Returning to the Responsiblity to Protect

The International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS),

sponsored by Canada, published The Responsibility to Protect in 2001. The basic
concept of R2P was adopted by the United Nations in 2005 and its subsequent
development has been supported by an international civil society network.
R2P targets a narrow group of mass atrocity crimes: genocide, war crimes,
ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. Although other issues certainly deserve
attention, the need to prevent these four crimes at leastarguably the most abhorrent
is not controversial. However, the doctrine has included a critique of sovereignty, which
has attracted controversy and challenges to its development. Consequently, it remains as
much hope as reality. Never again is its hope; the occurrence of mass atrocity crimes
like the Rwandan genocide, the Cambodian killing fields, and the Holocaust, its ground.
R2Ps fundamental principle is that a state is responsible for the protection of its
population from mass atrocity. The principle arises from and contributes to a
humanitarian spirit that has over the years established a variety of international
instruments to protect populations, such as the 1951 Genocide Convention. The latter
was brought to bear on perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, leading to two
decades of prosecution. Although it can do nothing for the hundreds of thousands of
murdered Rwandansnothing caneffective prosecution weaves a web of deterrence,
helping to protect populations going forward. Focusing international attention on the
responsibility of states to protect their populations encourages the development and
application of instruments such as the Genocide Convention, making mass atrocity
crimes less and less likely.
R2Ps fundamental principle has, however, been widely interpreted as including
limits on state sovereignty, which has generated controversy. According to R2Ps own
narrative, in the past state sovereignty was said to be a barrier to international
intervention to stop atrocities. R2P has removed the barrier by arguing that if a state
fails in its responsibility to protect its population it fails to fulfil the conditions of
sovereignty, opening the door for other states to intervene on behalf of its population.
This was the rationale for the 2011 UN-supported intervention in Libya, in which R2P
was invoked. Unfortunately, mission creep in Libya nudged the intervention down the
slippery slope to regime change (not to mention allegations that inadequate time was
given to diplomacy, a required ceasefire was not implemented, an arms embargo was

violated, war crimes were committed, and human insecurity was generated in the
region). Regime change in Libya led to R2P buyers remorse especially among the
BRICS countries for whom the doctrine seemed to turn into a Trojan horse.
Consequently, Security Council consensus (which would have to include Russia and
China from the BRICS) has become very unlikely on R2P.
Unfortunately, these results do not stray from past patterns. Looking back over
the last 60 years or so, the most powerful statesthe ones with the capacity to
intervenedid not shrink from intervention behind the excuse of sovereignty.
Whenever they wanted to intervene they did so. In fact, brutal leaders such as the Shah
of Iran, Castillo Armas, Mobutu, and Pinochet were largely installed and maintained by
powerful Western states that intervened to replace popular independent nationalist
leaders such as Mosasdeqh, Arbenz, Lumumba, and Allende. Even the 2001 ICISS
report notes that state practice reflected the unwillingness of many countries to give up
the use of intervention for political or other purposes as an instrument of policy.
Leading powers intervened in support of friendly leaders against local populations.
Sovereignty was no more of an obstacle for humanitarian intervention than it was for
interest-serving aggression. Certainly during the Cold War years the latter was state
practice.
But if sovereignty has not been a major obstacle to intervention and if
intervention has served powerful interests, then turning the responsibility to protect into
a critique of sovereignty will not prevent mass atrocity crimes. Political and geopolitical
ambition in the calculations of the strong will always have at least as much play as
protecting the weak.
The responsibility to protect, not the critique of sovereignty, is the fundamental
issue. Even Michael Ignatieff, one of the authors of the ICISS report, conceded in 2013
that attempts to move the concept of sovereignty over to the concept of responsibility
had not managed one millimetre of movement.
To continue the journey of hope to never again, we should turn away from the
critique of sovereignty and the example of Libya. Recollecting the lessons of the past,
we should beware of interventionists bearing gifts, and embark on an odyssey back to
R2Ps foundation, charting interconnections with complementary international
instruments along the way so as to weave a substantial web of deterrence around the
principle of state responsibility for the protection of populations.

Fonte:

DUNCAN,

John.

https://www.opencanada.org/features/returning-to-the-

responsiblity-to-protect/. 23 de abril de 2014.