International Responses to Mass Atrocities in Africa. Kurt Mills

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СКАЧАТЬ of concern in this book, it is precisely the interventionist aspects that are most salient and most unique from a normative perspective. To understand the current conception(s) of R2P, however, a very brief overview of the practice of humanitarian intervention is in order to illustrate the changing debates and status within international relations.

      The Practice of Humanitarian Intervention

      Most histories of the practice of humanitarian intervention begin in the nineteenth century.⁶³ During this period there were a number of military interventions in Europe, justifications for which included “proto-humanitarian” arguments. The defining features of the discourse and practice of humanitarian intervention during this period were twofold. First, as today, not all situations that might have demanded a robust response actually received one. Second, the class of people deemed worthy of being rescued was significantly circumscribed. While the European powers intervened to save noncitizens, they were noncitizens of a particular type. One needed to be Christian—and indeed the right kind of Christian—to be worthy of saving. This contrasts markedly with today’s universalistic conceptions of human rights and humanity, and arguments and actions to protect noncitizens around the world, although an expanded conception of humanity is no guarantee of action.

      Although this expanded humanity and human rights concern was evident from the end of World War II, the Cold War and decolonization prevented any type of intervention on humanitarian grounds—or certainly the use of humanitarian arguments to justify intervention. The Cold War paralyzed the newly created United Nations and created concerns that military adventures might lead to superpower confrontation. Decolonization entrenched notions of absolute sovereignty and revitalized the doctrine of nonintervention. There were three interventions in the 1970s that many point to as possible humanitarian interventions, even though humanitarian justifications were not ultimately deployed in any of these situations. India intervened in East Pakistan in 1971 in response to massacres by the Pakistani military; Tanzania intervened in Uganda in 1979 to overthrow Idi Amin; and Vietnam pushed the Khmer Rouge from power in Cambodia in 1979. All three cases were relatively limited ventures (certainly from the perspective of the interventions that were to come) and were justified with nonhumanitarian arguments—and indeed in all three cases there were traditional regional strategic interests involved. They all also had the effect of saving lives—and getting rid of regimes that engaged in widespread gross human rights violations.⁶⁴ Yet the international community was not ready to accept humanitarian arguments. The doctrine of nonintervention would have prevented such arguments from succeeding. This highlights a significant change in global outlook as humanitarian arguments are given much more consideration today, such that states attempt to use humanitarian arguments for very unhumanitarian reasons—as well as for more evidently humanitarian purposes.

      The post-Cold War world of the 1990s brought about conceptual and practical challenges to understandings of sovereignty and nonintervention. A raft of “new wars”⁶⁵ erupted in the aftermath of the Cold War as the Soviet Union fell apart and developing states lost their patrons. The first post-Cold War (or perhaps end of Cold War) intervention took place in Liberia as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) intervened in the civil war, which featured mass human rights violations and threatened regional stability. It did not have the initial approval of the UN Security Council, although it did receive the general approval of the international community afterwards. More important, however, was a declaration by the secretary-general of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), Salim A. Salim, who said that African governments who engaged in human rights abuses could no longer hide behind sovereignty.⁶⁶ This was a radical suggestion in 1990, and while still controversial, would attract much more support in Africa today. The 1991 creation of “no-fly zones” by the United States, UK and France in Iraq was intended to protect populations that were being persecuted by the Saddam Hussein regime. Operation Provide Comfort reflected a partial normative change as France argued that widespread human rights violations could legitimate UN Security Council action even if not identified as a threat to international peace and security, the traditional justification for forceful UN action.⁶⁷ Other interventions did see human rights and humanitarian concerns cited as threats to international peace and security, thus initiating an ideational change in Security Council practice.⁶⁸ In 1992–93 the United States undertook Operation Restore Hope in Somalia, taking over from a failed UN mission. The Security Council justification made the direct connection between humanitarian crises and international peace and security. However, the actual level of commitment to humanitarian objectives was demonstrated when the United States pulled out after only a few months when its forces suffered more—and particularly humiliating—casualties than expected.

      I have already mentioned the international failures in Bosnia and Rwanda. Although the intervention in Bosnia began as a rather lackluster affair, the massacre of 8,000 people in Srebrenica spurred NATO to action. It engaged in a bombing campaign that eventually led to an end to the war. But, overall, the UN experience in Bosnia was rather ignominious. This should not have been surprising, however, given that a year before the UN allowed 8,000 people to be killed in Srebrenica, it allowed 800,000 to be killed in Rwanda. The issue in Rwanda was not sovereignty. Rather, it was that no country (except for France, late in the day, and very ambiguously) had any interest in sending in troops to stop the slaughter. European states found the interest five years later in Kosovo when NATO intervened to protect Armenian Kosovars from Serbia. This, too, was an ambiguous intervention, given that the larger Serbian human rights abuses seemed to come after the intervention started.⁶⁹ And, the intervention occurred in the absence of UN Security Council approval, since any Security Council resolution would have been vetoed by Russia, given its ties to Serbia. As with Bosnia, there were traditional state interests involved—the general stability of the region, as well as the prospect of yet more refugees flowing into Western Europe. However, Kosovo also represented an assertion of a new doctrine on the part of some states that justified (unilateral) military intervention on humanitarian grounds.

      Recognizing Responsibilities

      During the 1990s, and in the context of changing ideas about human rights and the above mentioned interventions (or noninterventions), a number of authors addressed the balance between sovereignty and human rights.⁷⁰ They argued that rather than being in opposition, human rights were constitutive of state sovereignty. If a government abused its people, it could lose legitimacy and the state might lose its immunity to nonintervention. Further, there was discussion about whether there was a right or a duty to intervene, and under what conditions. The developing norm of a right and, indeed, a duty to intervene to protect gross violations of human rights was given voice in 2001 by the Canadian-sponsored International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) in a report entitled The Responsibility to Protect.⁷¹ It recognized a shift in the human rights versus state sovereignty discourse by arguing that claims to sovereignty entailed responsibilities. It also moved the debate away from discussing a right to intervene to a responsibility to protect those who might be threatened by gross violations of human rights or humanitarian crises. The ICISS noted three main responsibilities: to prevent genocide and other humanitarian catastrophes, to react when such situations occur, and to rebuild after a complex humanitarian emergency has ended.

      This norm was endorsed by the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change,⁷² and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan highlighted and affirmed this developing norm intended to set the agenda for the 2005 World Summit.⁷³ He also called on the Security Council to develop principles for the use of force. The 2005 World Summit Outcome document stated that the international community has a responsibility to address widespread gross violations of human rights, even if it means using force. However, the World Summit endorsed a somewhat different and watered down version of the ICISS proposal.⁷⁴ The norm has been more forcefully recognized by the African Union in its Constitutive Act. Article 4h states the following principle: “the right of the Union to intervene in a Member State pursuant to a decision of the Assembly in respect of grave circumstances, namely: war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.” While there is ongoing rhetoric in Africa regarding the neocolonial character of СКАЧАТЬ