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Posted 2:32 PM
by Mary
An idealistic effort to establish a new humanitarian principle is coming under
attack at the United NationsGARETH EVANS, a former Australian foreign minister and roving global troubleshooter, makes a bold but passionate claim on behalf of a three-word expression which (in quite large part thanks to his efforts) now belongs to the language of diplomacy: the “responsibility to protect”. In a recent book, he says there are “not many ideas that have the potential to matter more for good, not only in theory but in practice.”
Like many people who labour to ensure that mass murder will never recur, he links his personal commitment to an early formative event: in his case, a visit to Cambodia on the eve of the massacres in which up to a quarter of the population died. For others, the spur was the genocide in Rwanda, pictured above; for others still, the killing of Muslim men and boys from Srebrenica in Bosnia.
Whatever their motive, people of that cast of mind took heart from the moment in 2005 when the biggest-ever gathering of world leaders accepted the principle that they have a general “responsibility to protect” human beings from genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity. In a delicate formula which Mr Evans worked hard to craft, it was agreed that this concept, now known as R2P, referred mainly to the responsibility of states for their own people. Only in certain extreme circumstances, when states could not or would not protect their own citizens, or were actively harming them, might others step in. The concept was carefully modified so as to avoid giving prickly sovereign states the idea that they were about to be invaded at will by moralising outsiders.
But to the dismay of Mr Evans and his friends, a coalition of governments and other sceptics now seems bent on unravelling all their delicate work. These naysayers have been busily sharpening their knives ahead of a debate at the General Assembly which was due to start on July 23rd.
The apparent campaign to sabotage R2P is taking place in defiance of Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, who earlier this year drew up a report that presents the concept in the most cautious and reassuring of tones. As he argued, there were several benign and uncontroversial ways in which R2P could be made more real. For example, by helping decent states protect their people; or by having an effective early-warning system to trigger constructive action when things start to go wrong (or in plainer terms, when states start to collapse). He says action, military or otherwise, by external powers is a last resort.
Labels: GA, R2P
