Broadening the debate on intervention

The Responsibility to Protect
By Gareth Evans
Brookings, 349pp, $39.95
“NEVER again” was the world’s reaction to the horrors of Hitler’s concentration camps: more than six decades later, those words ring hollow.

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 politics in 1998, Evans has worked tirelessly on this problem and this book is a summation of his efforts so far. It is as much a handbook for identifying crises as a template for solving them, the most realistic approach to preventing and responding to mass atrocities. Neatly compiled and full of useful case studies and practical insights, it is an important resource for practitioners and interested citizens.

Evans relies heavily on analysis and thinking generated from within the UN system, aiming, it appears, not to reinvent the wheel but to refurbish it. He is an unashamed multilateralist and cites several situations, from Burundi to Macedonia, where multilateral organisations such as NATO and the European Union have stepped in before atrocities might have occurred.

“Responsibility to protect” is the term used to describe nations’ obligation to respond to and prevent mass atrocities. Under this doctrine, all states bear primary responsibility to protect their citizens from such crises.

In addition, where a population is suffering serious harm, the otherwise inviolable territory of a state yields to the international responsibility toprotect.

After a brief but informative introduction to mass atrocities throughout history, the first section of the book covers the development of the concept of the responsibility to protect. The second, more substantial section deals with the application of this responsibility before, during and after a crisis has occurred.

Evans coined the term (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 UN in 2001, the ICISS was given the task of 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’s 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 UN in New York. To this day, however, many nations refuse to accept that the concept has international standing, particularly non-Western states that 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 US’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. But there is no doubting that it is the global south that is the focus of this work and it is the West that is expected to do much of the intervention, be it military or not. For some readers, that will be alarming; for others, it will come as a welcome respite from criticisms of international intervention that do not offer any practical alternative.

Evans stresses that R2P is not just about military intervention but a menu of responses ranging from the non-military, such as economic sanctions, political and diplomatic isolation or threats of referral to the International Criminal Court. Indeed, he argues that military intervention should be an option only if there is a reasonable chance of halting or averting atrocities. Intervention is not justified, however, if it worsens the situation. Unfortunately, how and by whom decisions to intervene, and the success of those interventions, are to be judged is not addressed in much detail.

Nor is the spectre of great power impunity. Evans insists that powerful countries too are vulnerable, if not militarily, then by other forms of international pressure. But the example he offers 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 not surprising that Evans concludes that the impunity of great powers is a fact of life. A more comprehensive treatment of the issue would have been useful, however, especially given Evans’s experience as a senior diplomat for a middle-tier power that must, for its own survival, juggle the demands of more powerful allies.

There are other omissions. Although alluded to in some chapters, the responsibility of private actors such as multinational corporations for mass atrocities is not discussed.

Nor 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 Australian foreign minister, notoriously drank champagne with his Indonesian counterpart, the late Ali Alatas, after the two countries had signed a treaty sharing the oil wealth of the tiny 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 a third to one half of theTimorese population. Those figures alone should have made it a suitable case study for the book; that the country continues to struggle even after gaining independence in 2002 makes its omission disappointing.

Evans does, however, address the great humanitarian challenges of our times. If he does not answer all lingering questions, he can be thanked for tackling several. For too long this important discussion has been the sole preserve of political and intellectual elites. With this book you get the feeling Evans wants the rest of us to join the debate.

Mustafa Qadri is a former lawyer who practised in public international law.

NOTE: the version of this article that appears in The Australian incorrectly states that “half to two-thirds” of the East Timorese population was killed under the Indonesia occupation. The correct figure, as noted above, is one third to a half of the population.