-Written by AJ Reibel, MIR program, New Zealand
Responsibility to protect (R2P) has increasingly become an issue of concern on the international stage as civil wars, ethnic strife, economic and environmental mismanagement, violent struggles over limited resources and livelihoods, and commercial interests have brought about immense human suffering across areas of underdevelopment. As more attention has been directed at foci of instability and threats to human security, R2P has come to the forefront in discussions of emergency relief, conflict management and minimisation, and peace-building efforts. Responsibility to protect should be recognised as an important precept of international humanitarian law (IHL). Nonetheless, due to national and state sensitivities, the importance of sovereignty, and the limited precedence of military mobilisations with strictly altruistic agendas, R2P seems consigned to remain a precept agreed to by states – and, therefore, regarded as an international norm and value – but frequently dismissed in practice.
It is undeniable that, although intrusive and divisive, the notion of intervention in order to guarantee international R2P can be widely regarded as a feasible solution to address situations that have the potential to become (or have already degenerated into) acts of genocide and mass human rights violations. When a country, such as South Africa, allows for wanton violence and systematic terror to reign supreme across townships that dot its urban landscape, it has failed to properly ensure the security of humans living within its territorial integrity. What matters little in actuality (although not in theory) is whether the humans being targeted in an explosion of pent-up frustrations and disillusionment are citizens of the state or not. The idea of ensuring the rights of individuals and upholding human rights would mean that the government of South Africa has the responsibility to protect its immigrant populations as well as its citizens.
In the case that a country cannot, or is unwilling, to protect its inhabitants, then some proponents of R2P suggest that “protection” should be imposed by an external actor. Typical examples of this notion are in situations of humanitarian crises in failed states. Somalia, the DRC, Liberia, Lesotho, Bosnia, the Solomon Islands, and Timor-Leste all typify both successful and unsuccessful attempts to apply the R2P theory to practice.
The simple fact that involvements and internationally or regionally-sanctioned interventions were agreed upon in the examples listed above was that there was little resistance by the respective state in question. In other words, Lesotho did not (nor could it) resist the South African Development Community’s (SADC) decision to endorse a South African stabilisation force in Lesotho following the break-down in law in order in Maseru in the late 1990s.
Things look quite different, however, when more robust states violate the rights of segments of their populations. When the Sudanese government in Khartoum orchestrates a campaign of violence and brutality against its Christian, Animist and Bantu-speaking populations, proponents of a moral intervention (in order to meet the failure of Khartoum’s responsibility to protect all of its inhabitants) find fewer states willing to carry out just such an operation. In this regard, Cordula Droege’s legal article, “The Interplay Between International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law in Situations of Armed Conflict,” presents some excellent arguments for why both IHL and international human rights law (IHRL) should be recognised as overlapping rights that governments must strive to protect at home and abroad.
Nevertheless, Cordula seems to overlook the inherent differences of intervention in order to force warring factions to adhere by internationally-recognised rules of armed conflict and forcibly defending the livelihoods of populaces in different countries. When a general breakdown of society due to armed conflict ensues, the international community is quick to call for combatants to adhere to precepts of IHL. If ill-equipped armed groups violate IHL, such as the reprehensible tactics of intimidation carried out by Sierra Leone’s disparate rebel forces during the civil war of the late 1990s and early 2000s, the international community is more likely to get involved in a vacuous political situation. When formidable authoritarian regimes, on the other hand, violate precepts of IHRL – as China is often accused of doing – the international community is much less willing to act.
For the reasons demonstrated above, it seems that although R2P should be incorporated into IHL, it is unfeasible for it to be wholly integrated into IHL because fewer countries will champion and uphold the tenets of IHL. The end result will be a general disregard for vital IHL and simple lip-service paid to IHL and IHRL concepts at different International Forums and at the UN.
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