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Video Interview
Note: The opinions presented are not necessarily those of the Government of Canada.
(Video players are available here: QuickTime | Windows Media)
Transcript:
"The Responsibility to Protect" - Introduction
I'm Jutta Brunnée and I teach International Law and International Environmental Law at the University of Toronto.
Recently, in the last two or three years, there has been a lot of very animated and controversial discussion on whether or not our use of force framework still does what we need it to do. Much of the attention has been attracted by arguments-made by, most notably, the United States-that the framework is no longer sufficient to allow states to defend themselves well against new security threats. There has been pressure exerted in the United Nations to prove that it is still relevant. There has been a lot of very heated discussion.
What I find interesting is that there is another element to the use of force framework that deals precisely with the question of what used to be called humanitarian intervention. In this particular context it has actually been Canada that has been a lot less noticed, but it has been Canada that has been a very active entrepreneur, moving forward the debate on whether such intervention should be allowed and under what circumstances it should be allowed.
The background to all of this is the fact that the existing framework on the use of force is intended to limit any unilateral resort to military force as much as possible, and for that reason there is essentially a prohibition on the use of force except for cases of self-defence-that is, in a way, the individual state's security dimension. All the rest of the decisions on peace and security are with the Security Council. So one might say that the debate about whether that framework needs to be renovated keeps coming up when there are moments when there is a sense that the Security Council isn't operating as effectively as it might.
The motivation behind "The Responsability to Protect"
In a humanitarian intervention context, there is a whole spectrum of views on whether it is a good idea to ever allow humanitarian intervention under international law; to views that say that we should set the parameters to limit the extreme circumstances in which it might be allowable; to more liberal or expansive views that suggest that there should be a much wider range of circumstances when it is appropriate to intervene in countries that have abusive regimes, bad human rights records and the like.
What has been interesting, for me, is that I have always been on the side of those who have said that it is not a good idea to tinker with the framework and create new exceptions to the limitation on the use of force-for a whole range of reasons related to the risk of abuse and the perception that this idea might spread to many parts of the world.
The post-9/11 debates and notably the debates surrounding the intervention in Iraq have made me change my view for a number of reasons-in part because of the fact that there has been a shift in international perspectives on what sovereignty actually means and therefore what the principle of non-intervention means. That shift has been from the notion of sovereignty as a right to be left alone to the notion of sovereignty as a responsibility, particularly in a human rights context; and therefore also to the view that the non-intervention principle cannot be an absolute shield against outside involvement in matters of human rights abuses.
The second point is that we are actually at a stage where in a sense it is academic to debate whether we should or should not allow humanitarian intervention. It seems to me that this is already happening as the legal changes are evolving. The more realistic approach is to try to agree on parameters to make sure not only that this type of intervention is limited to a very narrow range of extreme circumstances, but also that there are criteria that allow us to assess when it is likely that intervention will do more good than harm.
The final reason, which has received a little less attention, is the one that is connected to the post-Iraq context. It has been evident in much of the public rhetoric of justification of the Iraq intervention that there has been a real blending of security arguments with liberation, human rights arguments and Saddam's regime as an abusive regime. No doubt there are connections between all of these issues, but when it comes to allowing international law to create an effective framework on the use of force it is crucial that we have a framework that has the ability to force a focus on justification. So to my mind, the risk is that when we allow the human rights issues and the humanitarian intervention issues to be imported into the debate on threats to our state security, they become just one factor that is used to justify an intervention as defensive when it may not be able to stand on its own two legs as a self-defence rationale.
A shift in the debate from a right to intervene to a responsibility to protect
Part of what motivated this report, which I think is an important insight, is that the debate has been cast for many years in terms of humanitarian intervention and the right of states or the international community to intervene in internal crises. This has raised a whole range of difficult issues because the principle of non-intervention seemed to be a cornerstone principle of the international order and is particularly important to many countries in the developing world.
What The Responsibility to Protect report has done is to continue the work that had been going on to shift the debate from a right to intervene to a responsibility to protect. That is significant because it does a number of things, one of those being that it starts to build consensus around the fact that sovereignty is not just the right to be left alone but is also a responsibility to one's own citizens, among other things. Therefore, if that responsibility cannot be or is not discharged by a given government, the corollary is that the principle of non-intervention cannot be an absolute shield against outside involvement.
On the other side of the equation, in the report is the idea that the primary responsibility to protect is with the country concerned. But when it cannot or will not discharge the responsibility, then there is an international responsibility to get involved. What that means, and I think this is important to understand, is when one looks at The Responsibility to Protect report, it places very strong emphasis on a wide spectrum of preventive approaches to outside involvement. When I say outside involvement, that means anything from capacity building, to building legal systems, to various kinds of government assistance. So there is a whole spectrum of preventive assistance functions that ideally would prevent states from failing or would enable them to pull back from the brink.
Then there is a further continuation on the spectrum that would be various forms of pressure that might be exerted on the country if it is at a state where that might be needed.
At the very far end of the spectrum, at the very narrow end of the spectrum, are situations where it may be necessary to intervene militarily. I think that is important to understand because the background to this is the debate about military and humanitarian intervention that has been very controversial, for good reasons. That is the part of the report that has attracted the most attention, precisely for that reason, but it is embedded in a much larger context.
"Responsibility to Protect" and the United States
The United States is tangibly less enamoured of the idea of criteria for the "responsibility to protect"; but it does seem to me that there might actually be an opportunity of bridge building. As much as I say that from a legal standpoint or from the standpoint of this framework of justification, we should be careful not to merge security and humanitarian intervention. Obviously those two are connected in a policy context. Working an effective way around the "responsibility to protect" has long-term benefits for security. It would seem to me that Canada can appeal to a range of actors. It could appeal to those who are worried about more interventionism by saying that if we can work out the criteria and build consensus around the criteria, we will have strengthened the framework that is ultimately designed to constrain any resort to military force.
At the same time, I think that Canada could also try and appeal to the American interest in the root causes of terrorism, the prevention dimension of the "responsibility to protect." All the things that can be done before we get to a military intervention context should be of interest to the United States, from the standpoint of a longer-term strategy to address global security threats. Also, a big part of American policy is to promote democracy and the rule of law around the world. The large spectrum of preventive measures that are part of this idea of promoting the "responsibility to protect" feed right into that agenda as well.
Parameters for humanitarian intervention
My sense is that another reason for actually spelling out the parameters for humanitarian intervention is that by creating a separate framework of justification, we would preserve a situation in which you have a framework that forces those who feel military intervention is necessary to justify their position based on the terms that are behind the intervention. You would maintain the need to justify the necessity of self-defence measures. And separately, if the motivation is genuinely humanitarian, it would have to be justified on those terms. In a sense, by spelling out the "responsibility to protect" angle of things, we might create a bulwark against this blending. I see that as dangerous because I see it as something that might ultimately undermine the ability of international law to force justification. That is where I see its primary force. |
"The Responsibility to Protect" - Introduction