By William Reed
The
Responsibility to Protect is a doctrine born out of the International
Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty of 2000 which was held in
response to the lack of coherent guidelines for humanitarian intervention. From Rwanda to Bosnia to Somalia to Kosovo, situations
where humanitarian intervention could have potentially remedied the situation
were handled poorly or no action was taken at all. The Responsibility to Protect came as an
attempt to shift the global dialogue from the rights of states to intervene in
the affairs of another state, to the responsibility states have to protect
their citizens and how the international community should react if that
responsibility is not met.[1]
The
Responsibility to Protect doctrine (RtoP) frames sovereignty as a
responsibility, not a right of states.
The government's responsibilities include protecting its citizens from
harm. RtoP says that if a government
fails to provide protection or commits any sort of atrocity, from genocide to
crimes against humanity within its own population, the international community
not only has the right to intervene, but it has the responsibility to
intervene.[2] Sovereignty no longer means that governments
can operate in whatever manner they want toward their own citizens. In essence, the focus is shifted back toward
the original goal of humanitarian intervention: civilian protection.
Already the
tension between sovereignty and RtoP is apparent. Sovereignty is one of the major pillars of
the international order and RtoP argues that, under certain circumstances,
other states can violate one state's sovereignty. The principle of sovereignty as written in
the UN Charter says that “all
Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use
of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any
state.”[3] Sovereignty is a staple of international law,
and can only be violated if action is authorized by the UN Security Council or
in self-defence, as stated in Article VII.[4]
The UN's conception of sovereignty and
legitimate uses of force are the two most important legal concepts used to analyse
RtoP.
The Responsibility to Protect, however, is not
legally binding. The Responsibility to
Protect can still only be seen as an international norm. Scholars argue that RtoP is grounded in
existing international law and is meant to be a guideline for how the relevant
pieces of international law should be interpreted. While RtoP drastically alters the norms
governing states legal obligations in the face of atrocity, it does not create
any new international law.
In the international system, norms have the
opportunity to become laws through codification in legally binding treaties or
extensive adherence to a norm by states.
Many argue that solidifying the legal obligations of RtoP in an
international treaty would make RtoP more effective. A treaty could impose more concrete
guidelines such as a definite trigger and prescription of acceptable actions. Most
likely the main reason a legal definition has not emerged is political:
governments fear they will be obligated to intervene against a state they
favour or that a government's own state will be targeted for intervention.
Comparing and contrasting the cases of Muammar
Ghadaffi's regime in Libya with the case of Bashar Al-Assad's regime in Syria
offers an example of where RtoP, a doctrine designed to eliminate
inconsistencies in the international response to atrocities, has proven too
weak. The UN Security Council authorized
intervention in Libya through resolutions 1970 and 1973 in 2011.[5] Libya is an example where the legal aspects
and political climate aligned to allow for the implementation of RtoP. In the face of ideological divides of the UN
Security Council (particularly Russia and China's anti-interventionist
attitudes) and the requirement of unanimity, political considerations can
easily undermine what is moral when considering authorizing the use of
force. No permanent member used its veto
in Syria and the states with the capability to take action were willing to
because the situation in Libya was relatively straight forward.
While Libya was not particularly divisive
politically, Syria has been a starkly different story. China and Russia have threatened to veto all
resolutions authorizing intervention in Syria.[6] Beyond the unwillingness of China and Russia
to authorize action, other major powers with the capability to intervene found
the situation on the ground complicated.
There was no strong, unified force for the international community to
support and intelligence was difficult to obtain. The analysis by some is that Syria looks
strikingly similar to the Rwandan Genocide in 1994; the exact event RtoP was
designed to prevent from recurring.
What emerges from this is a question of whether
immediately codifying the Responsibility to Protect as an international law
actually solve the inconsistencies of implementation. As stated before, some of
the benefits would be establishing a trigger for intervention and increasing
the punishment for states that do not act.
Most importantly, the current formulation of RtoP has clearly not solved
the problems of intervention in the 1990’s, thus there is risk of the same
problems recurring if the international community waits and hopes that the
issues resolve naturally without any changes to RtoP. Critics, on the other hand, argue that because
RtoP only reaffirms existing laws and creates nothing substantially new,
codifying it as a brand new law would actually give it less force and
legitimacy than if it continues to rely on its grounding in established
international law.[7]
While it is true
that the Responsibility to Protect is a strong political call to states,
situations continue to arise where states fail to follow the RtoP doctrine. The
only repercussions resulting from states' inaction unfortunately fall on the
unprotected populations. Thus far, RtoP
has been a somewhat-successful experiment at remedying the problems with
humanitarian intervention in the 1990’s.
However, there is a long way to go and the debate over the best way to
increase compliance with the doctrine must continue. It seems as though occurrences of mass
atrocities will not cease and, in response, the international community's moral
obligation to halt atrocities must be realized and executed more completely and
effectively.
[1] Evans,
Gareth, and Mhamed Sahnoun. "The Responsibility to Protect." Foreign
Affairs. N.p., Dec. 002. Web. Nov. 2014.
[2] Weiss,
Thomas. “Military Humanitarianism: Syria Hasn’t Killed It.” The Washington
Quarterly, 37:1, 7-20. 12 March 2014. Web.
[3] United Nations, Charter of
the United Nations, 24 October 1945, 1 UNTS XVI
[4]
Id.
[5] Pommier,
Bruno. "The use of force to protect civilians and humanitarian action: the
case of Libya and beyond." International Review of the Red Cross
93.884 (2011): 1063-1083.
[6] Weiss,
Thomas. “Military Humanitarianism: Syria Hasn’t Killed It.” The Washington
Quarterly, 37:1, 7-20. 12 March 2014. pg 13. Web
[7] Burke-White,
William W. "Adoption of the Responsibility to Protect." (2011). Web
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