Operationalizing the Responsibility to Protect—the Policekeeping Approach

Abstract

At battle of Solferino, Henri Dunant was so appalled by loss of life that he founded what became International Red Cross movement to mitigate most barbaric effects of modern warfare. His concept was that an agreement between states, Geneva Conventions, could regulate conduct of combatants along more humane lines. Since then, transformation from conflict between states to conflict between peoples within states has fundamentally altered moral and political space within which such initiatives take place. In Srebrenica, Rwanda, and a long list of orphaned conflicts, neutrality has often cost lives rather than saved them. Doing no harm has sometimes meant doing nothing at all, whereas aggressive military operations in support of humanitarian objectives in Somalia and Iraq have produced their own conflicts. (1) Understandably, consensus has increasingly been that if humanitarianism is to retain credibility it must devise better methods to safeguard human security: it needs a third way. To resolve dilemmas of state failure that emerged in 1990s, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan asked for an International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS). Its 2001 report, The Responsibility to Protect, argued that in cases of severe humanitarian emergency, territorial sovereignty would yield to an international responsibility to protect, including use of military force to enforce peace. (2) Such a responsibility, however, could not be exercised lightly and was to be accompanied by equal obligations to prevent or react to conflict and to rebuild postwar states, a reinvigoration of what Burke described as the dual mandate of trusteeship. (3) The Responsibility to Protect represents most sophisticated attempt at establishing a moral guideline for international action in face of humanitarian emergency. It predicates legitimate intervention on welfare of populations subjected to persecution rather than on calculations of national interest and security; it is multilateral in vision and it advocates UN's role in authorizing intervention and in guiding path to peace; it warns of use of force as an option of last resort while endorsing pragmatic merits of coalitions of willing and regional security arrangements. It is a practical guideline that, now more than ever, requires our support. However, operationalization of The Responsibility to Protect has been captive to traditional dual deadlock of establishing a permanent international military capacity and well-founded fears of nonconsensual intervention that could facilitate less salubrious forms of political exploitation. Military aspects of intervention may remain ad hoc and continue to be subcontracted to coalitions of willing and capable among UN member states. Full-scale transformation of societies through international administration, reconstruction, and security assistance will likely continue to occur selectively in those situations where national interests intersect with international media attention to human rights abuses. Nor for that matter is military intervention a panacea for internal conflicts; diplomatic pressure can produce results if applied judiciously. However, in those cases where international community does commit to transformation, such as Kosovo, East Timor, and Iraq, much could be done to make intervention more effective, and by implication more affordable, thus allowing and perhaps inspiring wider engagement internationally than is currently case. Substantial progress could be made in two fields in tandem with Brahimi reform process: rule of law and transitional administration. (4) As identified by UN's recent High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, lack of a coherent approach for rule of law has been a pivotal impediment to regeneration of peace and centralization of authority in postwar situations. (5) The organization of policing operations has received little attention--as realized too late in Balkans and spectacularly day after regime change in Iraq. …