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Implementing the “Responsibility to Protect”: Where Expectations Meet Reality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2011

Jennifer M. Welsh
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Type
Review Essay
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , Winter 2010 , pp. 415 - 430
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2010

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References

Notes

1 Media sources estimated that “at least several hundred” civilians were killed, and possibly more. See Levy, Clifford J., “In Kyrgyzstan, Failure to Act Adds to Crisis,” New York Times, June 17, 2010.Google Scholar While the exact numbers are still difficult to verify, the United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Oscar Fernandez-Taranco, told a closed-door meeting of the Security Council later that month that at least 300,000 Uzbeks became internally displaced following the violence, and another 100,000 fled into neighboring Uzbekistan. “UN Official Warns Security Council That Ethnic Tensions Remain High in Kyrgyzstan,” UN News Service, June 24, 2010; available at www.un.org/apps/news/printnewsAr.asp?nid=35136.

2 Traub, James, “It's Not Too Late to Save Kyrgyzstan,” Foreign Policy (June 22, 2010).Google Scholar

3 Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, “Open Letter to the United Nations Security Council on the situation in Kyrgyzstan,” June 24, 2010. The phrase “never again” alludes to the call by former secretary-general Kofi Annan to prevent atrocities such as those that occurred during the genocide in Rwanda.

4 In the 2009 report of the UN secretary-general, RtoP is described as resting on three pillars. Pillar one, drawing on preexisting legal obligations, is the responsibility of individual states to protect their own populations (whether nationals or not). Pillar two calls on the international community (acting through the UN system and partner organizations) to help states fulfill these responsibilities. Pillar three specifies the residual responsibility of UN Member States to act if the state in question fails to protect its population. See “Implementing the Responsibility to Protect: Report of the Secretary-General,” A/63/677, January 12, 2009.

5 Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1968 [1651]), chap. 29, para. 23.Google Scholar See also Glanville, Luke, “The Antecedents of ‘Sovereignty as Responsibility’,” European Journal of International Relations, Online First (May 19, 2010)Google Scholar; and MacFarlane, S. Neil and Khong, Yuen Foong, Human Security and the UN: A Critical History (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana State University Press, 2006), pp. 37–39.Google Scholar

6 The Responsibility to Protect, Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (Ottawa: IDRC, 2001).

7 Ibid., p. 8.

8 Deng, Francis M., Kimaro, Sadikiel et al. , Sovereignty as Responsibility: Conflict Management in Africa (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1996)Google Scholar; and Cohen, Roberta and Deng, Francis M., Masses in Flight: The Global Crisis of Internal Displacement (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1998).Google Scholar

9 Author's interview with Francis Deng, New York, September 16, 2008.

10 See “The Kampala Document: Towards a Conference on Security, Stability, Development and Cooperation in Africa,” Kampala, May 19–22, 1991.

11 Deng, Francis M. and Zartman, I. William, A Strategic Vision for Africa: The Kampala Movement (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2002), p. 139.Google Scholar

12 Deng, , et al. , Sovereignty as Responsibility, p. xii.Google Scholar

13 Ibid., p. xiii.

14 Ibid., p. 28.

15 For more on the context within which Deng wrote, see David Chandler, “Unravelling the Paradox of the ‘Responsibility to Protect',” Irish Studies in International Affairs 20 (2009), pp. 27–39.

16 Author's interview with Francis Deng, New York, September 16, 2008.

17 Pattison follows Kok-Chor Tan in arguing that RtoP therefore establishes only an “imperfect duty” to protect. See Tan, Kok-Chor, “The Duty to Protect,” in Nardin, Terry and Williams, Melissa, eds., Humanitarian Intervention: NOMOS XLVII (New York: New York University Press, 2006), pp. 84–116.Google Scholar As Pattison notes, Tan's use of the terms “imperfect duties” and “perfect duties” differs from the standard interpretation of these terms in moral philosophy (the lack of specificity around claimants rather than agents).

18 See, e.g., Arbour, Louise, “The Responsibility to Protect as a Duty of Care in International Law and Practice,” Review of International Studies 34, no. 3 (July 2008), pp. 445–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 For a preliminary attempt to allocate the responsibility, see 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, February 26, 2007, para. 430. Available at www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/91/13685.pdf.

20 See also Miller, David, “The Responsibility to Protect Human Rights” (Working Paper Series, SJ006, Centre for the Study of Social Justice, University of Oxford, May 2007), p. 4.Google Scholar

21 In the ICISS report, these criteria are just cause, right intention, proportionate means, last resort, reasonable prospects, and proper authority. Evans develops a similar set of five principles, but does not include proper authority (pp. 139–47).

22 I have developed this objection to effectiveness more fully elsewhere. See Welsh, Jennifer M., “Who Should Act? Collective Responsibility and the Responsibility to Protect,” in Knight, W. Andy and Egerton, Frazer, eds., Handbook of the Responsibility to Protect (London: Routledge, 2011).Google Scholar See also Miller, David, “Distributing Responsibilities,” Journal of Political Philosophy 9, no. 4 (2001), pp. 453–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 For other recent discussions of the Council's legitimacy, see Lowe, Vaughan et al. , The United Nations Security Council and War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), IntroductionGoogle Scholar; and Buchanan, Allen and Keohane, Robert, “The Legitimacy of the UN Security Council in the Wake of the Responsibility to Protect” (unpublished paper on file with the author, March 26, 2010)Google Scholar.

24 Lowe, et al. , The United Nations Security Council and War, pp. 39–43.Google Scholar

25 For more on the benefits of the Security Council as a collective legitimizer, see Welsh, Jennifer M., “Authorizing Humanitarian Intervention,” in Price, Richard and Zacher, Mark, eds., The United Nations and Global Security (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 177–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Evans, Gareth, “The Responsibility to Protect: An Idea Whose Time Has Come … and Gone?” International Relations 22, no. 3 (2008), pp. 283–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 For detailed examples of the continuing debate over meaning and use, see Bellamy's, more recent article, “The Responsibility to Protect—Five Years On,” Ethics & International Affairs 24, no. 2 (Summer 2010), pp. 143–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 On the cyclone in Myanmar, see Thakur, Ramesh, “Should the UN Invoke the ‘Responsibility to Protect'?” Globe and Mail, May 8, 2008Google Scholar; and Evans, Gareth, “Facing Up to Our Responsibilities,” Guardian, May 12, 2008.Google Scholar On the Russian example, see Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, “The Georgia-Russia Crisis and the Responsibility to Protect: Background Note,” New York, August 19, 2008.

29 UN General Assembly, “Special Subjects Relating to the Proposed Programme Budget for the Biennium 2008–2009,” A/RES/62/238, February 20, 2008.

30 A short resolution was eventually passed, which acknowledged the 2005 Outcome Document and committed the General Assembly to further discussion. See UN General Assembly, “The Responsibility to Protect,” A/RES/63/308, October 7, 2009.

31 See S/Res/1674 (April 28, 2006), para. 4.

32 UN Security Council, “Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict, ” S/PV.5577, December 4, 2006.

33 Bellamy, “The Responsibility to Protect—Five Years On.” See also Security Council Report, Update Report No. 1, “Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict,” June 18, 2007.

34 A paragraph indirectly referring to RtoP was deleted from a draft Security Council resolution on Darfur in 2007. See Strauss, Ekkehard, “A Bird in the Hand Is Worth Two in the Bush—On the Assumed Legal Nature of the Responsibility to Protect,” Global Responsibility to Protect 1, no. 3 (2009), pp. 291–323.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 The Council's work on the Protection of Civilians grew out of the post-Rwanda debate on the need for greater international commitment to act in the face of massive and systematic breaches of human rights law and international humanitarian law. The agenda was instigated by former secretary-general Annan's report “The Situation in Africa,” in which he identified the protection of civilians in instances of conflict as a “humanitarian imperative,” and called on the Council to pay greater attention to particular areas of concern. See “The Causes of Conflict and the Promotion of Durable Peace and Sustainable Development in Africa: Report of the Secretary-General,” A/52/871-S/1998/318, April 13, 1998.

36 Confidential interview with UN official, July 15, 2010.

37 Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change,” International Organization 52, no. 4 (1998), pp. 887–917.

38 Frost, Mervyn, “A Turn Not Taken: Ethics in IR at the Millennium,” Review of International Studies 24 (1998), p. 127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 See, e.g., Van Kersbergen, Kees and Verbeek, Bertjan, “The Politics of International Norms: Subsidiarity and the Imperfect Competence Regime of the European Union,” European Journal of International Relations 13, no. 2 (2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sandholtz, Wayne, “Dynamics of International Norm Change: Rules against Wartime Plunder,” European Journal of International Relations 14, no. 1 (2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Percy, Sarah V., “Mercenaries: Strong Norm, Weak Law,” International Organization 61, no. 2 (2007).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 Wiener, Antje, “Enacting Meaning-in-Use: Qualitative Research on Norms and International Relations,” Review of International Studies 35, no. 1 (2009), p. 176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 Prantl, Jochen and Nakano, Ryoko, “Global Norm Diffusion in East Asia: How China and Japan Implement the Responsibility to Protect,” International Relations 25 (forthcoming, 2011).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42 See Price, Richard, ed., Moral Limits and Possibility in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 Finnemore, Martha, “Paradoxes in Humanitarian Intervention,” in Price, ed., Moral Limits, pp. 197–224.Google Scholar For an elaboration on the perils involved in the use of force for humanitarian purposes, see Jackson, Robert, “War Perils in the Responsibility to Protect,” Global Responsibility to Protect 2, no. 3 (2010), pp. 315–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44 These two functions are set out by Bellamy in his subsequent article, “The Responsibility to Protect—Five Years On.”