Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, vol. 51, no. 2, April–May 2009, pp. 175–182
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The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and For All
Gareth Evans. Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2008. £16.99/$24.95. 366 pp.
The international community operates as best it can out of institutions devised in the aftermath of the Second World War. These institutions in their time provided an ingenious and sophisticated post-war settlement. They worked out the necessary compromises between rules and power; they built on the experiences and mistakes of the previous settlements of Vienna and Versailles. But our institutions are now showing their age. Few of them, however well devised for 1945–50, are fit for the purposes of 2009. They stand like palaces on a hill, still impressive to the distant observer, still active with innumerable meetings, but no longer proof against the weather. From time to time, as now with the financial institutions of Bretton Woods, an effort at reform is attempted. But in a world of 192 self-conscious nation- states the procedures for reform are extraordinarily cumbersome; progress has been slow, in most cases negligible. In the central sector which deals with war and peace it has so far proved impossible to reform the central institution, the UN Security Council. It can be argued that the single important achievement in this sector in recent years is the agreement on the Responsibility to Protect.
The phrase in itself is opaque, presumably because a blunter definition might be divisive; but the purpose was defined clearly enough in the Outcome Document of the UN World Summit in September 2005. The heads of state and governments declared that ‘each individual state has the responsibility to protect its population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity’. Should national authorities manifestly fail to provide this protection and peaceful means prove inadequate, then the heads of states and government ‘are prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the Charter, including Chapter VII, on a case by case basis and in co-operation with regional organisations as appropriate’.
This did indeed constitute a step-change which would have been inconceivable when I worked as a junior diplomat in the UK Mission to the UN in the late 1950s. At that time power had already shifted within the General Assembly into the hands of the newly independent nations, who were fearful of attempts by former colonial powers or the two superpowers to interfere in the way they ran their affairs. For them the sacred text was Article 2(7) of the Charter, which forbids interference by the UN in the domestic affairs of member states. They were prepared to argue that apartheid in South Africa, continued British rule in Cyprus or French rule in Algeria fell outside this clause and were international issues. But these governments would have vehemently rejected any idea that Article 2(7) could be pushed on one side to permit international intervention to protect their peoples from the consequences of their rule, however disastrous these consequences might be...
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Douglas Hurd was UK Foreign Secretary from 1990 to 1995. He is writing with Edward Young a book about the character and policies of 11 British Foreign Secretaries, to be published by Orion.
Related Articles
Responsible Intervention by Mary Kaldor (August–September 2008)
Human Rights in Conflict by Rosemary Foot (Autumn 2006)
For a Capability to Protect by David Gompert (Spring 2006)
The Humanitarian Transformation: Expanding Global Intervention Capacity by Michael O’Hanlon and P.W. Singer (Spring 2004)
Against the Grain: The East Timor Intervention by James Cotton (Spring 2001)
Sovereignty, Intervention and Peacekeeping: The View from Beijing by Bates Gill and James Reilly (Autumn 2000)
