Responsibility to Protect :

Conspiracy against sovereignty

Ajit RANDENIYA

An article in the Sri Lankan English media on April 26 by Radhika Coomaraswamy refers to the idea of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) being promoted by the United States (US) at the United Nations (UN) forums as ‘a natural humanitarian impulse’. The purpose of this article is to argue that the R2P is just another pretext to justify neocolonialist attempts to intervene in the domestic affairs of developing countries, and to draw attention to what Coomaraswamy refers to as an ‘international conversation’ the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES) wanted to be part of.

A review of the history of the R2P campaign over the last two decades shows that it is nothing but a carefully orchestrated series of deceptive attempts by a coterie of US ‘think tanks’ and INGOs to force this dangerous ideological tool on the UN, resisted vigorously and with the highest level of skepticism and disdain by the wider membership of the UN; they view it as the nearest imperialist contraption to the 15th Century Papal Bulls that rationalized the subjugation of Indigenous peoples around the globe.

History of the R2P concept

The R2P idea emanated from a Washington DC based now defunct, dubious think tank known as the Refugee Policy Group (RPG) aligned with the Brookings Institution’s ‘Brookings-Bern project’; this collaborative project with the Bern University is cause for concern in the context of the history of the Brookings Institution.

IDP children, away from the LTTE threat. File photo

In the early 1990s, the RPG initiated a concerted thrust to place on the global agenda the premise that the human rights of IDPs were being neglected. The neglect, it was claimed, was due to the reluctance of a small group of ‘international community’ to attempt to intervene in domestic affairs of other countries due to concerns about violating their sovereignty. Logically, the debate and international attention was next being drawn to the inappropriateness of the concept of sovereignty in today’s world.

The RPG of the Brookings-Berns ‘project’ in the late 1980s and early 1990s seemed to have been backed by unlimited financial resources, and was being spearheaded by three individuals: Francis M. Deng, Roberta Cohen and later, Professor Walter Kalin. Francis M. Deng, the founding employee of the RPG project is a former Sudanese politician and diplomat, and later UN employee with a long history of involvement in US think tanks: he was the first ‘Rockefeller Brothers Fund Distinguished Fellow’, and has held senior fellowships at the so-called ‘United States Institute of Peace’ in 2002 and 2006; Roberta Cohen who still serves as a ‘guest scholar’ at Brookings appeared to be Deng’s ‘handler’ in many ways; Richard Holbrook, the leading neocon and then US Ambassador to the UN, referred in jest to Deng and Cohen as Mr and Mrs IDP.

In 1990, Deng and Cohen, representing the RPG and a collective of other NGOs, pressurised a special meeting of delegates of the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNHCR) ‘to take measures to protect the human rights of IDPs as part of assistance provided to them’. Deng argued that when governments do not have the willingness or ability to protect their displaced populations, the international community faces a major ‘responsibility to protect’ them [emphasis added]. They campaigned hard to push their ‘doctrine’ to the top of the global human rights agenda and engaged aggressively and often discourteously in the case of Cohen, against naysayers.

Internal displacement

Their objective appeared to be to force the UN Human Rights Commission to place ‘internal displacement’ on its agenda and more importantly, ‘to create a mechanism for international response’. They demanded specifically that the UNHCR develop a conceptual and legal foundation similar to the Refugee Convention on which to base their growing involvement with IDPs and the Secretary-General appoint a ‘representative’ of the for IDPs.

The international community responded with Resolution 42/182 ‘On humanitarian assistance in emergencies’, adopted at the 1991 General Assembly, clearly stating that aid should be provided ‘with the consent of the affected country, on the basis of an appeal by the affected country’.

Unrelenting pressure on the UNHCR and the then Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali finally resulted in Deng being appointed ‘Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Internally Displaced Persons’ in 1994. Deng held this position until 2004 when the position was transferred to Walter Kalin, the Bern half of the Brookings-Bern project. Throughout this period Roberta Cohen served as principal adviser to the Representative.

Deng’s work as the secretary general’s ‘Representative’ essentially involved fruitless, yet never ceasing attempts to convince skeptical developing country governments that the US ‘concern for IDPs’ was not a pretext for their political or military involvement in other country’s affairs.

In 1998, Deng introduced ‘The Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement’ to the UNHCR. The principles drafted by Deng appeared to be an attempt to assuage concerns of the developing world by recognizing that the welfare and safety of IDPs is primarily a matter for their Governments, yet reserving the ‘gateway’ for intervention: Deng’s principles laid out the conditions that when governments are unable to fulfill their responsibilities, they ‘should’ request and ‘accept’ offers of aid and if they refuse, the international community has a right and a responsibility to take action ranging from ‘diplomatic efforts to political pressures, sanctions, or, military intervention.’

To be continued