mary kishimba and theresia tongora; r2p

7/28/2019 Mary Kishimba and Theresia Tongora; R2P

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UNIVERSITY OF DAR ES SALAAM

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

PS 334: HUMAN RIGHTS THEORY AND PRACTICE

COURSE LECTURERS: DR HEILMAN AND WILLIAM JOHN

SEMINAR LEADER: NOEL TWAGIRAMUNGU

SEMINAR DAY: TUESDAY

SEMINAR TIME: 1400 HOURS

DATE DUE: 10TH JANUARY 2012

AUTHORS: NAME REG. NO COURSE

KISHIMBA, MARY N 2009-04-05570 BA PSPA

TONGORA THERESIA 2009-04-05168 BA HI&PS

QUESTION 8:

Does R2P advance the cause of human rights or does it legitimate military

interventions?


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Introduction

This paper aims at showing how Responsibility to Protect (R2P) legitimizes military

interventions.

Despite the international community saying never again to mass killings after the Second

World War, millions of people are still dying years after the promise was made. Genocides

have occurred in Rwanda, Srebrenica and Darfur (Rasul 2005, 1). In order to keep their

promise, the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), with

the support of the Canadian government, prepared a report called Responsibility to

Protect. The report aimed at ending gross and systematic violations of human rights that

offend every precept of our common humanity (Macfarlane 2004, 978).

Responsibility to Protect (R2P) means that states are responsible for protecting all the

people within its borders from crimes against humanity, genocide, war crimes,

and ethnic cleansing. Failure or unwillingness to do so creates a responsibility for other

states to intervene, react and rebuild (Rasul 2005, 1).

This gives opportunity for powerful states to intervene in weaker states for reasons based on

their interests rather than for humanitarian assistance (Ibid). The task at hand is to prove how

R2P legitimizes military interventions rather than advancing the cause of human rights.

Background

In Septermber 2005, the United Nations (UN) hosted a world summit which comprised of 150

Heads of State to sign a document that supported the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). They

agreed to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council,

in accordance with the UN Charter.on a case by case basis and in cooperation with relevant

organizations as appropriate, should peaceful means be inadequate (Rasul 2005, 2).

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The United Nations Security Council is responsible for giving approval for forceful

interventions, and in the case where it fails to take action or in cases where the threat of

permanent members using their veto power to prevent intervention is imminent, countries are

able to seek other alternatives as was done in Kosovo (Rasul 2005, 1).

There have been concerns that states, especially powerful ones, are pursuing their security,

economic and political interests under the pretext of Responsibility to Protect. Guidelines

have been established as to when it is suitable to undertake military interventions and they

are, the threat of a state permitting or committing atrocities must be serious and credible;

the primary purpose of the intervention must be to halt or avert human suffering; military

intervention should be used as a last resort when other peaceful means have failed; the scale

of the military intervention should be the minimum required to stop the atrocities; there

must be a reasonable chance of success in halting or averting the suffering (Ibid).

However, there are instances when the forceful humanitarian interventions that have taken

place have raised questions and concerns as to their nature (Rasul 2005,1).

The When and Where of Military Interventions

The problem with the notion of R2P is that powerful states, especially those in the West, tend to

use their interests as a deciding factor when it comes to choosing when and where to intervene

rather than when and where humanitarian assistance is most needed. The United States- led

invasion of Iraq is a good example; in 1988 Saddam Hussein was responsible for killing a

hundred thousand Kurds, which is estimated to be the highest his killings reached (Cakmak

2006, 7). When the so-called forceful humanitarian intervention did happen, it was when

Saddam was not considered to have been involved in any killings, and if he was, it was

considerably less than the 1988 Anfal Genocide (Cakmak 2006, 7).

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The Iraq War shows the likelihood for states to abuse the notion of there being an international

responsibility to protect those who are experiencing human rights abuses either at the hands of

their states or that their states are unable to prevent (Macfarlane 2004, 977). It creates a loophole

for those with reasons other than humanitarian assistance in mind to pursue their self-serving

interests.

The issue of powerful states deciding where to intervene also highlights the problem of ulterior

motives in the military interventions that are undertaken in one area but not another. It means

that these states have particular interests in one country but not another (Roth 2004, 5). Roth

(2004) argues that there can be no justifiable claim for a state to stage an intervention in one

country when there could arguably the same or even greater need for intervention in another

country than the country where the intervention actually took place. The US intervention in Iraq

in 2003 therefore lacks credibility on the basis of the same situation occuring in the Democratic

Republic of Congo (DRC) on a larger scale of human rights abuses, but the intervention that took

place was modest compared to the one in Iraq (Roth 2004, 5).

The Libyan intervention of 2011 also shows how the states with the capabilities get to decide

where to intervene based on their interests. The NATO intervention in Libya took only one

month to organize, where they were able to mobilize a broad coalition, secure a UN mandate,

establish and enforce no-fly and no-drive zones and stop Gaddafis advancing army and prevent

a massacre of the innocents in Benghazi. The one in the Balkans, however, took over a decade

to carry out with air power (Thakur 2011, 7).

Historical Connections

Colonialism, among other factors, shaped the existing relationship between powerful and weaker

states, especially those found in Africa with have a greater need for humanitarian interventions

(Macfarlane 2004, 6). The R2P gives opportunity for powerful states to use the guise of

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humanitarian intervention to partly resume their domination of the countries who are in need of

military intervention (Macfarlane 2004, 3). Since these powerful countries still have an interest

in dominating their former colonies, they view humanitarian crises as an excuse to pursue said

interests under cover of a seemingly helpful military interventions (Kurth 2005, 93). States are

more likely to provide military interventions where they have a historical connection, such as

France intervening in Ivory Coast in 2004 and 2011 (Kurth 2005, 93).

Furthemore, the responsibilities entailed in the notion of R2P, such as the responsibility to

rebuild, give these powerful states an excuse to play an influential role in the internal matters of

the country long after the actual military intervention has taken place (Rasul 2005, 1). For

example, the United States began evacuating its military forces from Iraq after eight years of

military occupation with the excuse of the implied responsibility to rebuild the country after the

war and Saddam Husseins repressive rule.

Security Interests

R2P gives powerful states the excuse to intervene in countries where human rights abuses pose

threats to their security in terms of migration and criminality, especially in areas close to their

national borders such as the threat Haiti posed to the United States in 1994 and 2004 and East

Timor posed to Australia in 1999 (Macfarlane 2004, 988-989). If it were not for the security

threat posed by their neighbours, these states would probably not intervene, since the sad reality

is that weighed next to national interests, humanitarian crises ar rarely a top priority (Macfarlane

2004, 977). Macfarlane (2004) points out that humanitarian efforts that are not immediately

connected with national interests could be regarded as a diversion from pressing new security

challengesin short, the prospects for victims hoping for humanitarian interventions seem rather

bleak (Macfarlane 2004, 977).

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Moreover, R2P allows powerful states to address their security dilemmas by using humanitarian

crises as a basis for their military intervention. The United States- led invasion of Iraq is an

instance of such machinations. The 9/11 attacks left the United States in a security dillema and

after having attacked Afghanistan, the superpower considered Iraq to be its next biggest threat

due to the suspicion that it was in possession of weapons of mass destruction that may or may

not have been under Al Qaedas control (Kurth 2005, 97). Therefore, the USAs primary reason

for leading the military intervention was addressing its security threats rather than ending the

humanitarian crisis in Iraq.

Economic Interests

States have been known to pursue their economic interests while using R2P as a cover. There

have been many such cases such as the US-led invasion of Iraq being a least partly motivated by

economic interests, that is controlling Iraqi oil production, which would meet American needs,

with American president George Bush envisioning a vital interest inusing Iraq as a model to

spread free markets to other countries of the Middle East, most notably Syria and Iran (Kurth

2005, 97). Also, the American intervention in Somalia had economic interests at its core (Ibid).

The military intervention in Libya is considered to have been primarily about getting Libyan oil

despite all the high-blown rhetoric surrounding it (O Connell 2011, 13).

The lack of interests in humanitarian assistance makes it difficult for superpowers to intervene

in defence of human rights, evidenced by the lack of attempt to intervene in a number of

humanitarian crises, for instance the genocides in Burundi, Cambodia under Pol Pot, East Timor

and the massacres of Indians in Guatemala and Paraguay (International Action, 263).

Political Interests

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Humanitarian interventions require political authority from the government of particular

nation-states, such as the United States or Britain through regional organisations such NATO, the

European Union (EU) to the UN (Kurth 2005, 89). The lack of interests in a humanitarian crisis

means the lack of political will to intervene (Kurth 2005, 95). Therefore, it is unlikely that states

will intervene unless there is an interest that will provide the political will necessary.

Military intervention in countries has often been the result of the hegemonic tendencies of

powerful states like the USA, the UK and France to pursue their political interests. Several

critics of R2P and its application in the Libyan and Ivorian interventions such as Venezuela and

Nicaragua called the interventions the shameful manipulation of the slogan protection of

civilians for dishonourable political purposes, seeking unequivocally and blatantly to impose

regime change, attacking the sovereignty of a State Member of the United Nations [Libya] and

violating the Organizations Charter (Bellamy 2011, 20).

Also, the fact that the United States pursued the military intervention in Iraq with the intent to

democratize Iraq as a way to introduce liberal democracy to the Middle East proves how some

states put to use the R2P in order to further their own political motives. Macfarlane (2004) names

the unease that has become associated with the notion of Responsibility to Protect, where there

is a clear and present danger that the responsibility to protect is merely a euphemism for

(American) hegemony (Macfarlane 2004, 979).

Furthermore, states have been known to stage military interventions as a way to showcase their

capabilities in competition with other powers. For example, France led an EU intervention in

Congo in 2003 as a way to prove that it could act from under the shadow of NATO outside of

Europe (Macfarlane 2004, 983). Clearly, the motivating factor is the political gains to be realised

by the interventions staged by the superpowers. After it lost the credibility to intervene militarily

after the Iraq War, the United States went on a sort of public relations campaign to burnish its

image in international politics by staging interventions in Africa (Ibid).

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In Libya, NATO was interested in getting rid of Gaddafi, and the saw the humanitarian crisis

as a way to accomplish this. In light of the Libyan crisis, Stark (2011) argues that R2P has no

inherent moral meaning or influence when it has been applied inconsistently according to the

interests of the 5 permanent members of the Security Council in using a humanitarian justification

to further their own ends (Stark 2011, 15).

CONCLUSION

Based on the evidence, we have reached the conclusion that there is no humanitarian intervention in

reality. Rather, powerful states use the notion of R2P to further their own ends in accomplishing their

interests. Various case studies have shown how one countrys crisis creates opportunity for another to

pursue their political and economic agendas. Therefore the spirit of protecting and upholding human

rights no longer exists. What remains is the spirit of promoting states self- interests.

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REFERENCES

Bellamy, A (2011)R2P and the Problem of Regime Change, in The Responsibility to Protect:

Challenges and Opportunities in Light of the Libyan Intervention.pp 20-23.

Cakmak, C (2006) The International Criminal Court in World Politics, inInternational Journal

of World Peace, Vol 23, No. 1, pp 3-38.

Macfarlane, S. N, Thielking C. J, Weiss, T. G (2004) The Resposibility to Protect: Is anyone

Interested Humanitarian Intervention? in Thirld World Quarterly, Vol 25, No 5, pp 977-992,

Carfax Publishing Taylor & Francis Group.

O Connell, M. E (2011) How to Lose a Revolution, in The Responsibility to Protect:

Challenges and Opportunities in Light of the Libyan Intervention. pp 15-17.

Kurth, J (2005) Humanitarian Intervention After Iraq: Legal Ideas vs. Military Realities,

Elsevier Limited on behalf of Foreign Policy Research Institute, pp 87-101

Rasul, F. A (2005) Responsibility to Protect, in Global Solutions Fact Sheet,

http//:www.globalsolutions.org, Retrieved 3rd January 2012, 15:27.

Roth, K (2004) War in Iraq: Not a Humanitarian Intervention, in Human Rights Watch World

Report.

Thakur, R (2011) R2P, Libya and International Politics as the Struggle for Competing

Normative Architectures, in The Responsibility to Protect: Challenges and Opportunities in

Light of the Libyan Intervention,pp 12-15.

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