R2P: A common term in international diplomacy

by P. Krishnaswamy

Minister of Justice Rauff Hakeem who is the President of the Asian-African Legal Consultative Organisation in his speech at the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA) conference held in New Delhi said that the language of Article 2(7) of the UN Charter is explicit in declaring that sovereignty of member states is inviolate and stipulates that "nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorise the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any State". The Minister participated in the conference, held recently as a special invitee, spoke on the subject 'Responsibility to Protect".

"This is basically the chasm between those fierce advocates of "the right to intervene in order to protect" and those who hold the inviolability of national sovereignty. Here it must be pointed out that the concept of state sovereignty is violated totally when international intervention becomes coercive with or without boots on ground", he said.

The text of his speech:

"R2P is an issue that raises serious reservations and doubts in the minds of policy makers of the less affluent nations who are all members of the Afro Asian group of countries.

The Asian African perspective on R2P has therefore to be one of cautious deliberations that brings to my mind the oft repeated and somewhat aphorism that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Rather I would opt to agree with either Milton Friedman who famously said "concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it," or with Bernard Shaw who was more realistic of the limits of human endeavourer when he said "Hell is paved with good intentions and bad ones. All men mean well".

"The two aphorisms I cited, more or less sums up our dilemma in reconciling the need to uphold international morality and the sanctity of state sovereignty that is pivotal to the world order as we understand it today. Before I discuss the concept of the R2P I would like to remind this audience of my own inability to be absolutely precise in differentiating between subjective assessment and objective assessment or absolute truth and virtual truth.

I suppose that is why judges too are considered fallible and sometimes judgements are reversed.

"The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) concept as is pointed out by some of its eminent advocates is a concept that has come a long way from the time of the adoption of the UN charter. The founder nations of the United Nations wanted to avoid war between states and amongst states. It was essentially nation state centric in both substance and form.

"It is also useful to remind ourselves that we are discussing the subject of intervention in the backdrop of a unilateral intervention by a member of the Security Council, which the ex Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan declared as a violation of international law. Ironically it was the same Mr Annan who in 2000 declared that I quote "If humanitarian intervention is, indeed, an unacceptable assault on sovereignty, how should we respond to a Rwanda, to a Srebrenica-to gross and systematic violations of human rights?"

"Secretary General Annan in 2000 called out in anguish for international help.

The same Mr Annan in 2003 made a call in despair. Between anguish and despair our choice is very limited I think.

So let us agree that it is indeed a moral dilemma that has to be resolved by the community of nations. We need to do so in a complex world where morality is also a complex business. Some nations have the economic and military power that can enforce morality.

Some others who do not have the military power accelerate their efforts to acquire them.

"A decade ago the international response to mass-atrocities or crimes against humanity such as genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other large-scale atrocities that violated the conscience of mankind was zone of ambiguity wherein there was no clear consensus in the community of nations."Despite all pious declarations of "never again" rhetoric and frequent conventions on human rights, adopted since the end of the Second World War, there was no discernible international remedial action to prevent man committing atrocities against man.

Human catastrophe after catastrophe from Cambodia in the 1970s to Rwanda and the Balkans in the 1990s left perplexing questions unanswered.

"The concept of "responsibility to protect" or as commonly known R2P has become a frequently raised issue in international diplomacy. It has been given voice in crises from the Congo to Kenya and most notably, in the struggle in the last year in Libya.

"The point of departure of R2P from the earlier concept of humanitarian intervention was that it stressed on the primary responsibility of the State to protect its own population. R2P advances the idea that the international community should assist States in this endeavour. It has placed armed intervention within a broader range of measures that the international community might take to respond to genocide and mass atrocities."I would like to venture briefly into a territory that is fraught with some controversy.

Positives

That is to express the essence of the positives and the negatives of R2P as seen from an Asian-African perspective.

To do that I rely on two eminent men who voiced their reservations and hopes on the concept of responsibility to protect. The views I present are those expressed by them in an interactive dialogue on R2P that took place at the United Nations on 21st July, 2009 wherein the UN Secretary General emphasised that sovereignty and responsibility are mutually enforcing principles.

I do not think the Asian-African perspective to be in divergence with that position."