The Hindu : Opinion / News Analysis : Use of force and the responsibility to protect

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jun 01, 2005

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

Use of force and the responsibility to protect

Ramesh Thakur

The concept of the responsibility to protect takes away the last remaining excuses for us to sit back and do nothing when confronted with atrocities.

THE DEFINING event for the United Nations at its worst was surely international indifference in Rwanda in 1994. The world bore silent, very silent, testimony as 800,000 people were butchered in less than three months. This was not a matter of lack of awareness of what was going on, but of apathy. Nor was it lack of capacity, for just 5,000 professional troops with the right equipment, command and mandate could have done the job. No, it was a failure of civic courage at the highest and most solemn level of international responsibility.

Today, in Darfur, we are in the midst of dishonouring, yet again, the pledge of "never again".

According to the U.N. High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change: "The maintenance of world peace and security depends importantly on there being a common global understanding, and acceptance, of when the application of force is both legal and legitimate." Behind the headlines on the deeply divisive Iraq war was the larger question of the changing nature of threats in the modern world, the inadequacy of existing norms and laws in addressing them, and thus the need for new `rules of the game'.

The intervention of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in Kosovo in 1999 highlighted a triple policy dilemma of complicity, paralysis and illegality. To respect sovereignty all the time is to risk being complicit in humanitarian tragedies sometimes. To argue that the U.N. Security Council must give its consent to international intervention for humanitarian purposes is to risk policy paralysis by handing over the agenda either to the passivity and apathy of the Council as a whole, or to the most obstructionist member of the Council, including any one of the five permanent members determined to use the veto clause. To use force without U.N. authorisation is to violate international law and undermine world order.

The use of force, both domestically and internationally, must be tamed and brought under the restraining discipline of the rule of law. We need urgently a new institutional framework that can marry prudent anticipatory self-defence against imminent threats to the centuries-old dream of a world where force is put to the service of law that protects the innocent without shielding the criminals.

Significant gaps exist in the legal and institutional framework to combat today's real threats. If international institutions cannot cope with them, states will do so themselves. If prevention is strategically necessary and morally justified (why should an American President wait for another mass murder, and be prohibited from taking prophylactic action?) but not legally permitted, then the existing framework of laws and rules — not the anticipatory military action — is defective.

Given the changing nature and victims of armed conflict, the need for clarity, consistency and reliability in the use of armed force for civilian protection now lies at the heart of the U.N.'s credibility. Without a new consensus and clarity, its performance will be measured against contradictory standards, exposing it to charges of ineffectiveness from some and irrelevance from others. This will increase the probability of unauthorised interventions, and further erode the Security Council's primacy as the protector of peace and security.

The International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) published its landmark report "The Responsibility to Protect" with exceptionally bad timing in December 2001. The world was preoccupied with the war on terror. But the report has gained currency in the meantime. Its main conclusions find their way into the High Level Panel's report, including five legitimacy criteria: seriousness of threat, proper purpose, last resort, proportional means and balance of consequences.

During the worldwide consultations that the ICISS had, I was struck by four facts. There is a strong consensus that sovereignty is not an absolute barrier to international intervention in extreme circumstances in order to exercise the responsibility to protect. There is an equally strong consensus that Security Council authorisation for intervention is preferable to all other alternatives. Yet in practice very few insist that Security Council authorisation is necessary in all cases. Finally, despite this, there is considerable concern to avoid discrediting the U.N. or undermining respect for an international order based on rules and law rather than power and wealth.

Our ability and means to act beyond our borders, even in the most distant spots, have increased tremendously. This has produced a corresponding increase in demands and expectations "to do something." Consider an analogy. Rapid advances in medical technology have greatly expanded the range, accuracy and number of medical interventions. With enhanced capacity and increased tools have come more choices that have to be made, often with accompanying philosophical, ethical, political and legal dilemmas. For Indians the most common yet poignant example concerns checking on the gender of a foetus and aborting if it is a girl. The idea of simply standing by and letting nature take its course has become less and less acceptable. This has come to the point where in many countries today, parents who refuse all available treatment options for their children can be held criminally culpable for failure to exercise due diligence.

Similarly, calls for military intervention happen. The concept of the responsibility to protect takes away the last remaining excuses for us to sit back and do nothing when confronted with atrocities. In the real world today, our choice is not between intervention and non-intervention, but between ad hoc or rules-based, unilateral or multilateral, and consensual or deeply divisive intervention.

The challenge is neither to deny the reality of intervention nor to denounce it, but to manage it for the better. Establishing agreed principles to guide the use of force will make it more difficult to appropriate the humanitarian label to self-serving interventions, while making the Security Council more responsive to the security needs of civilians.

In his March 21 report, Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged the Council to adopt a resolution "setting out these principles and expressing its intention to be guided by them" when authorising the use of force. This would "add transparency to its deliberations and make its decisions more likely to be respected, by both Governments and world public opinion," he said.

That respect diminishes daily as more people die in Darfur. At best the Government of Sudan lacks the capacity to put a halt to the sufferings and deaths, at worst it is complicit in the killings. The African Union's steps are inadequate due to lack of capacity. The urgent need is for U.N. Security Council authorisation for NATO logistical and enforcement support to the commendable and courageous efforts of the African Union.

(Ramesh Thakur, senior vice-rector of the U.N. University, Tokyo, was an ICISS Commissioner and one of the principal authors of "The Responsibility to Protect." These are his personal views.)

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Opinion

News Update

Stories in this Section

Raising spirits and sharpening the focus

This time it could be for real

Effecting a change in post-Soviet republics

An ambience for a dialogue

Use of force and the responsibility to protect

Rich keep the poor just where they want them