Fighting the logic of inviolable state sovereignty: Balaji Chandramohan questions whether the responsibility to protect doctrine is an extension of international law or an attempt to overlook international law.

• Author: Chandramohan, Balaji
• Position: Report

Humanitarian interventions under the authorisation of the UN Security Council that infringe on a state's sovereignty have recently become the subject of increased debate. This stems from the evocation of the responsibility to protect doctrine for the first time in Libya last year and from attempts to take similar action in relation to Syria. Critics of the doctrine maintain that it is an attempt to facilitate the geo-political interest of states in the Security Council, whereas supporters point to its role in preventing genocide and mass atrocities within states' boundaries. The accepted middle-path could be to strengthen existing international institutions by enabling the UH Peace Keeping Force to take the mantle of implementing the council's resolutions aimed at promoting international peace and security.

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International law is a key element in promoting a system in which all nation states are treated equally and have sovereignty over their territories. (1) That law, and the institutions that uphold it, has evolved through the ages with varying challenges and issues. One aspect that has grown in importance during that evolution is the protection of human rights. In fact, this became a binding obligation on states after the United Nations came into being in 1945, with various conventions and protocols actively enforcing it.

A problem arises when a state fails to respect human rights. In such cases the United Nations has a moral obligation to act to alleviate the situation in the interests of international peace and security. But any such action by the United Nations will inevitably infringe on that state's sovereignty.

The matter is now under debate because the UN Security Council last year, for the first time, evoked the responsibility to protect doctrine in relation to Libya. This concept was first presented in the report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) in December 2001. The timing of this report's release in December 2001 was awkward, coming as it did after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States. In the wake of that shocking event the international debate shifted away from consideration of measures to prevent genocide and mass atrocity toward measures for the prevention and pre-emption of terrorist activities and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, premised in part on an argument of humanitarian intervention, was even more destructive to the advancement of the responsibility to protect agenda. The invasion heightened concerns that responsibility to protect would be used to further erode the sovereignty of smaller developing countries.

In September 2003 then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called upon member states to strengthen the United Nations to better advance development, security, and the protection of human rights. In recognition of the urgent need to address the United Nations' failures to respond to genocide, Annan challenged member states to include protection from genocide as part of this UN reform agenda. He then formed the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change to report on how the United Nations should confront the security threats of the 21st century. In December 2004, the panel released its report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility. Included in the report's 101 recommendations on strengthening the international security framework was an endorsement of an international responsibility to protect populations from grave threats.

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African initiative

Meanwhile, in 2000, African nations were working to enshrine the principles of responsibility to protect within the founding charter of the African Union. First, the Constitutive Act defines the promotion of peace, security and stability and the promotion and protection of 'human and peoples' rights' as core objectives of the union. Second, it identifies 'respect for democratic principles, human rights, the rule of law and good governance', 'respect for the sanctity of human life', and 'condemnation and rejection of impunity' among its core values. Most significantly, Article 4(h) of the Constitutive Act states that it is the 'right of the Union to intervene in a...