The responsibility to protect doctrine and humanitarian intervention: Too many ambiguities for a working doctrine

Journal of Conflict and Security Law

Volumn 13, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 191-213

  Focarelli, Carlo ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF PERUGIA   (Italy)

^b LUISS UNIVERSITY   (Italy)

Author keywords

Failed states; Gross violation of human rights; Humanitarian intervention; Responsibility to protect; UN General Assembly; UN Security Council

Indexed keywords

EID: 67449102320     PISSN: 14677954     EISSN: 14677962     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/jcsl/krn014     Document Type: Article

References (135)

1. The report is available at .
2. We the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century Millennium Report of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, September 2000, p. 48. Available at . The Secretary-General's answer was that 'surely no legal principle - not even sovereignty - can ever shield crimes against humanity. Where such crimes occur and peaceful attempts to halt them have been exhausted, the Security Council has a moral duty to act on behalf of the international community. The fact that we cannot protect people everywhere is no reason for doing nothing when we can. Armed intervention must always remain the option of last resort, but in the face of mass murder it is an option that cannot be relinquished'.
3. And extended to natural disasters, at which the report did make a hint (para. 4.20), see T. R. Saechao, 'Natural Disasters and the Responsibility to Protect: From Chaos to Clarity', (2007) 32 Brooklyn Journal of Int. Law 663-707
4. the doctrine has also provided an opportunity to justify - as a 'corollary', but going well beyond its original strictly humanitarian grounds - pre-emptive military operations against states being suspected of using weapons of mass destruction or of making it possible for terrorist groups to use such weapons, cf. M. F. Feinstein, A.-M. Slaughter, 'A Duty to Prevent', (2004) 83 Foreign Affairs 136-150.
5. See, e.g. R. C. Thakur, 'Intervention, Sovereignty and the Responsibility to Protect', (2002) 33 Security Dialogue 323-340
6. J. I. Levitt, 'The Responsibility to Protect: A Beaver Without a Dam?', (2003) 25 Michigan Journal of International Law 153-177
7. R. C. Thakur, 'In Defense of the Responsibility to Protect', (2003) 7 International Journal of Human Rights 160-178
8. D. Warner, 'Responsibility to Protect and the Limits of Imagination', (2003) 7 Int. Journal of Human Rights 154-159
9. A. J. Bellamy, 'Responsibility to Protect or Trojan Horse? The Crisis in Darfur and Humanitarian Intervention after Iraq', (2005) 19 Ethics & International Affairs 31-53
10. T. G. Weiss, Military-Civilian Interactions: Humanitarian Crises and the Responsibility to Protect (2005)
11. P. Williams and A. Bellamy, 'The Responsibility to Protect and the Crisis in Darfur', (2005) 36 Security Dialogue 27-47
12. M.-J. Zahar, 'Intervention, Prevention, and the "Responsibility to Protect"', (2005) 60 International Journal 723-734
13. G. Molier, 'Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect after 9/11', (2006) 53 Netherlands Int. Law Review 37-62
14. R. C. Thakur, The United Nations, Peace and Security from Collective Security to the Responsibility to Protect (2006)
15. A. L. Bannon, 'The Responsibility to Protect: The U.N. World Summit and the Question of Unilateralism', (2006) 115 The Yale Law Journal 1157-1165
16. R. J. Hamilton, 'The Responsibility to Protect from Document to Doctrine - But What of Implementation?', (2006) 19 Harvard Human Rights Journal 289-297
17. P. Hilpold, 'The Duty to Protect and the Reform of the United Nations, a New Step in the Development of International Law?', (2006) 10 Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law 35-69
18. L. Boisson de Chazournes and L. Condorelli, 'De la 'Responsabilit'e de Protéger', ou d'une Nouvelle Parure pour une Notion déjà Bien Établie', (2006) Revue Générale de Droit Internationale Public 11-18
19. A. J. Bellamy, Preventing Future Kosovos and Future Rwandas: The Responsibility to Protect after the 2005 World Summit (2006)
20. A. Bellamy, 'Whither the Responsibility to Protect?', (2006) 20 Ethics & International Affairs 143-169
21. C. Stahn, 'Responsibility to Protect: Politic Rhetoric or Emerging Legal Norm?', (2007) 101 American Journal of Int. Law 99-120.
22. M. Benzing, 'Sovereignty and the Responsibility to Protect in International Criminal Law', in D. König, P. T. Stoll, V. Röben, N. Metz-Lück (eds), International Law Today: New Challenges and the Need for Reform? (2008) 17-50.
23. The responsibility to protect doctrine finds wide acceptance amongst NGOs; see .
24. UN doc. S/2007/721.
25. .
26. On 21 February 2008 the Secretary-General announced the appointment of Mr Edward C. Luck as Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect (cf. ).
27. According to the Commission, 'if people are prepared to look at all these issues from the new perspective that we propose, it may just make finding agreed answers that much easier' (para. 2.5). As states hardly let themselves mislead by words, it seems that the Commission intended to find answers more easily acceptable in the world at large outside states (for instance, in the world public opinion and in its representing entities), so as to indirectly force the most reluctant states to accept it as a response to their own peoples' pressure.
28. On the question of the relationship between sovereignty and pursuance of global values, see C. Focarelli, 'Il Sistema degli Stati e il Governo dell'Umanità nel Diritto Internazionale Contemporaneo', (2007) 6 Quaderni di Relazioni Internazionali 42-53.
29. Permanent Court of International Justice, Advisory Committee of Jurists, Procésverbaux of the Proceedings of the Committee, June 16th-24th July 1920 with Annexes, The Hague, 1920, p. 325. For the English version, whose text reads 'the conception of justice and injustice as undeniably written on the hearts of civilised people', see p. 324.
30. A critique to the 'relativism' of current international law, as well as to the United Nations as a body dependent heavily on the behaviour of states which are detached from the natural moral law, was recently made by Pope Benedictus XVI in a speech on 1 December 2007, addressed to Catholic NGOs. Available at .
31. Cf. L. Daston and M. Stolleis (eds.), Natural Law and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Europe: Jurisprudence, Technology, Moral and Natural Philosophy (2007).
32. No doubt the report plays upon the ambiguity of the term 'responsibility' which can denote either a generic task, or a duty to deal with or take care of something or (more specifically) the consequences of a violation of a distinct primary obligation (presumably erga omnes), namely the obligation to respect fundamental human rights and international humanitarian law. This ambiguity extends to the question of whether the international community's reaction is the subject of a mere power or else of a veritable obligation, since a 'duty' to react leads one to think of both a legal obligation and a legal power which is only the legal counterpart of a moral duty.
33. For an analysis of these conditions, see S. C. Neff, War and the Law of Nations. A General History (2005) 45-59.
34. In fact, it is almost commonplace amongst historians of international law to observe that the realities of medieval war were poles apart from the just war theory, (cf. for instance, W. G. Grewe, Epochen der Völkerrechtsgeschichte (1984) 131-147, English translation: The Epochs of International Law (2000) 105-118.
35. J. Levitt, op. cit., fn. 4, p. 166, suggested that the report 'does not go far enough', in that it does not include within the just cause threshold racial discrimination and massive violations of human rights (which he regards as peremptory norms) as well as interventions aimed at reinstalling democratically elected governments, although these hypotheses are covered by the African practice and, in particular, by the treaty establishing the African Union.
36. On the meaning to be given to the concept of international community as a whole, see C. Focarelli, 'Customary Foundations of Jus Gentium in Francisco Súarez's Thought and the Concept of International Community in Contemporary International Law', (2006) 16 Italian Yearbook of Int. Law 41-56.
37. As recently occurred with respect to Burma (cf. infra, fn. 103).
38. See A. J. Bellamy, op. cit., fn. 4, p. 4.
39. See B. Conforti, The Law and Practice of the United Nations (2005) 225-226.
40. Cf. also para. 1.21.
41. UN doc. A/59/565.
42. UN doc. A/59/2005.
43. UN doc. A/RES/60/1.
44. For an accurate comparison between the three documents, see Stahn, loc. cit., fn. 4 pp. 102-110.
45. See W. G. Grewe, Epochen der Völkerrechtsgeschichte, op. cit., fn. 15, pp. 573-583, English translation: The Epochs of International Law, op. cit., fn. 15, pp. 487-496.
46. See more recently, V. A. Kartaskin, 'Humanitarian Intervention in the Globalizing World', (2005) 5 Baltic Yearbook of Int. Law (2005) 27-40
47. P. Valek, 'Is Unilateral Intervention Compatible with the U.N. Charter?', (2005) 26 Michigan Journal of Int. Law 1223-1255
48. R. Goodman, 'Humanitarian Intervention and Pretexts for War', (2006) 100 American Journal of International Law 107-141
49. R. Janse, 'The Legitimacy of Humanitarian Interventions', (2006) 19 LJIL 669-692
50. J. Zajadlo, 'Humanitarian Intervention Threat to International Order, Moral Imperative or Customary Norm "in Statu Nascendi"?', 27 Polish Yearbook of Int. Law (2006) 33-48.
51. UN doc. A/59/PV.86-90.
52. UN doc. A/59/PV.86, p. 9.
53. UN doc. A/59/PV.86, p. 13.
54. UN doc. A/59/PV.86, p. 5.
55. UN doc. A/59/PV.86, p. 9.
56. UN doc. A/59/PV.86, p. 13.
57. UN doc. A/59/PV.86, p. 15.
58. UN doc. A/59/PV.89, p. 22.
59. UN doc. A/59/PV.89, pp. 24-25.
60. UN doc. A/59/PV.87, pp. 17-18.
61. UN doc. A/59/PV.89, pp. 14-15.
62. UN doc. A/59/PV.90, p. 19.
63. UN doc. A/59/PV.90, p. 26.
64. UN doc. A/59/PV.89, pp. 24-25.
65. UN doc. A/59/PV.87, p. 6.
66. UN doc. A/59/PV.86, p. 24.
67. UN doc. A/59/PV.87, p. 5.
68. UN doc. A/59/PV.87, p. 29.
69. UN doc. A/59/PV.88, p. 4.
70. UN doc. A/59/PV.89, p. 27, as well as A/59/PV.96, p. 9.
71. UN doc. A/59/PV.88, p. 4.
72. UN doc. A/59/PV.88, p. 13.
73. UN doc. A/59/PV.88, p. 19.
74. UN doc. A/59/PV.88, p. 9.
75. UN doc. A/59/PV.88, p. 22.
76. UN doc. A/59/PV.88, p. 26.
77. UN doc. A/59/PV.87, p. 23.
78. See the letter of the US permanent representative J. Bolton of 30 August 2005, to the President of the UN General Assembly concerning changes to be made to para. 118 of the Outcome document draft on the responsibility to protect (available at ).
79. The United States' stance - generally favourable, but not less ambiguous - on the responsibility to protect doctrine can be read in (2006) 100 American Journal of International Law 463-464.
80. UN doc. A/59/PV.87, p. 13.
81. UN doc. A/59/PV.86, p. 20.
82. UN doc. A/59/PV.89, p. 10.
83. UN doc. S/RES/1674 (2006).
84. UN doc. S/PV.5319 and S/PV.5319 (Resumption 1) for debates and S/2005/40 for the Secretary-General's report.
85. UN doc. S/PV.5319 (Resumption 1), p. 9.
86. UN doc. S/PV.5319, p. 9.
87. UN doc. S/PV.5319, p. 11.
88. UN doc. S/PV.5319, p. 12.
89. UN doc. S/PV.5319, p. 20.
90. UN doc. S/PV.5319, p. 22.
91. UN doc. S/PV.5319, p. 23.
92. UN doc. S/PV.5319, pp. 25-26.
93. UN doc. S/PV.5319, p. 29.
94. UN doc. S/PV.5319, p. 28.
95. UN doc. S/PV.5319, p. 31.
96. UN doc. S/PV.5319 (Resumption 1), pp. 4-5.
97. UN doc. S/PV.5319 (Resumption 1), p. 7.
98. UN doc. S/PV.5319 (Resumption 1), p. 9.
99. UN doc. S/PV.5319 (Resumption 1), p. 10.
100. UN doc. S/PV.5319 (Resumption 1), p. 13.
101. UN doc. S/PV.5319 (Resumption 1), p. 17.
102. UN doc. S/PV.5319 (Resumption 1), p. 19.
103. UN doc. S/PV.5319, pp. 13-14.
104. UN doc. S/PV.5319 (Resumption 1), p. 15.
105. UN doc. S/PV.5319, p. 10.
106. UN doc. S/PV.5319, p. 19.
107. UN doc. S/PV.5319, p. 30.
108. UN doc. S/PV.5319 (Resumption 1), p. 3.
109. UN doc. S/PV.5319 (Resumption 1), p. 6.
110. UN doc. S/PV.5319 (Resumption 1), p. 8.
111. UN doc. S/PV.5476 for the favourable statements of the United Kingdom (pp. 6-7), Slovakia (p. 8), Ghana (p. 11), Tanzania (p. 13), Congo (p. 15), Argentina (p. 16), France (p. 20), Denmark (p. 21), Austria on behalf of the European Union (p. 22), Liechtenstein (p. 26), Canada (p. 27) and Guatemala (p. 31). Slovenia suggested permanent members of the Security Council abstain from casting their veto (p. 24). China again took a critical stance (p. 10).
112. UN doc. S/PV.5703 for the favourable statements of Panama (pp. 7-8), Peru (p. 8), Italy (pp. 10-11), Congo (p. 16), Slovakia (p. 17), the United Kingdom (p. 20), Ghana (pp. 20-21), Belgium (p. 24), Guatemala (p. 25), Japan (p. 26), Argentina (p. 27), Germania on behalf of the European Union (p. 30), Nigeria (p. 32), Canada (pp. 35-36), Liechtenstein (p. 35), Korea (pp. 36-37) and Rwanda (p. 37).
113. UN doc. S/PV.5703, p. 28.
114. UN doc. S/PV.5703, p. 17. China affirmed that 'no arbitrary intervention [should] be imposed on the government concerned over its objection' and that 'the Security Council should refrain from invoking the concept of the 'responsibility to protect'-still less should the concept be abused'. Colombia as well underlined the need that state sovereignty is safeguarded (p. 39).
115. UN doc. S/PV.5703, pp. 11-12.
116. UN doc. S/PV.5703, pp. 9-10.
117. UN doc. S/PV.5703, p. 23.
118. UN doc. S/PV.5781 for the statements of Belgium (p. 7), Panama (pp. 10-11), France (p. 13), South Africa (p. 15),Ghana (p. 17), Slovakia (p. 22), Peru (p. 24), Congo (p. 25), Iceland (p. 29), Portugal on behalf of the European Union (ibidem, Resumption, p. 2), Senegal (p. 8), Guatemala (p. 9), Nigeria (pp. 12-13), Australia (p. 13), Canada (p. 13), Liechtenstein (p. 16), Nepal (p. 18), Argentina (p. 19), Mexico (p. 20) and Colombia (p. 22).
119. In particular, Qatar observed that '[w]hile the principle of the responsibility to protect reflects a noble human value, it is easily exploited and abused; this prompts us to be cautious in dealing with this principle. Our objectives must therefore not be politicised; they must transcend individual interests and reflect pure humanitarian motives' (in UN doc. S/PV.5781, p. 18). Cautious was also the attitude of Vietnam (ibidem, Resumption, p. 22).
120. UN doc. S/PV.5781, p. 10. The Chinese delegate added that '[t]he Security Council should not become a forum for extrapolating this concept or engaging in other similar legislative activities, because that is a task for the whole membership of the United Nations. At present, this concept is not yet mature, and many Member States have considerable concerns about it'.
121. UN doc. S/PV.5781, p. 11. The United Kingdom affirmed that 'in those exceptional cases in which states cannot or will not protect civilians from the gravest abuses of their human rights, the international community not only has a right to act, but a responsibility to do so. That action can come in a range of forms, from sanctions against those responsible to direct intervention to protect civilians and should always be proportionate and carefully chosen'.
122. UN doc. S/PV.5781, pp. 30-31.
123. UN doc. S/PV.5781 (Resumption), p. 5.
124. UN doc. S/PV.5781, p. 8.
125. UN doc. S/RES/1755 (2007) for the text of the resolution and UN doc. S/ PV.5670 for the debate at the Security Council.
126. UN doc. S/RES/1769 (2007) for the text of the resolution (which commends 'the agreement of Sudan that the Hybrid operation shall be deployed in Darfur, as detailed in the conclusions of the high-level AU/UN consultations with the Government of Sudan in Addis Ababa on 12 June 2007 and confirmed in full during the Council's meeting with the President of Sudan on 17 June in Khartoum') and UN doc. S/PV.5727 for the debate at the Security Council. It is worth noting, that in this debate no state expressly raised the question of the responsibility to protect.
127. See A. De Waal, 'Darfur and the Failure of the Responsibility to Protect', (2007) 83 International Affairs 1039-1054.
128. The draft resolution obtained nine votes in favour, three votes against (China, Russian Federation and South Africa) and three abstentions (Congo, Indonesia and Qatar) (UN doc. S/2007/14). Objecting states underline that neighbour states of Burma had denied that there was a threat to regional peace and security and that the question was domestic beyond the competence of the Council (UN doc. S/PV.5619).
129. UN doc. S/PRST/2007/37. It is to be noted that no recourse to the procedure provided for in the Uniting for Peace resolution has been made.
130. See, for instance, Hamilton, loc. cit., fn. 4, p. 293.
131. See, loc. cit., fn. 3.
132. See Bellamy, Preventing Future Kosovos and Future Rwandas, op. cit. fn. 4, p. 8.
133. See L. Boisson de Chazournes and L. Condorelli, loc. cit., fn. 4, pp. 14-16.
134. A. L. Bannon, 'The Responsibility to Protect', loc. cit., fn. 4, p. 1162, remarked that unilateral intervention is admissible, subject to conditions laid dawn in theWorld Summit document of 2005, inter alia because 'in the absence of a functioning international institutions, one must look to the overriding purpose of the Summit agreement', an argument which in our view is hardly compatible with the positions taken by states on the specific issue of military intervention.
135. In a well-known speech on 5 March 2004, Sedgefield, the former UK Prime Minister T. Blair affirmed that '[i]t may well be that under international law as presently constituted, a regime can systematically brutalise and oppress its people and there is nothing anyone can do... This may be the law, but should it be?', thereby concluding that 'we do not accept in a community that others have a right to oppress and brutalise their people' (available at ). This statement reflects the new stance taken by the United Kingdom supporting humanitarian intervention 'in exceptional circumstances', beginning with the statement made by the Legal Adviser to the Foreign Office, A. Aust on 2 December 1992, (cf. [1992] British Yearbook of International Law, p. 827) and recently resumed in relation to the responsibility to protect doctrine (loc. cit., fn. 97).