The Responsibility to Protect in Darfur - Research Paper Example

 The Responsibility to Protect in Darfur Introduction The very function of a unified body of nations is to protect the citizens within any given region from any type of humanitarian harm, and to make certain that their basic rights as a human being are being granted. As history has shown, however, this is not always the case and the basis responsibility to protect, a function that largely falls upon the world community, has certainly failed in many respects. The Responsibility to Protect In essence, the responsibility to protect involves the notion that there is a social that exists in which national sovereignty should not be taken to be an absolute or universal right. In fact, it is generally accepted that a state forfeits their right to sovereignty when they fail in their obligation to protect the individuals that live within their border from any type of mass atrocity or violations of human rights. The most commonly cited examples of this include genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and any attempt at ethnic cleansing1. There are three commonly accepted tenants that comprise the idea of the Responsibility to Protect. The first involves the notion that any given state has a responsibility to protect its own population from any acts of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, or ethnic cleansing. If a state refuses to act upon its duty to protect the citizens from within its borders, then the second tenant of the Responsibility to Protect involves the idea that the international community at large has a responsibility to assist the state to fulfill its primarily obligation in this regard. This involves organizations such as the United Nations needing to forcefully intervene to protect the individuals that are being harmed. The third and final tenant involves the actions that international community must take to protect citizens from four main types of mass atrocities previously mentioned.2 The most commonly accepted means of intervention have involve taking coercive measure against the nation in question by imposing economic sanctions. Military intervention is also possible, yet that is seen to be a last resort. It is important to note that the concept of Responsibility to Protect is to be considered a social and global norm, but it is not a written law or policy. The main proponents of this policy to base the premise of its development on the need to respect underlying international law, in particular to the principles of national sovereignty, peace, security, human rights, and armed conflict. Unfortunately, these very areas of conflict with one another, as can certainly be seen in the recent issues relating to the Darfur region of Sudan. On the one hand, the international community is under the obligation to respect the national sovereignty of Sudan, yet many around the globe felt that Sudanese officials were failing in their own Responsibility to Protect the basic human rights of the citizens they were charged with protecting themselves3. It is out of this that the basic policy behind Responsibility to Protect is up for debate. At what point an international body, such as the United Nations, in empowered to step in when another nation or group of nations (such as is the case with the African Union) fail in their obligations. That is the debate that lingers to this day. Within the confines of the notion of the Responsibility to Protect, a certain framework of tools already exist for its effective implementation. There are policies designed to allow for such areas as mediation, early warning mechanisms, economic sanctions, and others that are designed specifically to prevent mass atrocities from occurring in any region of the global community4. There are certain social organizations, states, regional authorities, and international insinuations that all play a key part in the Responsibility to Protect, but the ultimate authority to act with military forces rests with the Security Council of the United Nations alone. History of the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine The doctrine of Responsibility to Protect dates back to 1990s as a result of the failure of the international community at large to respond two simultaneous instances of ethnic genocide in Rwanda and the massacre in Srebrenica. These two events occurred in 1994 and 1995 respectively, and it was found that the United Nations and other international bodies die little to prevent these nations from carrying out these crimes against humanity. It was found later, by Kofi Annan of the Unite Nation, that humanitarian intervention was needed and that it would not have been an unacceptable assault on the sovereignty of Rwanda to have done so, as that nation was failing in its obligation to ensure the basic human rights of those living inside its borders. Moving beyond these events, even the African Union established the basic precept in 2000 that the international community did have a duty to respond in situations of crisis, particularly if one state is not living up to its obligation to protect its citizenry from crimes of mass atrocity5. It was in that year, then, that the African Union wrote into policy that it had the right to intervene in any member state that was perpetuating either war crimes, genocide, or crimes against humanity. In 2005, the African Union also adopted what is dubbed the Ezulwini Consensus, which openly advocates adoption of the Right to Protect as a tool to be utilized in the prevention of mass atrocities against African citizens. It was also in 2000 that the Canadian government worked hard to establish the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. This was in direct response to Kofi Annan's earlier challenge that much more should have been done to intervene in Rwanda and Srebrenica, as there were obvious gross and systematic violation of human rights being carried out in those two regions. Subsequent to this, in February of 2001 the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty wrote in the phrase ‘responsibility to protect’ as a means to get around the right to intervene or obligation to intervene doctrines that had long been in place in order to provide a sense of duty amongst the nations of the world to acts quickly and decisively to solve cases of humanitarian crisis. It was in that same year that the Commission released an internally produced report titled ‘The Responsibility to Protect’. This one document completely rewrote the definition of state sovereignty to entail that the concept came not only with rights, but with responsibilities. Specifically, it was written into the report that each respective state around the globe has the inherent responsibility to protect its people from becoming victims of human rights. The Commission when on to argue that any form of military intervention needs to be viewed as an exceptional and extraordinary measure. It went beyond previous doctrines in this matter, however, by outlining a series of factors that, when present, would justify the use of military force. This begins with just cause6. For the international community to intervene in another state, there must be an obvious, serious, and irreparable harms being perpetuated against human beings, or this must clearly be an immanent event that is deemed highly likely to occur. In addition, the right intention must be present. By this, it is meant that any military intervention that occurs must take place for the express purpose of preventing further human suffering, and there can be no other motive for doing so. It was also determined that military intervention must be deemed to be the last resort. In other words, the international community has obligation to first attempt every other measure to curb the mass atrocities taking place in a sovereign state before military intervention is put on the table. A fourth factor put into place back in 2001 relates to proportional means. This entails the notion that military action must be clear and defined to the point that only the force necessary to end the human suffering be used, and nothing more. The fifth factor involve reasonable prospects. This means that the plausibility of success for such a mission must be reasonably high, and that it is unlikely that any perceived consequences of military intervention would actually be worse than the consequences that would have resulted without the intervention. Finally, right authority must be established, such that the military action itself is actually authorized by the Security Council of the United Nations themselves7. As is the focus of this study, even with the report issued by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, mass atrocities have continued to persist around the world, with seemingly little action being taken by the international community to curb it. The Darfur region in Sudan is a tragic example of this in that such crimes against the populace were allowed to persist without any noticeable means of military intervention taking place. These problems related to the actual implementation of the Responsibility to Protect have persisted to the point that the United Nations recently issues a 2009 report calling anew for the doctrine to become more useful in protecting the populace of sovereign states. To do so, a three pillar approach was established by the General Secretary of the United Nations. The first pillar stresses that states to do have a primary responsibility to protect the individual living within their borders from genocide, war crimes, any overt attempt at ethnic cleansing, and any crimes that the international community would consider to be a crime against humanity. This was a restatement of earlier policies designed to promote the Responsibility to Protect. Pillar Two went further in defining the specific commitment that the international community has adopted to help states develop the resources and power that they need to protect their citizenry from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. The responsibility also extends to helping those that under turmoil even before an imminent crisis or conflict does break out within a sovereign state. The final pillar further defines the responsibility that the international community has to act in a time and decisive manner in their efforts to prevent and force a stop to any genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, or crimes against humanity, particularly in instances where a state simply is failing in its own obligation to protect its own population8. The Crisis in Darfur and the Failure of the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine The crisis in Darfur was decades in the making, came to the attention of the international community in recent decades, yet took more than 10 years of genocide and mass atrocities throughout the region before the international community really made any effort to support its own Responsibility to Protect Doctrine. Many question how this could have happened given the history that has taken place throughout the African Union and elsewhere in the world where crimes against humanity should have been prevented, yet were not9. Still more question how the newly established African Union and the United Nations could fail to react in Darfur, when media attention was so heavily focused on issuing a call for action. Consider the reality that governments around the world have endorsed the concept that with sovereignty comes responsibility, yet the truth that there has been little to not progress made to this end to protect civilians that are suffering directly at the hands of their own government. This is exemplified in the actions that took place for over a decade in the Sudanese territory of Darfur. Even after being presented with a mountain of evidence that Sudan was failing in its obligation to protect its population from genocide and other crimes against humanity, international bodies such as NATO, the European and African Unions, and the United Nations did not even seriously contemplate military intervention to decisively resolve the crisis and return basic human rights and dignity to the people of Darfur10. There are believed to be three main factors that contributed to this indecisiveness, resulting in a perfect storm that pitted the people of Darfur in a classic case of benign involve in a crisis that was occurring in the wrong place at the wrong time. The first factor that many point to is the increasing skepticism that many in the world place on Western intervention in issues relating to humanitarian crisis. In addition, a second factor rests in the various Western interests that are present in Sudan, which contradicts on the basic principles of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine. A third factor that has been raised in this failure to act rests in the relationship that existed between the crisis in Darfur itself and the civil wars being fought elsewhere in the country. All of these factors, and others, simply combined to negate the normal action of humanitarian intervention and turned it into a policy that was weak and unsuited to the developing crisis in Darfur. In essence, it has largely been found that the governments of the world failed in their obligation to work with one another to save the millions in Darfur for imminent danger and harm at the hands of their own government11. It should be noted that the United Nations actually passed a Security Council Resolution specifically addressing the crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan. In fact, shortly after that, the UN Ambassador from one member of the United Nations commented that is one state is unwilling to live up to its obligation to protect its citizenry from crimes of mass atrocity, then it is certainly a responsibility of the international community to take that task upon itself. In essence, the claim was already made that the international community had not choice but to forcefully intervene in Darfur, yet even with the Resolution, little actually happened. The resolutions that were drafted relating to the Darfur, and those drafted a few years earlier by the Commission sponsored by Canada, all alluded to the reality that what was happening in Sudan constituted a grave and supreme humanitarian emergency. The truth was the many felt that the only way to protect the general populace within Darfur from mass genocide was to have outside intervention and for the international community to, if you will, come to the rescue. According the United Nations resolution relating to the Responsibility to Protect, the two criteria to meet before military intervention can be viewed as a viable option were certainly met12. There was a large scale loss of life already taking place in Darfur, and this amount to a systematic and large scale attempt at ethnic cleansing. These two realities were in play and the United Nations and the African Union were aware of them and agreed that the thresholds had been met. As a result, armed intervention should have been viewed as the most plausible means of dealing with the issue and to decisively enter into a sovereign nation with the express purpose of protecting the citizenry of that country from crimes against humanity. Even with all of the aforementioned information and data, however, the international community failed to seriously put military action and intervention in Sudan on the table. Even after the security council of the United Nations passed Resolution 1556 officially condemning what was taking place in Darfur, they stopped short of taking any action that would have the international community assuming responsibility to alleviate the human suffering that was taking place in the region13. They this by failing to authorize a humanitarian intervention of any kind. As an alternative, the United Nation simply imposed an arms embargo on the entire region of Sudan and it demanded that that the Sudanese government work diligently to disarm the janjaweed militias that were wreaking havoc throughout the region. The Sudanese government was then called upon to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid that was destined for the individuals in Darfur most affected by the attempts at ethnic cleansing. In addition, the United Nations Security Council officially expressed support for the Protection Force of the African Union, but this military group, consisting of foreign troops, was the only force permitted to be deployed to Darfur. No other military group in the international community took an active, or inactive for that matter, role in the conflict. This armed group carried little influence, and it did next to nothing in terms of solving the true issues that civilians on the group in Darfur were facing at the time. Until mid-way through the 4th quarter of 2004, the troops sent by the African Union were only given the authority to protect the small Observer Mission14. In addition, out of the authorized for of 3,330 peacekeepers from the African Union, less than 600 actually arrived in the region. In essence, there appears to be a grave contradiction between the international communities statement that sovereignty must be viewed as a responsibility, and the actual language used in draft resolutions that strive to enhance their own feeling of humanitarianism around the world, yet do little to actually force them into action. It is the scholarly opinion of many that the crisis in Darfur certainly represented a humanitarian emergency the likes of which modern civilization had perhaps never seen before. As such, it was to be an important test of the international communities actual resolve to live up to its own Responsibility to Protect doctrine. In fact, the global community has long espoused the notion that every sovereign state had an obligation to the populace of another to ensure basic human rights for all, and this important principle was being put to the test in Sudan. In essence, the crisis in Sudan had its root in a civil war of sorts that dated back to February of 2003. This is when the Sudanese Liberation Army, in conjunction with the Justice and Equality Movement, began to attack various government military installations throughout the region. They did so largely out of frustration that the people of Sudan had endured evades of political marginalization and economic neglect. At first, some success by those rebel groups was had, as the government was seemingly caught off guard, yet that advantage quickly faded. The government responded to this militia action by ramping up its own air force superiority, and actively working to arm the janjaweed militias, which were basically groups of outlaws that supported the government and engaged in mass killing, abductions, sexual crimes, and widespread destruction of crops, livestock, and other resources essential to the survival and well being of the general populace. There were several attempts during this time to negotiate an effective cease fire agreement, but these failed. In the early part of 2004, the government began to launch a major gourd and air offensive throughout the region, ending with then President Bashir declaring that ‘law and order’ had been restored to the region. This was not the case, however, and due to poor communication throughout the region, fighting continue throughout the area, and the janjaweed continued mass attacks aimed directly at the people throughout the Darfur region. It did not take long, mid-2004 to be exact, for the World Health Organization to note that roughly 400 people per day were dying the Sudan as a direct result of the ongoing conflict. At the time, the prediction was made that this number could increase to well over 2,000 per day in due course15. It was at this time that the United Nations and most Western countries describe the situation as the most serious humanitarian emergency taking place in the world at that time. Even with these proclamations being made, little was done to curb the crimes against humanity that were still taking place. In fact, by September of that same years, the number of deaths committed throughout the region as a direct result of the action undertaken by the Sudanese government and the janjaweed militias has risen to over 70,000. In addition, the number of people openly crying out for humanitarian relief had surged by over 10% since June of 2004, which amounted to over 2 million individuals. It is important to note that nearly every international body concerned with global human rights was condemning that actions taking place around Darfur during this time. This included the security council of the United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Crisis Group, NATO, and more. Some even went to so far as to label what was taking place as genocide, drawing comparisons to what happened in Rwanda in 1994, showing that the international community had learned nothing in nearly a decade of turmoil throughout this region of Africa. Even the General Secretary of the United Nations at this time, Kofi Annan, openly stated that what was taking place in Darfur left him with a deep sense of foreboding. He went on to state that the international community can no longer stand idly by and let it happen, but action much be taken, which may include military action. The Congress of the United States made similar remarks, yet no military action seemed to be imminent, even after all of these comments. Through it all, the main form of assistance from the international community revolved mostly around humanitarian relief, of which most of it did not ever reach the very people needing it the most. Must of the program and process was mired in corruption, and the peacekeepers from the African Union were simply too few in number and ill prepared to get the humanitarian relief to the regions of Sudan that desperately needed it16. Conclusion The international community should feel a profound sense of obligation to assist individuals in a sovereign state in way humanly possible should they fall under attack or be denied their own basic human rights. The motive for this should be altruistic in nature, and should not be out of national self interest. In the case of Darfur, there seem to be a breakdown in this fundamental rule of humanity, and the people of the region suffered gravely as a result. The Responsibility to Protect must extend to all nations of the world precisely because we are all a part of one human race. There are a series of fundamental human rights and a belief in dignity and respect that should be afforded to everyone equally, regardless of what state they call home17. This is an essential component and part of why the United Nations was formed in the first place, yet it appears to be neglected in instances where global self interest wins out of a need to exhibit altruistic virtues. Darfur is a sad example of what can happen when words alone fail to spur on action. References Chesterman, Simon. “Humanitarian Intervention and Afghanistan”. in Jennifer Welsh, ed., Humanitarian Intervention and International Relations. (2004): Oxford: Oxford University Press. Deng, Francis. “Frontiers of Sovereignty”. Leiden Journal of International Law, 8.2 (2015): 249-286. Franck, Thomas. “Recourse to Force: State Action Against Threats and Armed Attack”. (2012): Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Giegerich, Bastian and William Wallace. “Not Such a Soft Power: The External Deployment of European Forces”. Survival, 46.2 (2014): 163-182. Hoge, Warren. “US Alters Sudan Resolution to Attract UN Votes”. New York Times, (30 July 2004). Johnson, Douglas. “The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars”. (2013): Oxford: James Currey. Laughland, John. “The Mask Altruism Disguising a Colonial War”. The Guardian (2014, 2 August). MacFarlane, Neil. “What the International Community Can Do To Settle the Conflict”. Central Asian and the Caucasus, 4.4 (2010): 148-157. Slim, Hugo. “Dithering over Darfur? A Preliminary Review of the International Response” International Affairs, 80.5 (2014): 829-850. Williams, Paul and Alex Bellamy. “The Responsibility to Protect and the Crisis in Darfur”. Security Dialogue, 36.1 (2005): 27-47. Read More