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UNU Update | |
The newsletter of United Nations
University and its network of research and training centres and programmes |
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Issue 27: September-October 2003 |
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COMMENT It's time to redefine a 'just war'
The 1990s was a
challenging decade. Our consciences were shocked by atrocities from Rwanda
to Bosnia and beyond, and by the price that innocent men, women and
children paid because of the world's failure to rise to such challenges. Though the
terrorist attacks of 9/11 shifted attention to the war on terrorism, the
debate about the need to intervene in sovereign countries for the purpose
of human protection has not gone away. Indeed, since coalition forces in
Iraq have failed to find any weapons of mass destruction, human protection
has become the only remaining significant justification for the U.S.-led
war on the dictator Saddam Hussein. But does Iraq
meet the test of "humanitarian intervention"? See for yourself
by taking a look at the report The Responsibility to Protect, by
the International Commission on
Intervention and State Sovereignty (dubbed "R2P"). Canadian
Prime Minister Jean Chrétien tried valiantly to promote this report at
the recent Progressive Governance Summit in England. He ran into
difficulty because some at the conference feared that the concept could be
used to justify the war on Iraq. This is ironic,
for most ICISS commissioners (I was one) would argue that the Iraq war
would not have met our criteria for justifying intervention. Because it's easy
to label a war as a "humanitarian intervention" – deflecting
critics who don't want to be cast as "anti-humanitarian" – we
recommended a change in terminology. It's important to focus attention on
needs of victims, including the prevention and follow-up assistance
components of external action (issues that are becoming major concerns in
post-war Iraq). As such, we found
it useful to reconceptualize sovereignty, viewing it not as an absolute
term of authority but as a kind of responsibility. State authorities are
responsible for the functions of protecting the safety and lives of
citizens, and accountable for their acts of commission and omission in
international as well as national forums. While the state has the primary
responsibility to protect its citizens, the responsibility of the broader
community of states is activated when a particular state either is
unwilling or unable to fulfill its responsibility to protect; or is itself
the perpetrator of crimes or atrocities; or where populations living
outside a particular state are directly threatened by actions taking place
there. We sought to
define thresholds when atrocities are so grave, they clearly require armed
international intervention. Such thresholds are crossed when large-scale
loss of life or ethnic cleansing is occurring or is about to occur (this
rule is not retroactive, and does not justify intervention now for
atrocities committed years ago). As well, we
argued that all military interventions must be subject to four
precautionary principles: right intention, last resort, proportional means
and reasonable prospects. Iraq would likely have failed on all four
principles. Intervention for
human protection purposes occurs so that those condemned to die in fear
may live in hope instead. The goal is not to wage war on a state in order
to destroy it and eliminate its statehood, but to protect victims of
atrocities inside the state, to embed the protection in reconstituted
institutions after the intervention, and then to withdraw all foreign
troops. Given the
enormous normative presumption against the use of deadly force to settle
international quarrels, who has the right to authorize such force? Even if we agree
that military intervention may sometimes be necessary and unavoidable in
order to protect innocent people from life-threatening danger, key
questions remain about the international authority that can override
national sovereignty. R2P came down
firmly on the side of the central role of the UN as the indispensable font
of international authority and the irreplaceable forum for authorizing
international military enforcement. While its work can be supplemented by
regional organizations acting within their own jurisdictions, only the UN
can build, consolidate and use military force in the name of the
international community. Our choice is no
longer between intervention and non-intervention, but between ad hoc, or
rules-based, intervention. If we are going to get any sort of consensus in
advance of crises requiring urgent responses, including military
intervention, the principles outlined in Responsibility to
Protect point the way forward. If hostile governments and critics
can move beyond their reflexive suspicion of the very word
"intervention," they'll find that R2P contains the safeguards
they need with respect to threshold causes, precautionary principles,
lawful authorization, and operational doctrine. Ramesh Thakur is UNU Vice Rector and director of the Peace and Governance Programme. This commentary first appeared in the July 22 edition of the The Globe and Mail. These are his personal views. |
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