pressure Burma’s government, mainly through economic sanctions and Japan’s cancellation of a five million dollar grant. Hopefully these new economic constraints, combined with the extreme damage caused by the recent cyclone attack, will force the Burman government to accept foreign intervention before the situation escalates further.

The UN has taken further strides in supporting R2P since its acceptance in 2005. In addition to the position of Special Advisor for the Prevention of Genocide created in 2004, the UN recently created a Special Advisor on R2P on December 11th, 2007. This Special Advisor, currently Edward Luck, will advise the Security Council on whether or not a situation qualifies for intervention under R2P.

Responsibility to Protect strives to remind us that we are all humans. Despite ethnicities, religions, or boundary lines, at the core of the matter we are all humans. Therefore, it is our moral responsibility to relieve our fellow human beings from unnecessary suffering and pain. Although the sovereignty of a state is elemental to its ability to function, when that state neglects to use its sovereignty to protect its people it no longer has the right to govern. It must be convinced, or perhaps forced, to relinquish some of its sovereignty to abate the suffering of its people. The other countries of the world must be that outside force that changes the trajectory of a state away from self-destruction and towards liberation.

*More information about R2P can be found at: http://www.responsibilitytoprotect.org