Continued Consideration of RtoP Proves a Success at UNGA Debate
Refugee Rights News
November 2009
The long awaited United Nations (UN) General Assembly debate on the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) was held on 23-28 July, and civil society groups around the world rallied together to ensure that dialogue on the norm was advanced. The debate marked Member States’ 2005 commitment to undertake "continued consideration" of the norm, as well as providing a forum for discussion on the UN Secretary General’s 2009 report, Implementing the Responsibility to Protect, which seeks to begin the process of clarifying mechanisms for implementing this commitment in practice. On 14 September 2009, the General Assembly adopted its first resolution on RtoP, based on the positive outcome of the debate and discussion of the Secretary General’s report.
During the session, civil society organisations called on States to carefully consider the Secretary General’'s report and to engage constructively in the debate. For its part, the International Refugee Rights Initiative (IRRI), a member of the International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect (ICRtoP), signed on to ICRtoP’s letter to all Ambassadors, as well as coordinating an Africa-focused letter, which was sent to African Union member states and signed by 18 organisations. Additionally, IRRI co-Director and Darfur Consortium co-Chair Dismas Nkunda spoke at an ICRtoP hosted event on 20 July, entitled “The Responsibility to Protect: A Dialogue with Civil Society in Advance of the UN General Assembly Debate”. On 15 September, the ICRtoP released the Report on the General Assembly Plenary Debate on the Responsibility to Protect.
The RtoP is an international human rights and human security norm designed to prevent genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. Should any of these mass atrocity crimes occur, States have the responsibility to protect populations, and the four crimes must trigger reaction when States’ are unable or unwilling to protect their populations. The Secretary General’s report focuses on three pillars of response to the four designated crimes. These pillars consist of:
- State responsibility: an obligation of each state to protect its own people from mass atrocity crimes;
- Assistance to states: the responsibility of all states to assist others in enhancing their protection capacities; and
- Timely and decisive action by the international community: to prevent and halt atrocities when the state in question is manifestly failing to do so.
Presentation of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Implementing the Responsibility to Protect
The debates were preceded by a presentation by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon of his report on 21 July 2009. In a brief overview, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon endorsed the concept of "sovereignty as responsibility", indicating that sovereignty and responsibility are “mutually reinforcing principles”. He highlighted three main points, the first of which was to reiterate that the report seeks to “situate the Responsibility to Protect squarely under the UN’s roof and within our Charter, where it belongs”. Secondly, Ban emphasized that prevention based upon moral and practical reasoning should be the most important element of RtoP. A balanced, nuanced approach to prevention and protection could be achieved through fully utilizing the tools at the UN’s disposal. Thoughtful policy development provides a way for the international community to support States in meeting their obligations to protect their populations. Finally, he expressed the hope that states will engage to strengthen capacities in early warning and prevention in order to ensure an early and flexible response in country specific situations. Force should only be utilized as a last resort, and in conformity with the relevant provisions of the UN Charter. Ban challenged Member States to “resist those who try to change the subject or turn our common effort to curb the worst atrocities in human history into a struggle over ideology, geography or economics. What do they offer to the victims of mass violence? Rancor instead of substance; rhetoric instead of policy; despair instead of hope.”
The Secretary General’s Special Advisor with a focus on the Responsibility to Protect, Dr. Edward Luck, offered a similar introduction of the report at the ICRtoP civil society dialogue where he highlighted the role of NGOs in ensuring the implementation of the RtoP through advocacy and research. Dr. Luck clarified that through his mandate to conceptualise RtoP and suggest policy guidelines for implementation, he was cognizant that RtoP means different things to different people, States, and regions. In his opening remarks to the General Assembly in the Informal Interactive Dialogue on 23 July, Dr. Luck commented that the debates had the opportunity to dispel some of the myths that have surrounded RtoP since its inception – that RtoP is synonymous to humanitarian intervention, that sovereignty and responsibility are incompatible – and begin a dialogue to facilitate the sharing of best practices and what kinds of assistance and capacity building best enhance states’ abilities to avert future rounds of violence and social fragmentation. In fact, RtoP serves to ‘discourage unilateralism, military adventurism, and an overdependence on military responses to humanitarian need’, and sovereignty must be understood by Member States as being mutually reinforcing principles to strengthen state capacity.
Though by and large UNGA Member States view RtoP as a balanced package and support the first two pillars of state responsibility and assistance to states respectively, the issue of use of coercive force under the third pillar of reaction remains controversial, with some States demanding further discussion on use of force criterion and Security Council protocol. The report endeavours to encourage learning and experience sharing amongst networks, and as Dr. Luck noted, civil society will be crucial actors in mobilizing this sharing and applying it in an integrated, creative, and holistic way.
Gathering Consensus on Issues of Sovereignty, Responsibility, and the RtoP
At the meeting in July, with the exception of a handful of delegations, UN member states affirmed that the World Summit Outcome Document was not up for debate. Benin and Lesotho noted that mass atrocities within state borders could constitute threats to international peace and security, while many other states noted the importance of grounding RtoP in the UN Charter and international humanitarian law. Legitimate concerns about RtoP were raised by some governments, who worried about the misuse of RtoP to justify coercive unilateral interventions, and the scenario that the UN Security Council would be blocked by veto or be unjustifiably selective in its interventions. However, states such as Chile concluded that it would be morally and politically wrong to conclude that because the international community did not act somewhere, it should not act anywhere. Lesotho argued that RtoP made the Security Council more accountable, by clarifying standards for intervention. Other Member states were not as constructive, with Sudan calling for the General Assembly to be the sole body authorised to use force, as giving the Security Council control of RtoP measures was equivalent to “giving the wolf the responsibility to adopt a lamb”.
The dialogue between Member States was an important step forward in generating greater support for the implementation of RtoP, as well as dismissing rhetoric by some states who continued to equate RtoP to humanitarian intervention and neo-colonialism. These states attempted to undermine the dialogue by debating the meaning and merits of the norm, misrepresenting valid critiques of the RtoP, or rehashing decades-old arguments.
Emphasis on the Normative Entrenchment of the Responsibility to Protect in Africa from Member States and Civil Society
Both African and non-African governments alike recognized the role of African regional and sub-regional organizations, and credited the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the 2000 Constitutive Act of the African Union as fundamental in the promotion of R2P. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon himself stated that “RtoP emerged from the soil, spirit, experience, and institutions of Africa”. The need to prevent incitement of the four crimes and prevention through quiet diplomacy were exemplified through the recent success stories of Cote d’Ivoire and Kenya.
Ninety-two states (and two observers), including 16 from Africa spoke during the debate. A welcome change in stance came from South Africa, who emphasised the myriad of UN Charter instruments applicable to RtoP of negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, and resorting to regional and sub-regional arrangements. Ghana challenged the conception that sovereignty could operate as a shield for mass atrocity crimes, and suggested that sovereignty was an instrument and that states were only credible when they recognized the human rights and dignity of their citizens. The Gambia suggested that depoliticising the architecture of RtoP could help to bridge a “deficit of trust” amongst member states, while Nigeria emphasised the importance of capacity building and integrating the work of the AU’s Framework for Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development into the Peacebuilding Commission. South Africa and Ghana also mentioned the importance of the African Peer Review Mechanism, while Sierra Leone noted the importance of Africa’s Continental Early Warning System, and the AU’s Consultative Panel of the Wise.
A powerful aspect of the debate came when Member States that had suffered greatly from large scale violence issued a call for implementation of RtoP. The Permanent Representative of Rwanda to the UN Eugene-Richard Gasana stated “it is our considered view that the debate on the Secretary-General’s report on implementing the responsibility to protect should not be an exercise in intellectual posturing or an opportunity to grind political axes or to engage in polemics; it is simply about the value we place upon human life”.
At the ICRtoP Civil Society Dialogue, Jaqueline Murekatete, a Rwandan Genocide Survivor, Fellow at the Miracle Corners of the World, and Director at Jacqueline’s Human Rights Corner, and Dismas Nkunda also embodied the voices of those who had directly witnessed mass atrocity crimes. Ms. Murekatete called on listeners to think critically about the concept of RtoP as enhancing protection to individuals, to acknowledge what the framework of the RtoP means to victims and survivors of the crimes that the concept seeks to address, and for the future of humanity. Though the concept is a huge step forward in genocide prevention, it is undermined by the international community’s failure to prevent current atrocities, notably in Darfur.
Mr. Nkunda highlighted Africa's pioneering role in support of RtoP, mentioning the Conflict Prevention Framework of ECOWAS, adopted in 2008, and the Constitutive Act of the African Union, adopted in 2000. He also noted that in 2007, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights passed a resolution to strengthen RtoP in Africa. The International Conference on the Great Lakes Pact on Security, Stability and Development in the Great Lakes Region was another example of regional commitment. Particularly relevant was Sudan's ratification which, according to Mr. Nkunda, provides a way to hold Sudan accountable for mass atrocity crimes in Darfur, namely through the protocol on the prevention and punishment of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, which also explicitly states that the leaders of member states responsible for these crimes may be held responsible.
Next steps: Implementation
The General Assembly debate on RtoP provided an opportunity for a genuine, constructive dialogue, and for Member States to address how they were going to fill the gaps in capacity, will and imagination in preventing mass atrocities. Many of the statements by Member States also included pragmatic examples of how governments were already at work at enhancing the norm in their own region and at national levels. States also raised recommendations regarding the veto powers of the permanent five members of the Security Council, and the need to come to a consensus around abstention and the use of veto power in the Security Council in the event of mass atrocity crimes, as well as formulating use of force criterion.
At the international level, Member States recommended strengthening early warning systems through bolstering the offices of the Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide, Francis Deng, and that of Dr. Luck’s, and establishing an inter-agency mechanism to assess early warning monitoring information. This would imbue the UN system with mass atrocity checks and balances, and provide system wide coherence in policy-making. Additionally, the Peacebuilding Commission’s (PBC) work should be linked to that of the preventative aspects of RtoP, as lack of post-conflict reconstruction makes the return to conflict nearly inevitable. At the regional and sub-regional level, there must be increased support to political processes, strengthening existing structures and creating regional standby forces for rapid reaction should peaceful means fail.
At national and domestic levels, acceleration and domestication of state ratification of the Rome Statute increases accountability, and as Bosnia-Herzegovina stated ‘becoming party to international human rights instruments, international humanitarian law, refugee law and above all the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court should be seen as a factor for stability for every state’. Enhancing national capacities through fulfilling and improving upon national constitutions, legal regimes, transparency, and good governance was noted by Tanzania and Swaziland. Finally, assistance programmes for building the capacity for protection would greatly reduce the risk of future mass atrocity crimes under the first two pillars of RtoP.
Conclusions
It was heartening for advocates that countries that had previously been sceptical, such as Indonesia, Brazil, India, Algeria, China, Ecuador and the Philippines, delivered constructive statements during the debate. Ms. Thelma Ekiyor, Executive Director of the West Africa Civil Society Institute and Chair of the ICRtoP, summed up the challenge: "while clarifying continuing misconceptions through education and outreach is essential, now the challenge for civil society groups worldwide is to improve and build the capacity of sub-regional, regional and international institutions to ensure that the norm is working properly to protect populations from mass atrocities.”