The EU and the Responsibility to Protect: The Case of Libya, Mali and Syria

Abstract

INTRODUCTION The reluctance of the European Union (EU) to deploy robust military enforcement operations might lead to the assumption that the EU is not strongly committed to the responsibility to protect (R2P) in practice, even though regional organisations have been identified to play an important role in its three pillars. In political statements, the EU has long expressed its support for the concept, and, within the last decade, the EU can be seen to have emerged as an international military actor. Nevertheless, its engagement in recent humanitarian crisis in the Arab World and Africa could be criticised as falling short of its potential. Nine European member states participated in NATO Operation Unified Protector in Libya in 2011 and France militarily intervened in Mali in 2013. In the case of Syria, several European member states debated the use of force against the Assad regime domestically in 2013, even without a UN Security Council mandate. In all of these instances, the EU did not launch military operations to end serious violations of human rights. Nevertheless, the EU did not refrain from acting either; rather it limited itself to non-forcible measures. This chapter argues that the R2P doctrine has been defined widely to include a range of preventive and non-forcible measures in its three interlinked pillars: Pillar One focuses on the protection responsibilities of the state; Pillar Two focuses on international assistance and capacity building; and Pillar Th ree focuses on delivering a timely and decisive response. Unlike the much discussed right of humanitarian intervention, which helped provoke discussion of R2P, the latter concept is not focused on military reaction. The importance of prevention within R2P has been strongly emphasised. By using a wider definition of R2P, as indicated by the terminology used in UN documents themselves – including a range of preventive and non-forcible measures, such as ‘positive incentives’ or ‘sanctions’, this chapter aims to show that the EU's foreign policy choices could be brought within that broad understanding of R2P. In particular, the analysis of the EU's engagement in Libya, Mali and Syria will provide evidence that the EU is expressing its commitment to R2P by operationalising its comprehensive concept of crisis management in practice.