Posted on: February 22nd, 2011 by Ernie Regehr
By all accounts a “mass atrocity event”[i] is unfolding in Libya. There is less certainty as to whether the international community will find the means to respond.
A group of NGOs under the leadership of UN Watch has issued an urgent appeal (see endnote for a link to full statement)[ii] to world leaders for international intervention in Libya: “We urge you to mobilize the United Nations and the international community to take immediate action to halt the mass atrocities now being perpetrated by the Libyan government against its own people. The inexcusable silence cannot continue.”
The NGOs describe a grim picture: “Snipers are shooting peaceful protesters. Artillery and helicopter gunships have been used against crowds of demonstrators. Thugs armed with hammers and swords attacked families in their homes. Hospital officials report numerous victims shot in the head and chest, and one struck on the head by an anti-aircraft missile. Tanks are reported to be on the streets and crushing innocent bystanders. Witnesses report that mercenaries are shooting indiscriminately from helicopters and from the top of roofs. Women and children were seen jumping off Giuliana Bridge in Benghazi to escape. Many of them were killed by the impact of hitting the water, while others were drowned. The Libyan regime is seeking to hide all of these crimes by shutting off contact with the outside world. Foreign journalists have been refused entry. Internet and phone lines have been cut or disrupted.”
They describe conditions and events that they say are “systematic violations” of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as “crimes against humanity” as defined by the Explanatory Memorandum to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. They refer to the Responsibility to Protect commitment made by the World Summit in 2005: “Because the Libyan authorities are manifestly failing to protect their population from crimes against humanity, should peaceful means be inadequate, member states are obliged to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the UN Charter, including Chapter VII.”
There have been several other calls for limited intervention to enforce a no-fly zone. Such a zone would be designed to end airborne attacks on civilians, and also to “prevent mercenaries and weapons from being shipped in.”[iii] The Libyan Ambassador, at least one of them, joined the call – referring to “genocide.”[iv] Enforcement forces mentioned include NATO and the Egyptian Air Force.
In his Foreign Affairs blog, Marc Lynch also calls for enforcement of a non-fly zone:[v] “This is not a peaceful democracy protest movement which the United States can best help by pressuring allied regimes from above, pushing for long-term and meaningful reform, and persuading the military to refrain from violence. It’s gone well beyond that already, and this time I find myself on the side of those demanding more forceful action before it’s too late.”
In a strong appeal issued before the current Libyan crisis, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called in general for “timely and decisive” responses. “How many children,” he asked, are in places of peril today and asking: “Is the world listening? Will help arrive in time? Who will be there for me and my family?”[vi]
Who, indeed?
Later on Feb 22, two additional statements were issued.
Francis Deng and Edward Luck, the UN Secretary-General’s advisers respectively on genocide the responsibility to protect, issued a statement which said in part: “We remind national authorities in Libya, as well as in other countries facing large-scale popular protests, that the heads of State and Government at the 2005 World Summit pledged to protect populations by preventing acts of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, as well as their incitement. We join Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in urging all parties to exercise utmost restraint and to seek peaceful means of resolving their political differences.”[1]
The UN human rights chief, Navi Pillay, also called for an immediate end to the human rights violations in Libya and for an independent international investigation. “The callousness with which Libyan authorities and their hired guns are reportedly shooting live rounds of ammunition at peaceful protestors is unconscionable. I am extremely worried that lives are being lost even as I speak,” Pillay said. She referred to the reported use of machine guns, snipers and military planes against demonstrators, calling such acts brazen violations of international law. “The state has an obligation to protect the rights to life, liberty and security,” she said. “Protection of civilians should always be the paramount consideration in maintaining order and the rule of law.”[2]
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eregehr@uwaterloo.ca
Notes
[i] The term is used by Mark Leon Goldberg, “The Perils of a ‘No Fly Zone’ for Libya,” 21 February 2011. http://www.undispatch.com/the-perils-of-a-no-fly-zone-for-libya. A “mass atrocity” is usually defined as a minimum of 5,000 civilians killed intentionally. The Stanley Foundation, “Mass Atrocities and Armed Conflict: Links, Distinctions, and Implications for the Responsibility to Prevent, appendices to, Alex J. Bellamy, “Mass Atrocities and Armed Conflict: Links, Distinctions, and Implications for the Responsibility to Prevent,” Policy Analysis Brief, The Stanley Foundation, February 2011. http://www.stanleyfoundation.org/publications/pab/BellmayAppendices22011.pdf.
[ii] UN Watch, 20 February 2011. http://blog.unwatch.org/index.php/2011/02/20/urgent-ngo-appeal-to-world-leaders-to-prevent-atrocities-in-libya/.
[iii] “Calls for Libya ‘no-fly zone’,” AFROL News, 21 February 2011. http://www.afrol.com/articles/37390.
[iv] “Libyan Envoy to Ask UN Security Council to Impose No-Fly Zone,” Bloomberg, 22 February 2011. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-22/libyan-envoy-to-ask-un-security-council-to-impose-no-fly-zone.html.
[v] Marc Lynch, “Intervening in the Libyan tragedy,” Foreign Policy, 21 February 2011. http://lynch.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/02/21/the_libyan_horror.
[vi] “Secretary-General sets out broad agenda for strengthening human protection,” UN News Centre, 2 February 2011. http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=37454&Cr=responsibility+to+protect&Cr1=#.
[1] Statement by the UN Secretary–General’s Special Advisers on the Prevention of Genocide and the Responsibility to Protect on the situation in Libya, 22 February 2011. http://responsibilitytoprotect.org/UN_Secretary-General’s_Special_Advisers_on_the_Prevention_of_Genocide_and_the_Responsibility_to_Protect_on_the_Situation_in_Libya].pdf.
[2] “Pillay calls for international inquiry into Libyan violence and justice for victims,” 22 February 2011, Office of the High Commissioner of Human rights. http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/Media.aspx?IsMediaPage=true.
Posted on: January 6th, 2011 by Ernie Regehr
The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect warns that “an escalation in the situation [in Côte d’Ivoire] could easily lead to the commission of mass atrocities….”[i] Protection is far from guaranteed, but the international effort to date is serious.
All the ingredients for long-term strife punctuated by explosive violence are in abundant supply in the Ivory Coast: north-south regionalism that reflects an economic divide, ethnic conflict, a north-south Muslim/Christian divide, xenophobia borne out of a history of illegal immigration, and most recently of course a contested presidential election in which each of the final two contestants has access to partisan armed forces.
The current crisis, in which the descent into major fighting has thus far been avoided, has already imposed huge costs on the people of a country still trying to recover from the last civil war. The UN reports that violence has claimed the lives of nearly 200 people and investigators have found evidence of extrajudicial executions, torture and arrests.[ii] A week ago NGOs working in northeastern Liberia estimated that some 30,000 refugees had arrived from Côte d’Ivoire, many of whom were “reporting widespread violence and intimidation from both Ivoirian government troops and soldiers from the former rebel Forces Nouvelles operating in the west.”[iii] In the midst of deeply entrenched poverty, the crisis is putting food prices on the rise – doubling in some cases.[iv] The public unrest and political chaos are currently blocking a nationwide vaccination drive against yellow fever.[v]
A National Post columnist, in another run at the failures of the UN, complained that “once again the UN finds itself with a problem that has no apparent solution”[vi] – but that is exactly where the most intractable problems are taken. The UN and the international community are indeed already deeply involved in the crisis: through the presence of UN peacekeeping forces, a succession of Security Council resolutions, the African Union,[vii] the regional Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS),[viii] and most especially a declared commitment to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, when their own governments fail to do so.
Protection from that list of crimes means preventing them, which is the point emphasized by Francis Deng and Edward Luck, special Advisers to the Secretary-General respectively on the prevention of genocide and the responsibility to protect. In a public statement on the crisis in Ivory Coast they said the protection responsibility “entails the prevention of those crimes, importantly including their incitement,” and they warned all the involved parties “that they are accountable for their actions under international law.”[ix]
The UN Security Council similarly reminded Ivorian leaders that they “bear primary responsibility for ensuring peace and protecting the civilian population” and called on the UN peacekeeping forces to assist local authorities in that mission and to “implement [their] protection of civilian mandate.”[x]
There is inevitably reluctance to formally invoke the “responsibility to protect” (R2P), not least because it is taken by some as code for military intervention. The UK Independent newspaper launched a pre-emptive headline against military action with the declaration that “the last thing Ivorians need is an invasion”[xi] – which is a sentiment that could be appropriately applied to all states virtually all the time, but which offers rather slight help in sorting out the means by which the international community might best act on its R2P obligations.
To date, it is worth noting, the international community has been pursuing its responsibility cautiously but seriously in the spirit of the R2P doctrine approved by the UN in 2005.
International intervention or assistance is already partly military, inasmuch as UN peacekeeping force of over 9,000 international military and police personnel are already deployed there through the UN Operation in Côte d’Ivoir (UNOCI),[xii] including a few hundred seconded from UNMIL in Liberia. More may be added, but the primary focus is on the diplomacy envisioned under Chapter VI and non-military coercion under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.
In Chapter VI diplomacy the international community has been united in calling for the election results to be respected, for President Laurent Gbagbo (a southerner) to step down, and for election winner Alassane Quattara (a northerner) to assume that role. Measures under Chapter VII include a military embargo, a ban on diamond exports, frozen bank accounts and other assets, and travel bans against key individuals.
Louise Arbour of the International Crisis Group reflects the general wariness of the international community when she says “a military solution to the crisis in Côte d”Ivoir is unlikely.”[xiii] ECOWAS and the AU have clearly put military intervention, beyond the UN forces already there, on the table, but neither is keen, or has the ready means, to go that route. So, for now, we are seeing R2P in a prevention mode in Ivory Coast, along the lines envisioned by the framers of the 2005 R2P commitment.
The outcome is far from certain, and it is an uncertainty that holds the well-being of millions of people in the balance.
eregehr@uwaterloo.ca
Notes
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[i] “Open Statement on the Situation in Côte d’Ivoire,” Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, 17 December 2010. www.globalr2p.org.
[ii] BBC News, 28 December 2010. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11916590.
[iii] “Back to square one?”, IRIN, 30 December 2010. http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportID=91496.
[iv] “Political impasse sparks food price hikes,” IRIN, 28 December 2010. http://www.irinnews.org/PrintReport.aspx?ReportID=91472.
[v] “Chaos blocks yellow fever vaccination drive,” IRIN, 5 January 2011. http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportID=91530.
[vi] Kelly McParland, “The UNs dilemma in Ivory Coast,” National Post, 2 January 2011. http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/01/02/kelly-mcparland-the-uns-dilemma-in-ivory-coast/.
[vii] Communique, African Union, 9 December 2010. http://www.africa-union.org/root/au/index/index.htm.
[viii] Extraordinary Session of the Authority of Heads of State and Government on Cote D’Ivoir, 24 December 2010. http://www.africa-union.org/root/au/Conferences/2010/december/situation/Final%20Communique_Eng.pdf.
[ix] “UN Secretary-General’s Advisers on the Prevention of Genocide and the Responsibility to Protect on the situation in Côte d’Ivoire,” United Nations press release, 29 December 2010. http://unclef.com/preventgenocide/adviser/pdf/Special%20Advisers’%20Statement%20on%20Cote%20d’Ivoire,%2029%20.12.2010.pdf.
[x] Resolution 1962, United Nations Security Council, 20 December 2010 [S/RES/1962 (2010)]. http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N10/702/17/PDF/N1070217.pdf?OpenElement.
[xi] Adrian Hamilton, “The last thing Ivorians need is an invasion,” The Independent, 30 December 2010. http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/adrian-hamilton/adrian-hamilton-the-last-thing-ivorians-need-is-an-invasion-2171654.html.
[xii] Annual Review of Global Peace Operations 2010, A Project of the Center on International Cooperation (Lynne Reinner Publishers, Boulder and London, 2010), pp. 89-94.
[xiii] Louise Arbour, “Open Letter to the United Nations Security Council on the Situation in Côte d’Ivoir. 20 December 2010. http://www.crisisgroup.org.
