The Responsibility to Protect doctrine can be resurrected
The legal norm has been manipulated and forgotten. But today it is needed more than ever. The United Nations General Assembly met yesterday at its
The legal norm has been manipulated and forgotten. But today it is needed more than ever. The United Nations General Assembly met yesterday at its headquarters in New York to discuss the responsibility to protect (R2P) doctrine and the continuing perpetration of atrocities across the world. These gatherings have been taking place annually since 2018, but they have done little to advance the proper enforcement of R2P. Yesterday’s meeting was no different. The UN may have failed to effectively apply R2P, but that does not mean it is a bad principle. It also does not mean we should give up on it. The idea of establishing a norm in international law to prevent crimes against humanity and genocide first emerged in the aftermath of the failure to stop the genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia. In 2001, the International Committee on Intervention and State Sovereignty developed the framework for R2P. It was crafted first as an obligation of states to protect their own people, and then, when that fails, as an obligation of other states to take action. In 2005, at the UN World Summit, the world’s heads of state met to discuss the new framework. The final document adopted at the summit – which, in effect, embedded R2P into international law – read “The international community, through the United Nations, also has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, to help to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.” Similar efforts resulted, in July 2002, in the establishment of the International Criminal Court tasked with prosecuting individuals accused of committing war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
All this represented a high point of the desire to ensure a rules-based order to protect people in need and to punish all those who flout that obligation. It was an ambitious and imaginative effort to make the world a safer place. But it did not work. There are various reasons for that failure. Perhaps the main one was the absence of the slightest interest from several powerful member states in implementing R2P. Lack of action from governments has resulted in brutal indifference to suffering, famine, crimes against humanity and genocide. Ironically, several of them remain members of the so-called Group of Friends of R2P. There was also the politicisation of R2P in pursuit of geopolitical agendas. In 2011, when protests erupted in Libya, the government of Muammar Gaddafi responded violently. Western governments led by the US invoked R2P when seeking permission from the UN Security Council to intervene. What was supposed to be a humanitarian intervention to protect the civilian population turned into a regime-change operation. The manipulation of R2P was its death sentence. Russia, a permanent UNSC member, but also other powers, saw it as a conduit for Western interventionism rather than a humanitarian doctrine. What followed was global inaction on horrific atrocities in Syria, Palestine, Sudan, DRC, Ethiopia, Myanmar, and elsewhere. As a UN official involved in humanitarian efforts and conflict mediation, I have had a front seat to the suffering and devastation that the failure to protect has led to.
The BriefWire