Responsibility to protect

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Responsibility to Protect is a recently developed concept in international relations. It aims to provide a legal and ethical basis for "humanitarian intervention" : the intervention by external actors (preferably the international community through the UN) in a state that is unwilling or unable to fight genocide, massive killings and other massive human rights violations. Along with globalization has come the moral pressure of states to protect the human rights of people in countries other than their own. If a particular state is unwilling or unable to carry out its responsibility to prevent such abuses, that responsibility must be transferred to the international community, which will solve problems primarily via peaceful means (such as diplomatic pressure, dialogue, even sanctions) or, as a last resort, through the use of military force. This is either seen as an extraterritoriality, or an expression of universal morality.

1 State sovereignty
2 Globalization
3 Criticism
4 Details
- 4.1 Instances
5 See also
6 References

[edit] State sovereignty

Since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, there has been an international covenant in place to respect the autonomy and sovereignty of states. Before the Westphalian system was in place, states could coerce other states without the need for justification. The treaty of Westphalia adopted the idea of Cultural relativism, and made non-interference an international norm. The 'Responsibility to Protect' makes an adjustment to state sovereignty by declaring that for a states' sovereignty to be respected, a state must demonstrate responsibility to its citizens.

[edit] Globalization

Globalization has changed the international system such that states are more inter-connected, and therefore, they are less likely to ignore the behaviors that they find cruel within the neighboring states. Also, there is an increasing social sentiment towards humanitarian issues abroad. With the development of the U.N., it is becoming more likely that states will be able to agree on a shared moral understanding. At minimum, the idea that genocide or any systematic killing should not be allowed to occur to human beings anywhere. The September 2005 UN reform outcome document declared that the U.N. should: "affirm that every sovereign government has a 'responsibility to protect' its citizens and those within its jurisdiction from genocide, mass killing, and massive and sustained human rights violations."

[edit] Criticism

Some criticise the responsibility to protect as a form of "Western imperialism". ^{[citation needed]} Some nations, mainly developing countries, hold concerns that the responsibility to protect will be abused and serve to allow powerful states to further their own objectives. ^{[citation needed]}

Others criticise the use of their country's soldiers in matters which they do not consider to be a national threat. Political realists argue that it is the nature of states to be self-interested and morality does not come into play because the international system is "anarchical". ^{[citation needed]}

Another criticism of the responsibility to protect is that it places too much emphasis on violent events and does not address equally devastating cases of famine and poverty. Many also question the focus on military action.

[edit] Details

According to the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, the responsibility to protect is broken down into three parts:

The responsibility to prevent
The responsibility to react
The responsibility to rebuild

[edit] Instances

When a sovereign state consents to intervention, it is no longer an issue of The Right to Protect, it is then called peacekeeping. During the Cold War, many human rights violations were tolerated in order to avoid alienating countries and turning them to the Communist bloc.
Events that have involved the responsibility to protect debate since the Cold war:

Angolan Civil War in 1974
Kurdish genocide in Iraq in 1987.
Gulf war in 1990
Yugoslav wars in 1991 (Bosnia and Somalia). In the case of Somalia, it could be argued that there was no legitimate sovereign government to object to the intervention.
Rwandan Genocide in 1994
The responsibility to protect was one of George W. Bush's justifications for the 2003 Invasion of Iraq