Reviewed by Mustafa Qadri
Sunday, 21 Jun, 2009 | 10:04 AM PST |
‘Never again’ was the world’s reaction to the horrors of Hitler’s concentration camps. Sadly, those words continue to ring hollow over six decades later. In this timely book Gareth Evans, Australia’s foreign minister in the Hawke and Keating governments, charts international attempts to put an end to mass atrocities once and for all.
Since his retirement from Australian politics in 1998, Evans has worked tirelessly on this problem and the book represents the culmination of his efforts. It is as much a handbook as it is a template for what he considers the best, most realistic approach to preventing and responding to mass atrocities.
Neatly compiled and chock full of useful case studies and practical insights, the book is a useful resource for practitioners and interested citizens alike.
The book relies heavily on analysis and thinking generated from within the UN system. His aim, it appears, is not to reinvent the wheel, but to reinvigorate it. Evans is an unashamed multilateralist, and he affirms this by citing several situations — from Burundi to Macedonia — where multilateral organisations like Nato and the EU have stepped in before mass atrocities might have occurred.
The term ‘responsibility to protect’, which is also the title of the book, is used to describe every nation’s obligation to prevent and respond to mass atrocities.
Under this doctrine, all states continue to bear primary responsibility to protect their citizens from such crises. But where a population is suffering serious harm the otherwise inviolable territory of a state yields to the international responsibility to protect.
After a brief but useful introduction to the history of mass atrocities, the first section of the book covers the development of the responsibility to protect concept. The second, more substantial portion of the book deals with the application of this responsibility before, during and after a crisis has occurred.
Evans coined the term ‘responsibility to protect’ (abbreviated to R2P in keeping with the taxonomy of the 21st century) during proceedings of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty which he co-chaired.
Established by the United Nations in 2001, the ICISS was tasked with ‘bridging the gap’ between the need to respond to mass atrocities and respecting the territorial integrity of sovereign nations.
As a member of the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change in 2003, which included elder statesmen from every corner of the globe, he continued to champion the principle.
It is a testament to Evans’ clout and persistence that although the R2P debate foundered following the events of September 11, it was eventually adopted by the 2005 World Summit, a meeting of the world’s leaders hosted by the United Nations in New York. To this day, however, many nations continue to query the concept’s international standing.
There are constant reminders of this throughout the book, particularly amongst non-western states who fear foreign intrusion. Evans goes to great lengths to convince the reader why R2P is not a Trojan horse for legitimating western excursions into the ‘Global South’ such as the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003.
But there is no doubting that it is the Global South that is the focus of this work, a matter not lost on readers here in Pakistan, and it is the West that is expected to do much of the intervention be it military or not.
Evans stresses that R2P is not just about military intervention but a ‘menu of responses’ ranging from non-military – like economic sanctions, political and diplomatic isolation, or threats of referral to the International Criminal Court — to military options.
Indeed, he argues that military intervention should only be available if there is a reasonable chance of ‘halting or averting atrocities.’ But intervention is not justified if it makes the situation worse. Unfortunately, how and by whom interventions are to be judged is not addressed in much detail.
Nor is the spectre of great power impunity. Evans insists that powerful states are also vulnerable — if not militarily than by other forms of international pressure. But the example offered of the pressure placed on Indonesia to permit a referendum on East Timor’s independence is far from convincing.
Given his commitment to the UN Security Council as, among other things, ‘the only source of legal authority for non-consensual military interventions,’ it is unsurprising that he concludes that great power impunity is a fact of life that cannot be displaced.
That may be so, but a more comprehensive treatment of this issue would have been useful, especially given Evan’s experience as a senior diplomat from a middle-tier power that must, for its own survival, forever juggle the demands of its more powerful allies.
There are other omissions too. Although alluded to in some chapters, the responsibility of private actors, such as multinational corporations and private military contractors, for mass atrocity crimes is not discussed.
Another is East Timor. Evans speaks usefully of his experience with the UN mission in Cambodia in the 1990s. Yet he offers surprisingly little on East Timor’s tumultuous recent history. It was Evans after all who, as Australia’s foreign minister, infamously drank champagne with his Indonesian counterpart Ali Alatas after the two countries had signed a treaty sharing the oil wealth of the tiny then-occupied land.
That treaty, and Australian support for Indonesia’s claim over the island, did much to legitimate an occupation that the UN estimates led to the death of one-third of the Timorese population, the highest per capita death rate since the Holocaust. That alone should have marked it out as a suitable case study for the book. That the country continues to struggle even after gaining independence in 2002 makes it a disappointing omission.
Evans is nevertheless to be commended for seeking to address the great humanitarian challenges of our times. If he does not quite manage to answer all lingering questions he can be thanked for providing several answers. For too long this important discussion has been the sole preserve of political and intellectual elites. With this book you get the feeling he wants the rest of us to join the debate.
The Responsibility to Protect: Ending mass atrocity crimes once and for all
By Gareth Evans
Brookings Institution Press, Washington
ISBN 978-0-8157-2504-6
348pp. $29.95
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/in-paper-magazine/books-and-authors/once-and-for-all
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