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The Responsibility to Protect: Growing Pains or Early Promise?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2011

Abstract

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Type
Response
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2010

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References

Notes

1 At the 2005 World Summit, the heads of state and government unanimously pledged to protect their populations by preventing genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, as well as by preventing the incitement of such acts. They agreed, also, that the international community should assist and support states in that regard, including “those which are under stress before crimes and conflicts break out.” They pledged to “support the United Nations in establishing an early warning capability.” They noted the international community's responsibility to use peaceful means under Chapters VI and VIII of the UN Charter to offer protection. When such “means [are] inadequate,” they underscored that they “are prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council.” In January 2009, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon offered a three-part strategy for turning these fine words into deeds. The first pillar is the prevention and protection responsibility of the state, something for which international institutions can rarely substitute. The second pillar is the responsibility of the international community to help states meet those core responsibilities, whether through targeted development assistance, capacity building, preventive action, or helping the state defeat armed groups that are committing such atrocities. Under the third pillar—response—the international community should utilize the full range of tools under Chapters VI, VII, and VIII of the UN Charter to respond to situations of the manifest failure to protect against the four crimes.

2 Bellamy, Alex J., “The Responsibility to Protect—Five Years On,Ethics & International Affairs 24, no. 2 (Summer 2010), pp. 143–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Bellamy, Alex J., Responsibility to Protect (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009).Google Scholar

4 Hultman, Lisa, “Keeping Peace or Spurring Violence? Unintended Effects of Peace Operations on Violence Against Civilians,” Civil Wars 2, nos. 1–2 (March-June 2010), pp. 2946.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 “Implementing the Responsibility to Protect: Report of the Secretary-General,” A/63/677, January 12, 2009. For a commentary on how the secretary-general's approach and that endorsed by the heads of state and government at the 2005 World Summit differed from that first proposed by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty in 2001, see Luck, Edward C., “Building a Norm: The Responsibility to Protect Experience,” in Rotberg, Robert I., ed., Mass Atrocity Crimes: Preventing Future Outrages (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2010), pp. 108–27.Google Scholar

6 Remarks by the secretary-general to the Security Council, U.N. document SG/SM/13070, August 25, 2010.

7 See Annex to A/63/677; ibid.; and “Early Warning, Assessment, and the Responsibility to Protect: Report of the Secretary-General,” A/64/864, July 14, 2010.

8 Remarks by the Special Representative for Somalia to the Security Council, S/PV.5858, March 20, 2008. The special representative made a similar plea to the U.S. Congress in 2009, underscoring that the “issue of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is at stake” in Somalia; available at foreignaffairs.house.gov/111/abd062509.pdf, p. 2.

9 Among the statements along this line, see those of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, OSCE High Commissioner for National Minorities, and jointly by the UN Special Advisers on the Prevention of Genocide and on the responsibility to protect at www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=10150&LangID=E; www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=10220&LangID=E; www.osce.org/documents/hcnm/2010/06/44564_en.pdf; and www.un.org/preventgenocide/adviser/pdf/Statement%20of%20Special%20Advisers%20Deng%20and%20Luck%20on%20the%20situation%20in%20Kyrgyzstan%2015%20June%202010.pdf. As of this writing, it is too early to gauge their cumulative effect.

10 For a useful assessment of the July 2009 debate by two active NGOs, see the Global Centre on the Responsibility to Protect, “Implementing the Responsibility to Protect: The 2009 General Assembly Debate: An Assessment”; available at globalr2p.org/media/pdf/GCR2P_General_Assembly_Debate_Assessment.pdf; and the International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect (ICRtoP), “Report on the General Assembly Plenary Debate on the Responsibility to Protect” (September 15, 2009); available at responsibilitytoprotect.org/ICRtoPGAdebate.pdf. For a summary of the August 9, 2010, informal General Assembly interactive dialogue on “Early Warning, Assessment, and the Responsibility to Protect,” see the ICRtoP at www.responsibilitytoprotect.org/Summary%20of%20EW%20dialogue%20on%209%20August%202010(2).pdf. For the remarks of the secretary-general in July 2009, see SG/SM/12374, July 21, 2009. For the August 2010 and July 2009 statements by the Special Adviser to the U.N. Secretary-General Edward C. Luck, see www.ipinst.org/events/podcasts/185-we-should-not-wait-for-the-bad-news-ed-luck-says-at-un-general-assembly-meeting.html, and www.ipinst.org/images/pdfs/luck_ga_statement23july2009.pdf, respectively. For a summary of the August 9, 2010, informal General Assembly interactive dialogue on “Early Warning, Assessment, and the Responsibility to Protect” prepared by the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, see globalr2p.org/resources/.

11 First articulated in paragraph 139 of the 2005 Outcome Document, the General Assembly's mandate to continue its consideration of RtoP was reaffirmed in a consensus resolution following the July debate, one of the largest of the year. See UN General Assembly resolution A/RES/63/308, September 14, 2009.

12 See Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change,” International Organization 52, no. 4 (1998), pp. 887–917. For an assessment of how well the evolution of RtoP fits their model for norm development, see Edward C. Luck, “Building a Norm: The Responsibility to Protect Experience.”

13 When wearing a UN hat, this author refers to RtoP as a concept, principle, or standard instead.

14 International Court of Justice, Case Concerning the Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro), General List, no. 91, Judgment, February 26, 2007, para. 430.

15 See, for instance, “Preventing Mass Atrocities: A Conversation with Louise Arbour,” Council on Foreign Relations, Washington, D.C., June 8, 2007; and Arbour, Louise, “The Responsibility to Protect as a Duty of Care in International Law and Practice,” Review of International Studies 34, no. 3 (2008), pp. 445–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. p. 453 on the responsibilities of the five permanent members given their veto power.

16 International Court of Justice, Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro Judgment.

17 For a more positive assessment, see Sebolt, Taylor B., Humanitarian Military Intervention: The Conditions for Success and Failure (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).Google Scholar For a more negative one, see Valentino, Benjamin, “The Perils of Limited Humanitarian Intervention: Lessons from the 1990s,” Wisconsin International Law Journal 24, no. 3 (Fall 2006), pp. 723–40.Google Scholar

18 See Luck, Edward C., “Sovereignty, Choice, and the Responsibility to Protect,” Global Responsibility to Protect 1, no. 1 (2009), pp. 1021.CrossRefGoogle Scholar