World panel outlines guidelines for military intervention


	December 21, 2001	atimes.com

Front

World panel outlines guidelines for military intervention

By Akhilesh Upadhyay

UNITED NATIONS - Events like September 11 rearrange the world in a hurry. Otherwise, the shift in world order is a slow process that takes a lot of suffering, reflection, and learning.

Rwanda in 1994 revealed the horror of inaction. Somalia, on the other hand, exposed how interventions are not always enough. In 1999, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) made a decisive military intervention in Kosovo, but many are still questioning whether NATO had set a wise precedent in bypassing the United Nations.

These and other human catastrophes have led to a broad consensus that the United Nations, formed in the wake of World War II, had throughout the '90s failed to keep pace with the changing needs and expectations of the 21st century. Indeed, at the UN Millennium Summit, Secretary General Kofi Annan challenged the international community to address ethical, political and operational dilemmas posed by humanitarian intervention. It was a call to recognize the shift in the world order from the mutual distrust of the Cold War toward a new system which respects democracy, good governance and human rights.

After a year-long debate, which saw its members travel all over the world for wide-ranging consultations, the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) this week submitted a comprehensive report to Annan that makes the case for military intervention by the UN. "The Responsibility to Protect" argues that it is possible to reconcile the dual objective of protecting particular groups within a sovereign nation without undermining its sovereignty. The United National Security Council is the only universally accepted authority to validate such an intervention.

"The basic argument is that sovereign states have a responsibility to protect their own citizens from avoidable catastrophe," says Gareth Evans, ICISS co-chair and former Australian foreign minister. "However, when they are unable or unwilling to do so, that responsibility must be borne by the broader community of nations." Evans insists that the report is not "another analytical study" on the right to intervene, but a practical guide to a principled intervention. The report, he hopes, will break new ground for an international consensus on who should exercise the intervention, under whose authority, and when, where, and how.

"If you are to take military action," says Evans, "the threshold has to be very high." "The Responsibility" explicitly states that the military intervention is only warranted where there has been "large-scale loss of life", or "large-scale ethnic cleansing". But even then, military intervention, the report argues, can only be justified when every non-military option for the prevention or peaceful resolution of the crisis has been explored. The scale, duration and intensity of the intervention should be the minimum necessary to secure the defined human-protection objective.

The report urges the Permanent Five Members of the Security Council not to apply their veto power, when their vital state interests are not involved, to obstruct the passage of resolutions authorizing military intervention for which there is otherwise majority support. It warns the UN that its failure to rise up to protect "in conscience-shocking situations" could lead the concerned states to explore other means to meet the urgency of the situation. In such a case, UN's stature will seriously suffer, Evans says.

The commission's report was completed before the September 11 attacks, and was not conceived as addressing the challenge posed by such attacks. Instead it aims at providing "precise guidance" for states faced with human-protection claims on other states. The two situations, the report points out, are fundamentally different. The commission has developed a framework to address the first case. The report offers no guidelines for responding to terrorist attacks on a state, such as occurred September 11. It only restates that the UN Charter explicitly affirms, "the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations". The measures taken, however, need to be immediately reported to the Security Council, as the United States did in the aftermath of September 11.

A number of countries have been against the idea of intervention against a sovereign state. China, for example, reacts strongly to any criticism about its handling of separatist movements in Tibet, where people revere their exiled Buddhist leader the Dalai Lama, and human-rights violations in Xianjiang, where Uighur Muslims are waging a separatist movement. India, for its part, has steadfastly stood against any international mediation on Kashmir, and Russia took the same stand on Chechnya.

There are still strong differences over what constitutes the threshold for intervention, though there is largely a consensus that the authority for such an international intervention should be the Security Council, says Mohamed Sahnoun, ICISS co-chair and special adviser to the UN secretary general. "We are pleased that the commission has been able to advance the debate and broaden the scope of consensus. As the secretary general has said, we want no more Rwandas. We believe that the adoption of our proposals is the best way of ensuring it," he said.

The ICISS was established by Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien in response to Annan's challenge at the UN Summit. Members of the Commission are Evans, Sahnoun, Gisele Cote-Harper (Canada), Lee Hamilton (US), Michael Ignatieff (Canada), Vladimir Lukin (Russia), Klaus Nauman (Germany), Cyrill Ramaphosa (South Africa), Fidel Ramos (Philippines), Cornelio Sommaruga (Switzerland), Eduardo Stein (Guatemala), and Ramesh Thakur (India).

(Inter Press Service)

back to the top

©2001 Asia Times Online Co., Ltd.

Building B - 5th Floor, 102/1 Phra Arthit Road, Chanasangkhram, Bangkok 10200, Thailand