Human Rights and “The Responsibility to Protect”

By John Varghese

The human rights agenda has once again clawed its way into public discourse after a decade of marginalisation and oblivion in the post 9/11 era. The Libyan crisis and the broader Arab Spring have been met with fierce resistance by the authoritarian governments of the region.

In particular, the Libyan crisis was so stark that the international community was drawn into a civil conflict between rebels in the East and Muammar Gaddafi’s troops in Tripoli. ‘The responsibility to protect’ was invoked in principle, on the grounds that government forces were ready to indiscriminately kill civilians in Benghazi. The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) voted in favour of a ‘no-fly zone’ so as to prevent a large scale slaughter, such as occurred in Rwanda.

The birth of the human rights movement began with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Yet the politics of the Cold war blocked the UNSC from taking bold, decisive action when faced with mass atrocity and genocide. The end of the Cold War allowed the Security Council to engage in numerous peacekeeping missions abroad, and human rights activists were hoping for a new dawn in the human rights agenda. However, its successes were short-lived with the failed interventions in Somalia, the horrors of civil conflict in Rwanda and the murdering of innocent men, women and children taken from UN ‘safe zones’ in Bosnia. The Rwandan genocide resulted in over 800,000 deaths with millions displaced. There was a broad consensus that the failures in halting genocide and mass atrocities in both Rwanda and Bosnia had a particularly sobering effect on the international community.

With this hindsight, the Canadian government launched the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) co-chaired by Gareth Evans and Mohamed Sahnoun. The aim of the Commission was to build political will for international action in the event that a future crisis emerged. The concept of “the responsibility to protect’, which had been coined by Francis Deng, the Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Internally Displaced Persons, was recommended by the Commission and would later be adopted by the United Nations. It would allow for international action if a state failed to protect its citizens from mass atrocity including genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. Whilst there have been numerous criticisms of the doctrine in recent times, it has been the basis of successful intervention in Kenya where political violence following the 2008 election had threatened to escalate into a full-scale civil war. The “responsibility to protect” has established a basic framework in dealing with future humanitarian crises and is responsible for saving thousands of lives in the wake of the Libyan civil war.  As protesters in Syria, Bahrain and Yemen continue to be abused and systematically targeted by their authoritarian regimes, it is time for the international community to act decisively to protect these innocent civilians.

Suggested further reading about ‘Responsibility to Protect’

Bellamy, J. Alex, Realizing the Responsibility to Protect; International Studies Perspectives, 2009 pp.111-128

Evans, Gareth, The Solution: From “The Right to Intervene” to “The Responsibility to Protect”

Newman, Michael, Revisiting the ‘Responsibility to Protect’; The Political Quarterly, Vol.80, No.1, January-March 2009 pp.92-100

Sharma, K.Serena, Toward a Global Responsibility to Protect: Setbacks on the Path to Implementation; Global Governance 16, 2010 pp.121-138

* John is currently studying for a Masters in International Relations at the University of Melbourne and is actively involved in the promotion of human rights through Amnesty International.

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