Protecting the Responsiblity to Protect

When, within the last month, Russian President Putin spoke about the rationale
for Russian intervention in Crimea, those of us who believe in the importance of the
R2P doctrine were fortunate that he did not characterize his intervention to protect
Russian-speaking Crimean residents as his own version of "the responsibility to
protect." Indeed, Russian and Chinese opposition to the doctrine, oft recognized as a
core violation of the over-riding UN principle of state sovereignty, would have been but
one of the constraints he faced in typifying Russian military intervention in this way.
But the steadfast UN Security Council opposition to the doctrine in addition to
the use of the P5 veto in situations like Syria, Sudan, and paralysis in the face of the
Rwandan Genocide speak volumes about how hard it has been for the R2P doctrine to
have either a clean launch or a measured, successful application. The challenge we face
is the whether the license for genocidal engagements pursued by driven extremists and
authoritarians will continue.
The challenge for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, while complex and
compelling, is not without a solution. But with that said, a course of diplomatic
innovation and hard negotiation will be vital if we are to move the puck down the ice in
a meaningful way. And here, the UN should be prepared to reach out to other
international organizations to shape an anti-genocide coalition that groups military,
intelligence, judicial, police and diplomatic authorities worldwide in a joint effort to
anticipate, prevent, engage, apprehend, and criminally sanction any and all genocidal
plans and intentionsregardless of its source or sponsor.
In some circumstances, as was the case in Libya and should have been the case
in Rwanda and Syria, military intervention on a preventative basis may unfortunately be
required. In other circumstances, suspending IMF and World Bank support and bilateral
credit lines for offending governments may also be required. In others still,
apprehending and charging of those responsible and complicit genocidaires by
legitimate domestic authorities as well as special force engagement to extract and bring
to trial those who are perpetrating this mass crime against humanity may well be
necessary. An international criminal court without the agency to arrest war criminals
and genocide perpetrators will diminish in value and salience. To do this properly, an
anti-genocide intelligence centre that uses the latest human, electronic, and digital
surveillance techniques may well be appropriate. Any lesser effort would imply that

genocide is but one crime among many others and not in need of special attention. And,
for a Secretary-General, this would be an abdication of the offices most important
humanitarian responsibility.
At a recent conference on genocide in Belgium, Ban Ki Moon said all the right
things by pointing appropriately to his two advisors on the issue, one of whom is
Jennifer Welsh, a distinguished Canadian foreign policy scholar. But having an advisory
framework without a plan for rapid response, prevention, engagement, and enforcement
capacity is still too passive. Some member nations of the UN, to their credit, have put
into place early warning, strategic, and military capacity on the genocide issue
including the United States.
Sadly, Canada has notand it clearly should.
So, too, should the UN be engaged with NATO, La Francophionie, the
Commonwealth, ASEAN, Arab League, EU, and Islamic Conference among others to
discuss joint enforcement and engagement protocols for genocide prevention.
Only in the event of these developments would the lessons of Rwanda have been fully
applied. Only then would our responsibility to protect be made real through the
capacity to deploy.
These are the next steps protecting the responsibility to protect actually
requires.
Meek cap in hand diplomacy will not work here. Commemorative declarations
about the horror of genocide are all well and good. But the proof of any such treaty or
protocol is in its implementation. As long as we spend and do more about drug
smuggling and financial regulation than we do about robust, muscular, and fearless
genocide prevention, the responsibility to protect doctrine will be in profound need of
protection, itself.

Fonte:

SEGAL,

Hugh.

https://www.opencanada.org/features/protecting-the-

responsiblity-to-protect/. 2 de maio de 2014.