The Responsibility to Protect and the problem of military intervention

The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) has come a long way in a relatively short space of time. From inauspicious beginnings, the principle was endorsed by the General Assembly in 2005 and unanimously reaffirmed by the Security Council in 2006 (Resolution 1674). However, the principle remains hotly contested primarily because of its association with humanitarian intervention and the pervasive belief that its principal aim is to create a pathway for the legitimization of unilateral military intervention. This article sets forth the argument that a deepening consensus on R2P is dependent on its dissociation from the politics of humanitarian intervention and suggests that one way of doing this is by abandoning the search for criteria for decision‐making about the use of force, one of the centre pieces of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty 2001 report that coined the phrase R2P. Criteria were never likely to win international support, the article maintains, and were less likely to improve decision‐making on how best to respond to major humanitarian crises. Nevertheless, R2P can make an important contribution to thinking about the problem of military intervention by mitigating potential ‘moral hazards’, overcoming the tendency of international actors to focus exclusively on military methods and giving impetus to efforts to operationalize protection in the field.     

Russia,humanitarian intervention and the Responsibility to Protect: the case of Syria

Western analysis perceives Russian approaches to issues of humanitarian intervention and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) as running counter to western‐inspired international norms. This debate has surfaced with some vigour over Russia's policy in the Syria conflict where, in order to protect its strategic interests in Syria, an obstructionist Moscow has been accused of ignoring humanitarian considerations and allowing time for the Assad regime to crush the opposition by vetoing a resolution threatening to impose sanctions. While Russian approaches are undoubtedly explained by a desire to maximize its growing political influence and trade advantages to serve its legitimate foreign policy interests, and while Moscow's attitudes to intervention and R2P exhibit important differences from those of the major western liberal democracies, its arguments are in fact framed within a largely rational argument rooted in ‘traditional’ state‐centred international law. This article first highlights key arguments in the scholarly literature on intervention and R2P before going on to examine the evolution of Russian views on these issues. The analysis then focuses on the extent to which Moscow's arguments impact on international legal debates on the Libya and Syria conflicts. The article then seeks to explore how Russian approaches to intervention/R2P reflect fundamental trends in its foreign policy thinking and its quest for legitimacy in a negotiated international order. Finally, it attempts to raise some important questions regarding Russia's role in the future direction of the intervention/R2P debates.     

The Responsibility to Protect at 15

In the fifteen years since the publication of the report ‘The Responsibility to Protect’ by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, there has been a burgeoning literature on all aspects of R2P. This review article focuses on five issues. First, it revisits the shift from ‘humanitarian intervention’ to R2P as the key innovation in 2001, highlighting the political, conceptual, normative, procedural and operational differences between the two. Second, it examines the state of knowledge regarding the causes of atrocities; the institutional vulnerabilities and points of resilience; the pathways from simmering animosities to mass killings; the indicators and precursors; and the most effective preventive and response mechanisms. Third, it reviews the unsatisfactory state of R2P implementation. Fourth, it discusses the main R2P actors, from international organizations and key groups of states to individuals. Finally, it addresses the continuing scepticism about R2P, in that it does not resolve all the dilemmas of how outsiders can provide timely, decisive and effective assistance to any group in need of protection.     

A chronic protection problem: the DPRK and the Responsibility to Protect

The Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea (DPRK) is arguably the world's most chronic abuser of human rights. In an unprecedented move, a Commission of Inquiry established by the UN's Human Rights Council accused the DPRK government of systematic violations of human rights amounting to crimes against humanity. In so doing, the Commission succeeded in putting human rights in the DPRK on the global agenda. Within months the UN's General Assembly and Security Council had joined the human rights body in examining the issue. This article explains the emergence of this new engagement with human rights in the DPRK, showing its relation to the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ principle. It charts the growing sense of frustration felt at the lack of progress on human rights in DPRK and shows how this was manifested in the General Assembly's decision to pursue the Commission's recommendations and call on the Security Council to take concrete steps. Despite this, however, the article shows that there are powerful obstacles in the way of a more robust international approach to human rights in the DPRK and counsels a less confrontational approach focused on engaging China and building trust within the Security Council.     

The Responsibility to Protect and the International Criminal Court: counteracting the crisis

The establishment of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) process and the International Criminal Court (ICC) were seen by many to constitute significant progress in the protection of human rights. However, these institutions are now in crisis, due in large part to their failure to prevent or prosecute recent acute human rights abuses in Syria. There have been two responses to this crisis: the first assumes that the crisis is caused by the current structures of international governance, in particular the power of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), and calls for radical reform. The second sees possibilities within the current structure and advocates making R2P and the ICC more closely aligned under UNSC control. The article argues that both responses are mistaken and sets out an argument in favour of refocusing on the complementary nature of each institution. The Court's most successful actions have been in exercising the powers afforded by its complementary jurisdiction in situations such as Colombia. Similarly, R2P works more successfully at preventing conflict and changing expectations of acceptable state behaviour than it does at confronting situations in which large‐scale violence has begun. The article argues that the ICC and R2P should focus on ‘positive complementarity’ agendas, with the ICC devoting more resources to assisting states to build legal capacity in order to deter future conflict through stronger domestic criminal systems, and advocates of R2P focusing less on intervention in live conflict situations and more on building within states the capacity and resources to protect their own populations.     

请拉起手,为保护濒危的白鹤宣誓 《保护白鹤法库国际宣言》在辽宁法库国际白鹤节上签署发布

<正>由国际鹤类基金会、中国野生动物保护协会、沈阳市人民政府主办的第六届沈阳法库国际白鹤节,3月27日在辽宁省法库县正式启动。来自国际鹤类基金会以及中、美、俄、日、韩、蒙古等国家的官员、专家、学者聚集法库,向全世界发布《保护白鹤法库国际宣言》,并向国际社会提出建议每年3月27日为世界白鹤日。     

Assessing Measures Designed to Protect the Homeland

Some general parameters are proposed for evaluating homeland security measures that seek to make potential targets notably less vulnerable to terrorist attack, and these are then applied to specific policy considerations. Since the number of targets is essentially unlimited, since the probability that any given target will be attacked is near zero, since the number and competence of terrorists is limited, since target-selection is effectively a near-random process, and since a terrorist is free to redirect attention from a protected target to an unprotected one of more or less equal consequence, protection seems to be sensible only in a limited number of instances.     

Space,Social Relations,and Contestation: Transformative Peacebuilding and World Social Forum Climate Spaces

The 2013 and 2015 World Social Forums in Tunis, Tunisia hosted thematic “climate spaces” for the first time. This article examines the extent to which these spaces are constitutive of a form of “transformative peacebuilding” aiming to transform social relations and eliminate the structural violence of the world capitalist economy. Both the theoretical and practical activities of civil society at the climate spaces are shown to be transformative but only to the extent that they contest broad processes of trasformismo which transcend differences and obscure the lived realities of governance and resistance. In this sense, civil society groups and movements at the climate spaces are shown to engage with global capitalism to potentially produce new global understanding and action. This generates new understandings of civil society as constitutive of directly resistant modes of social relation that push for radically different visions of climate justice and governance.     

Responsibility,Humility, and Intervention

Abstract

This paper proposes an analysis of The Responsibility to Protect that is rooted in the Christian realism of Reinhold Niebuhr. R2P rests on three central claims: sovereignty ought to be understood in terms of responsibility rather than control, the just cause criterion for war should include humanitarian protection, and rightful authority ought to be relocated to multilateral institutions. In turn, Niebuhr’s Christian realism proposes a dialectic of responsibility and humility that shapes our understanding of justice and coercion. While examining R2P through a Niebuhrian lens shows some compatibility between the two moral frameworks, it also reveals the insufficient understanding of humility with respect to human motivations and limitations that underlies R2P’s criteria.     

祈佛求道、护祐诞生——以敦煌《难月》诞育愿文为中心

本文集中考察了敦煌《难月文》愿文范本为主的中古诞育方面文献,兼及密字道法符印中疗治难产等疾患的念咒吞符等方法.在唐宋之际,围绕着诞育、家庭社会会有一系列活动展开.由家庭舍财发愿、祈求妇女平安顺产,通过寺僧诵经赞像求取功德,以回向保祐母子平安,是当时社会人们处理诞育的主流形式.大略反映了唐宋之间民众在诞育方面的意愿和行为.     

South Pacific Agendas in the Quest to Protect Natural Areas

In the South Pacific islands, development assistance agencies, financial institutions, and international NGOs approach conservation in ways that provide opportunities for foreigners to advise islanders about appropriate paths to development. They fund the intergovernmental South Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), which uses its organizational, legal and discursive powers to create opportunities for their work, and so helps validate inequitable political and economic relationships between the islands and developed regions, ensuring that these continue unchallenged by concerns about environmental degradation. But this outsider–insider dichotomy is too simplistic to describe all the endeavours connected with South Pacific protected areas. Amongst indigenous interests in the islands there is more than a single conservation agenda. The variety of agendas connected to efforts to protect natural areas in the South Pacific islands illustrates that conservation is more than a technical endeavour with a single moral goal. Conservationists’ success in preserving biodiversity and natural areas depends, therefore, upon forming explicit and open alliances with other individuals who, although they may have different aspirations and values, are prepared to work openly and effectively with them to achieve some agreed measures.     

China,the international criminal court,and global governance

ABSTRACT

This article explores the Chinese policies towards the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the context of global governance. Despite China’s fast-growing foreign policy competence, the level of confidence held by China in engaging with global governance systems has not yet fully transmitted to the legal institutions governing human rights issues, and the ICC is such an example. This article examines specific policy concerns of China regarding the ICC in light of China’s engagement with global governance, and some of the traditional concerns that have had an impact on that engagement. It discusses the extent to which these concerns should still be regarded as policy barriers preventing China’s full accession to the ICC in years to come.     

Party Leaders,the Media,and Political Persuasion: The Campaigns of Evatt and Menzies on the Referendum to Protect Australia from Communism

Abstract

The 1951 referendum campaign to ban communism produced a massive shift of public opinion, from Yes to No. This article attempts to explain why. It examines the political appeals and rhetoric of the Liberal and Labor Party leaders, their coverage across the entire metropolitan press, and their use of radio. Breaking with earlier interpretations, it argues that Evatt's campaign encompassed wider issues than civil liberties, suggests that Menzies' campaign was damaged by unruly meetings and shows that neither side appealed exclusively to ‘reason’ or to ‘passion’. Ultimately, the success of the No campaign rested on its capacity to mobilise most Labor voters and to attract some Liberals. This was an extraordinary achievement, but it was secured using routine forms of electioneering.     

Globalization, Corporate Social Responsibility and poverty

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become a major focus of interest for development practitioners in recent years. While development NGOs have been critical of voluntary corporate initiatives, official development agencies have taken a more positive view and in some cases encouraged CSR. This article locates the growth of CSR in the context of global deregulation since the early 1980s, highlighting the key drivers that have led to its adoption by many leading transnational corporations. It then describes the factors that have led to the recent emphasis given to CSR by both bilateral and multilateral development agencies and the United Nations. A framework for analysing the links between foreign direct investment and poverty is developed focusing on the impacts on the poor as producers, consumers and beneficiaries of government expenditures. This framework is used to illustrate the limitations of CSR in terms of likely impacts on poverty reduction through each of the channels identified and also to point to areas in which CSR may have some positive benefits. Overall, the article concludes that it is unlikely to play the significant role in poverty reduction in development countries that its proponents claim for it.