The Concept of Responsibility to Protect
Prof. mr AndrĂŠ Nollkaemper
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Resolution 1970 (2011) Adopted by the Security Council at its 6491st meeting, on 26 February 2011 Recalling the Libyan authorities’ responsibility to protect its population..
Emergence of R2P
Predecessors
The problem: Rwanda and the Balkans: ‘never again’
1999 – Kosovo
2001 - The International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty
2005 - The Outcome document (World Summit)
2009 - UN SG report
2005 Outcome Document ď Ž
138. Each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This responsibility entails the prevention of such crimes, including their incitement, through appropriate and necessary means. We accept that responsibility and will act in accordance with it. The international community should, as appropriate, encourage and help States to exercise this responsibility and support the United Nations in establishing an early warning capability.
2005 Outcome Document ď Ž
139. 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. In this context, we are prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the Charter, including Chapter VII, on a case-by-case basis and in cooperation with relevant regional organizations as appropriate, should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. We stress the need for the General Assembly to continue consideration of the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and its implications, bearing in mind the principles of the Charter and international law. We also intend to commit ourselves, as necessary and appropriate, to helping States build capacity to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and to assisting those which are under stress before crises and conflicts break out.
2009 UN SG Report: 3 pillar approach
(1) the protection responsibilities of the state; (the ‘responsibility to protect’)
(2) international assistance and capacity building; and (the ‘responsibility to rebuild’): the state is not necessarily the problem, and can be part of the solution
(3) timely and decisive response to prevent and halt genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity (the ‘responsibility to respond’).
The concept of R2P
Limited scope: the four core crimes Pragmatism Risks
What is old Obligations of the territorial state Obligations of third states The responsibiilty of the SC
Practice – protection of civilians, peace keeping
What is new Political support of law - reaffirmation of obligations Legalization of Politics: third states, Security Council Integrative approach
Open questions
Allocation of responsibility between the territorial state and the international community
Fear of imperialism and selectivity
What does it mean to ‘protect’?
Allocation within the international community: who is to act?
Genocide case Regional organizations
Humanitarian intervention
Regional organizations Africa has deliberately or inadvertently become the choice continent of Security Council’s most profound inaction. Thus, asking Africa to, once again, trust a body that has proved several times to be totally useless when their lives are at stake is like squeezing a stone to yield water. ‘...[T]he dictates of civilization, the spirit of comity and the gargantuan privileges of camaraderie impel that Africans must, once again, entrust the Security Council with the sacred responsibility to protect them from harms. In entertaining this request, however, Africans clearly reserve for themselves the right to go it alone, if and whenever they deem fit. This is, to be fair, a small price for the Security Council to pay for squandering its legitimacy (prof Abass, 2011)
Humanitarian intervention In retrospect, would anyone really disagree that, if such measures could have prevented the Rwandan genocide and the deaths of 800,000, then we should have taken them - regardless of international law's obstructionism and whatever unease we might feel? So how can we say that we should not adopt these same measures to prevent the next Rwanda, and the next one after that? (Daniel Goldhagen, 2011)