Conspiracy against sovereignty - Part II:

R2P doctrine ideological tool of neocolonialism

Ajit RANDENIYA

The idea of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) promoted by the US and UN forums is just another pretext to justify neocolonialist attempts to intervene in the domestic affairs of developing countries. Outside the UN, INGOs and NGOs sustained the issue through their own campaigns with generous financial help from Western Governments.

Deng’s guiding principles failed to address the concerns, but the failure did not dissuade the Brookings-Bern Project from pushing ahead with their agenda. Walter Kalin who took over from Deng presented to the UN, in 2005, the ‘benchmarks of national responsibility’. Kalin continued with his ‘help’ by presenting, in 2008, a Brookings-Bern developed ‘manual for law and policy makers’ designed to help states shape laws and policies based on Deng’s Principles.

Outside the UN, the INGOs and NGOs sustained the issue ‘on the boil’ through their own campaigns with generous financial help from Western Governments.

The Canadian Government financed the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), established in 2000 and headed by none other than Gareth Evans of the International Crisis Group (ICC), was a major initiative.

International community

The ICISS report ‘The Responsibility to Protect’, released in December 2001, presented the key idea that sovereignty is a responsibility and that the international community has the responsibility to react to crises by diplomatic engagement, coercive actions, and military intervention, in order to bring ‘security and justice’ to the victim population. The ICISS Report was not adopted by national governments.

The Brookings-Bern project next exploited the 2005 World Summit, convened for the purpose of following up on the 2000 Millennium Summit, by including R2P on the agenda: after a lengthy debate, Member States reluctantly agreed to include reference to R2P in the Outcome Document, limited to two paragraphs; 138 and 139. These paragraphs stated in no uncertain terms that the scope of R2P will be limited, and that the responsibility for IDPs lay with individual States. The United Nations Security Council Resolution 1674 of 2006 reiterated the reservations of paragraphs 138 and 139. Coomaraswamy’s apparent attempt to portray this reluctant agreement as ‘adoption’ by the international community borders on dishonesty.

Security Council

During the period between 2006 and 2009, the US and UK made a number of failed attempts to intervene in Myanmar (2007), Darfur (2008) and Sri Lanka (2009), portraying resolution 1674 as a commitment given by the Security Council (which it was not): Russia and China strongly resisted the pressure. The latest reaction of the Brookings-Bern project to the hiatus came in January 2009, in the form of a report by the Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon entitled ‘Implementing the Responsibility to Protect’.

This report argued for overcoming resistance to the implementation of R2P and attempted to ‘sugar the pill’ by acknowledging the primary responsibility to protect lay with States, as part of the ‘three pillar’ approach Coomaraswamy is referring to.

The report eventually led to a debate in the General Assembly in July 2009, with 94 Member States voicing some important concerns.

The Resolution (A/RES/63/308) only records that the international community had ‘taken note’ of the Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s report and the debate, and promised to further discussions in the General Assembly.

US-led efforts to implement R2P

Throughout the period of stagnation of the R2P ‘doctrine’ as an ideological tool of neocolonialism facing stiff resistance by former colonies, the US and UK was attempting to use it for meeting their geopolitical objectives. During the early stages, in the early 1990s, they exploited the goodwill of an unsuspecting Security Council to expand the ‘operational coverage’ of UNHCR to include IDPs and other affected populations.

The most cynical, deceptive use of the R2P idea involved as part of the US-led illegal invasions of Iraq in 1991 and the NATO aggression against former Yugoslavia, when they used the UNHCR to create ‘safe havens’ under the pretext of protecting displaced Kurds and Bosnian Muslims respectively.

However, Russia and China in the Security Council quickly realised the deceptive nature of the R2P trap and blocked the West’s further attempts to intervene.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and the Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy called for R2P’s implementation during Cyclone Nargis in Burma in 2008 with French, British and US warships nearing Burma’s coast in anticipation. But Russia and China insisted that the situation did not constitute a threat to international peace and security.

In the case of Darfur, China blocked any reference to R2P in the Security Council Resolution 1769 that authorised an African Union-UN force to protect IDPs and other civilians. The attempts again Sri Lanka in April-May 2009 also failed.

Current status of R2P

Perhaps the most accurate up-to-date status of the R2P ‘doctrine is provided in Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s ‘report on human security’ released on April 6, 2010. Paragraph 24 of the report, the solitary paragraph that refers to R2P states: “Meanwhile, the responsibility to protect, as agreed upon by Member States in paragraphs 138 to 140 of the World Summit Outcome, focuses on protecting populations from specific cases of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleaning and crimes against humanity. As noted in the Secretary-General’s report on implementing the responsibility to protect (A/63/677), the international community, guided by the principles of the Charter, must do its part to prevent and limit the escalation of these cases. Such cases result in large and complex humanitarian crises that are costly in terms of human lives, loss of social capital and financial resources, and are more difficult to resolve later.”

UN Charter

As the preceding account of history shows, nothing has changed in relation to the acceptance of R2P as a ‘doctrine’ to be used to justify international intervention in domestic affairs of other countries.

In addition to the suspicions arising from the dubious origins of the R2P project, the successful operation of the existing UN structural and policy frameworks have made this ‘doctrine’ unwarranted: the UN Charter gave expression to the objectives of the international community of achieving global peace based on sovereignty, prosperity and equality, and laid out the tools for achieving those objectives through Chapters VI, VII and VIII of the UN Charter; the R2P idea flies in the face of the founding principles of the UN.

The concerns of the developing world described by Coomaraswamy as ‘paranoid state of mind’ are fully justified in the context of the disgraceful history of this dubious ‘project’ initiated by the neocolonial powers. The Economist of July 23, 2009 entitled an article on R2P ‘An Idea whose Time has Come and Gone?’; Coomaraswamy and others who are wasting their energies, albeit on handsome UN salaries, would do well to ponder! Concluded

The writer holds LLB Hns. and PhD (International Relations) degrees from the University of Sydney.