UN Debate on Genocide: Protect or Intervene?

By JOHN HEILPRIN / AP WRITER
The Irrawaddy News

UNITED NATIONS — Out of genocides past and Africa's tumult a controversial but seldom-used diplomatic tool is emerging: The concept that the world has a "responsibility to protect" civilians against their own brutal governments.

At the UN General Assembly, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon pushed Tuesday for more intervention for the sake of protection.

"The question before us is not whether, but how," Ban told the assembly, recalling two visits since 2006 to Kigali, Rwanda. The genocide memorial he saw there marks 100 days of horror in which more than half a million members of the Tutsi ethnic minority and moderates from the Hutu majority were slaughtered.

"It is high time to turn the promise of the 'responsibility to protect' into practice," Ban said.

Rwanda's genocide began hours after a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down as it approached Kigali on the evening of April 6, 1994. The slaughter ended after rebels, led by current President Paul Kagame, ousted the extremist Hutu government that had orchestrated the killings.

"We still find ourselves in a world that has so far been maybe willing, but less likely committed to stop genocide and similar crimes," said Jacqueline Murekatete, a human rights activist who was 9 years old in Rwanda when she lost her entire family to the genocide.

Among those questioning the concept has been General Assembly President Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann, a leftist Nicaraguan priest and former foreign minister who organized a two-day debate starting Thursday. He issued a four-page "concept note" that made clear his reservations.

"Colonialism and interventionism used responsibility to protect arguments," says the paper issued by d'Escoto's office. "National sovereignty in developing countries is a necessary condition for stable access to political, social and economic rights, and it took enormous sacrifices to recover this sovereignty and ensure these rights for their populations."

William Pace, executive director of the World Federalist Movement's Institute for Global Policy, said d'Escoto's views are a "political misuse of the GA presidency" since they contradict the General Assembly's 2005 endorsement of the 'responsibility to protect' doctrine.

"It is not a synonym for military intervention," Pace added.

The idea that the world should take responsibility if nations fail to protect their own population was first promoted by Ban's predecessor, Kofi Annan, in 1999, citing conflicts in Angola, Kosovo, Sierra Leone and East Timor.

It gained huge momentum with the African Union's endorsement in 2000. The General Assembly backed it in 2005, though a budget committee has yet to provide funding for a special adviser's office.

In 2006, the UN's most powerful body, the 15-nation Security Council, threw its weight behind the idea in two legally binding resolutions.

Proponents have recently pushed to implement it in places like Darfur, Congo, Kenya, Burma, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe.

In May 2008, for example, the council discussed a proposal by France to authorize the UN to enter Burma and deliver aid without waiting for approval from the nation's ruling military junta. China and Russia, citing issues of sovereignty, blocked the idea.

And in July 2008, Russia and China vetoed US-proposed sanctions on Zimbabwe's leaders, rejecting an attempt by the global community to take action against an authoritarian regime widely criticized for a violent and one-sided presidential election.

At her first appearance before the Security Council in January, US Ambassador Susan Rice used the occasion to emphasize that the Obama administration takes the concept seriously. Earlier this month, at the Group of Eight summit in Italy, President Barack Obama called it "one of the most difficult questions in international affairs."

There is no "clean formula" for when to act, Obama said, but there are "exceptional circumstances in which I think the need for international intervention becomes a moral imperative, the most obvious example being in a situation like Rwanda where genocide has occurred."

Ban advised limiting UN action under the 'responsibility to protect' concept to safeguarding civilians against genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. He acknowledged the possibility of some nations "misusing these principles" as excuses to intervene unnecessarily, but said the challenge before the UN is to show that "sovereignty and responsibility are mutually reinforcing principles."

"Military action is a major last—not first—resort," he said. "No part of the world has a monopoly on wisdom or morality."

READ MORE---> UN Debate on Genocide: Protect or Intervene?...

British MPs urge UN to invoke R2P in Burma

by Mungpi

New Delhi (Mizzima)- Over 60 British Members of Parliament have called on the United Nations to form a commission of inquiry into crimes against humanity committed by Burma’s ruling junta and to invoke the principle of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in relation to the crisis in Burma.

The MPs including the Former Foreign Office Ministers, Ian McCartney and Keith Vaz have signed an Early Day Motion (EDM), which was tabled by MP John Bercow, Co-Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Democracy in Burma, expressing concern at the deteriorating human rights situation in Burma.

The MPs, in the EDM, urged the UN to invoke the principle of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in relation to the Burmese junta’s appalling human rights records particularly a military campaign against its ethnic nationalities.

The EMD “urges Her Majesty's Government, along with other governments, to propose the establishment of a commission of inquiry to investigate allegations of crimes against humanity and war crimes in Burma; and urges the UN to invoke the principle of Responsibility to Protect in relation to the crisis in Burma.”

Rights groups and activists accused Burma’s military government of using policies to terrorize its citizens, more severely in remote areas of the country, where ethnic minorities live, in order to maintain its stranglehold on power.

The Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a campaign group that has been lobbying for democratic change in Burma, in a statement on Thursday said the Burmese junta’s policies include the widespread use of rape as a weapon of war, forced labour, the use of human minesweepers, and child soldiers.

The junta’s army has also destroyed over 3,300 villages in eastern Burma since 1996, and launched attacks on civilians resulting in displacement of about a million people, the group said.

John Bercow, who had visited the Thailand-Burma border and the India-Burma border, where Burmese ethnics live in precarious states, said he had heard horrific stories from victims of human rights violations.

“I have sat face to face with victims of unspeakable torture, including women and children who have seen their loved ones murdered. They have looked me in the eye and pleaded for the world to hear their cry,” Bercow said in the statement.

“It is time their cries were answered and the junta's crimes investigated. The people of Burma urgently need the freedom and justice they have been denied for so long," he added.

The Early Day Motions are formal motions submitted for debate in the House of Commons in the British Parliament. While very few EDMs are actually debated, they highlight the extent of parliamentary support for a particular cause or view point.

Alexa Papadouris, CSW's Advocacy Director said their group calls on “the British Government and other Governments to take this call seriously and to initiate a commission of inquiry into the junta's crimes against humanity.”

The concept of R2P was adopted in 2005 World Summit, where governments and world leaders agreed that they have a responsibility to protect when a government is unable or unwilling to protect its civilians from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing.

In implementing R2P, first peaceful measures can be adopted through the use of economic, political, diplomatic, and legal tools but if this fails the International community can use collective force through the UN Security Council under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, only as a last resort.

READ MORE---> British MPs urge UN to invoke R2P in Burma...

US Envoy to UN Signals Support for ‘R2P’

By JOHN HEILPRIN / AP WRITER
The Irrawaddy News

UNITED NATIONS — US Ambassador Susan Rice signaled on Thursday during her first appearance before the UN Security Council that President Barack Obama's administration feels a "responsibility" to sometimes take on nations that abuse their own citizens.

"As agreed to by member states in 2005 and by the Security Council in 2006, the international community has a responsibility to protect civilian populations from violations of international humanitarian law when states are unwilling or unable to do so," Rice told the council, without elaborating, during a closed-door session.

The US Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, answers questions from reporters at the United Nations in New York. (Photo: AFP)

"But this commitment is only as effective as the willingness of all nations, large and small, to take concrete action. The United States takes this responsibility seriously," she said, according to a transcript of her remarks made available to reporters later.

During the past year the UN has debated whether it has a "responsibility to protect" civilians in such cases.

Last May, for example, the council discussed a proposal by France to authorize the UN to enter Burma and deliver aid without waiting for approval from the nation's ruling military junta. Several countries, citing issues of sovereignty, blocked the idea.

France had argued that the UN has the responsibility—and power—because of language adopted at a UN summit in 2005 saying the world body sometimes has a "responsibility to protect" people from genocide, war crimes and ethnic cleansing when nations fail to do it. A Security Council resolution adopted in 2006 reaffirmed that agreement.

Rice also emphasized, in keeping with the subject of Thursday's council meeting, that the U. would work to strengthen protections for civilians in conflict zones and support international prosecutions of war crimes.

"It is in this spirit of cooperation and determination that we will seek to use this body of international law to minimize human suffering and protect vulnerable populations," Rice said.

She said the International Criminal Court "looks to become an important and credible instrument for trying to hold accountable the senior leadership responsible for atrocities committed in the Congo, Uganda and Darfur."

The US opposed the court's creation and for the past decade refused to join it. The court is not part of the United Nations, but the 107 nations that ratified the 1998 treaty creating it, along with the UN, are responsible for responding to its requests for cooperation.

As former president George W. Bush's administration wound down, the United States became a strident supporter of bringing Sudan's president before the court on charges of orchestrating atrocities in Sudan's Darfur region.

Rice, who began work at the UN on Monday, defended Israel while pressuring it to account for its military actions. Much of Thursday's council discussions revolved around Israel's three-week offensive and January 18 cease-fire in Gaza, diplomats said.

"Violations of international humanitarian law have been perpetrated by Hamas through its rocket attacks against Israeli civilians in southern Israel and the use of civilian facilities to provide protection for its terrorist attacks. There have also been numerous allegations made against Israel, some of which are deliberately designed to inflame," Rice said.

"We expect Israel will meet its international obligations to investigate, and we also call upon all members of the international community to refrain from politicizing these important issues," she said.

READ MORE---> US Envoy to UN Signals Support for ‘R2P’...