Shedding the light of providing concrete legitimacy and judicial platform to ensure the protection of human rights, the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) has amply proven to be a reliable toolkit for international community, especially for the United Nations (UN), to halt mass atrocities. Nonetheless, the doctrine inevitably encounters the matrix of dilemmas in terms of ethical, political and legal issues, which leaves R2P an unceasingly discrepancy over how to counterbalance the respect for state sovereignty and maintenance of peace and security.
It is necessary to understand the mechanism of how R2P frequently get caught in the perplexing grids of this matrix and its components and how the UN resolves this subject. To begin with, the Responsibility to Protect is a result of the 2005 World Summit outcomes, after it had been proposed in 2001 after some traumatic events across the world in the past decades. This doctrine is meticulously built upon six criteria which need to be fully satisfied to deploy intervention within states. Those six principles can be listed as “just cause” threshold, right intention, last resort, proportionate means, reasonable prospects of success and right authority. (Evans and Sahnoun 2002) Simply, R2P is a principle in which it urges individual state to fully obligate to protect its civilians against “genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.” (The United Nations 2005) The International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect succinctly defines the principle as:
The RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT (“RtoP or “R2P”) is a new norm to prevent and stop genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. The Responsibility is not a law, but rather a political commitment to guide states and sub-regional, regional and international arrangements in protecting populations from these crimes and violations. (2013)
Should the state manifestly fail to protect its population, international community and other states, in cooperation with regional organizations and other bodies, may take prepared collective actions on behalf of those who affected by such disasters. In other words, R2P is “a doctrine calling for fundamental alterations to our concepts of national sovereignty and security.” (Murray 2013) Indeed, the advent of R2P has significantly provoked the ideology of existing sovereignty that it sees sovereignty as a precedent element of how states are willingly capable of protecting their citizens. As the doctrine is widely implemented and the complexity of conflicts increases, the ambit of R2P somehow is perceived to violate and intrude the sacredness of sovereignty. The underlying reason of this adversity could trace back to the period after the Cold War since the UN has been intervening in conflicts more frequently, sometimes even without the consent of host country – one of the quintessential essences of R2P principles. Consequently, such interpretation of R2P usually faces with objections and criticisms relating to individual state’s sovereignty.
The first and foremost obstacle is the receptacle in legal supremacy. One principle always appeals to R2P is the principle of non-intervention to such respect of state’s sovereignty, or Westphalian sovereignty. Historically, the conception of sovereignty rooted from the peace treaties of Osnabrück and Münster, or Treaty of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years War in ancient Europe. Upon the signatory ceremony, legal bounds of hierarchy, allegiance and authority existed between the emperor and the Pope on one hand, and the European princes and monarchs on the other were replaced by a new acknowledgement of the relations between the kings and princes. Indeed, this understanding cultivated a recognition of a model of equal sovereignty. This model is a liberal legal order in which each polity adopts its own laws and consequently contracts with other equal entities to create obligations between them insofar as it has been applied and adopted in international community. However, none of those entities has the authority or supreme power to impose obligations on or to command the others. As a corollary, the notion of Westphalian sovereignty has been endured for centuries and said to be the a priori precedence in all international laws and treaties throughout history. In practice, the UN exercises its peacekeeping operations following three core principles: the consent among parties, impartiality and neutrality, and non-use of force except for self-defense. (Mingst and Karns 2012) Moreover, the UN upholds much of its binding motto of non-intervention as it respects state sovereignty ever since the principle lays a fundamental basis within any international organizations. Therefore, should any forms of intervention, legally speaking, on such concrete and well-established principle of Westphalian sovereignty be considered a breach of international law? Additionally, according to Gareth Evans and Mohamed Sahnoun, sovereign state is “empowered by international law to exercise exclusive and total jurisdiction within its territorial borders, and other states have the corresponding duty not to intervene in its internal affairs.” (Evans and Sahnoun 2002) Indeed, the model of sovereignty has dominated the international system for centuries, thence states are granted their legal sovereign status by virtue. Thus far, states are legally and legitimately able to practice power and authority over their populations and territories. This granted sovereignty ipso facto becomes much of individual state’s might that it is treated as another mean of protection. Since the ultimate goal of state is survival, weak and under-developed nations often utilize this protection to against strong and aggressive but illegal and illegitimate interventionism because it pronouncedly offends against “the constitutive norms of international society”. (Bellamy 2003) This is seriously the case of which throughout the 1990s when there were many new countries born out of decolonization. As they enjoyed won sovereignty, simultaneously they were also very much conscious of their fragility and vulnerability that they were unable to confront themselves with such aggressive intervention encroaching on the country, especially of which came from super power states and their alliances. (Evans 2008) Back in history, such dilemma which state borders trumped human rights had notoriously occurred in various events, one very vantage example is the Rwanda Genocide between two Rwandese populations, the Tutsi and the Hutu, in 1994. Though there was a clear evidence that an actual planned genocide was about to take place, the UN blatantly took no serious action, even gradually pulled out its resources and personnel leaving very little support for the United Nations Aid Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR), of which it earlier created. Perversely, as the crisis escalated, what was observed as a civil war by the international community was de facto an ethnic cleansing by the Hutu against the Tutsi. (Hylton 2009) Even in its mandate operating under Chapter VI, peacekeepers were directed to remain neutral, and mainly to focus on assisting humanitarian assistance activities and democratization. Insofar as the situation did not labeled as genocide, the UN and the UNAMIR created a “nurturing, justified agenda for inaction” that led to a total death toll of 800,000 people. (Hylton 2009) Then, there has arguably raised a conundrum of a state’s failure to commit to its pledged responsibility to protect its civilians when mass atrocity occurs; whether it is still illegal to intervene, or whether the deployment of interference causes international objection of violating the very principle of sovereignty. Another question which also weighs on scholars’ shoulders is how to balance these two spectrums of sovereignty and responsibilities, as they argue that this ambivalence could possibly lead to unwelcome and even dangerous challenges to traditional sovereignty. (Glanville 2014) However, there is one answer for sure is that without any intervention in such tragedy, in opposition to the embracement of sovereignty, another Rwandan picture will come as no surprise.
The second drawback that contributes to the limitation in exercising R2P, also to be considered as the toughest problem, is political will in term of national interest. This potential risk is subject to derive from the very beginning of statecraft, particularly with the introduction of the philosophy of classical realism under the umbrella of power. Classical realism perceives the will to possess and practice power is associated with human nature. Thus, classical realists claim that state is primarily “selfish and power seeking”. (Mingst 2004) Additionally, contemporary realists inherit that idea and also believe in the importance of self-interest as they see national interest equates power with influence. (Lebow 2016) This notion of self-interest could be reflected by the activities of expansionism, imperialism and colonialism across history timeline. Those previous policies were mainly to fulfil the quest for new markets, raw materials, much low-cost labor and even the export of capital. Therefore, when it comes to humanitarian intervention, the risk, in reality, lies under the potential of R2P being used as a veil to cover up the “naked pursuit of national self-interest.” (Arbour 2008) At this point, there is an actual overlap between the concept of sovereignty and self-interest to those countries gained their independence out of decolonization. As being said, those countries were much proud of their new identity as they inclined to see the notion of non-intervention as their only defense against threats from exogenous and powerful actors seeking to promote their political and economic interests. Hence, the Global North will definitely find it difficult to justify their foreign affairs where there is no vital national interest while the Global South is worry about their sovereignty being interventional breached. In reality, there is an actual possibility that the concept of R2P could be abused and misused by powerful states to not only advance their national interests but also to dominate weaker ones. (Hehir 2010) As so, the view national interests vis-à-vis R2P, especially in today’s scenario remains purely in the simplified relation of economic-political involvement. Consequently, this episode retains an impasse, of which it is problematic to establish trust and consensus for action. (Evans 2007) The case in Syria is as a very vantage example to illustrate this dilemma. Since the beginning, the conflict in Syria has attracted attention from international community as there has been pressures from humanitarian rights advocates against the augmented influence derived from political entities. The Syrian conflict has existed since 2011 as civilians began rioting against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Ever since, it has been reported there were at least 250,000 people being killed, though the total death toll in fact has reached up to 470,000. Furthermore, as the violence in the country continues, about 4.8 million people have fled the borders creating a perplexing situation of European refugee crisis. Especially, the use of chemical weapons on its citizens, first flashed in 2013 and recently in Idlib in April 2017, has contributed to the high visibility of the crisis as well as the necessity for humanitarian intervention to stop the disaster. As it is located in the central position, Syria is on the high road to Europe as it plays a gateway to get access to the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Hence, there has come a strong involvement of geopolitics within the nation – as proxy wars. As Russia has very strong stakes in Syria that Russian and Iran have the intentions to keep Assad’s regime afloat. Consequently, it has created a high intractability in which it is difficult to pass a resolution without any objection, if not to say veto, from Russia. On the other hand, as notably, the increase in influence of China as the most Oriental actor in roundtables added more weights into the Russian fear that international intervention in Syria might set “a precedent undermining national sovereignty wherever a ruler’s values do not echo those of Western liberal democracy”. (Davidson 2013) This is seriously a case when the two countries have blocked United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution on Syria for 6 times from 2011 which expressed “grave concern at the deterioration of the situation in Syria”. Thus far, it started an increased scrutiny over Russia’s impartiality and also the UNSC’s efficacy in regard to Syria. (Adams 2015) Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, was dismayed that she commented with a very sharp and striking tone in 2012:
The United States is disgusted […] But a couple of members of this council remain steadfast in their willingness to sell out the Syrian people and shield a craven tyrant. The United States, by contrast, stands fully and irrevocably with the long-suffering people of Syria.
Unlike Rwanda, by the time of the Syrian conflict, the concept of Responsibility to Protect had already been first endorsed in the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) Report in 2001. Insofar as a state cannot protect their citizens, even the state is the one committing humanitarian rights abuses, international community can then override sovereignty and act as humanitarian-driven action. However, there needs to remember since the United Nations itself is a state-based organization, states can fully advance their influence using their diplomatic manipulation. Apropos of Syrian conflagration, due to Russian obduracy along with Chinese involvement, there is a very slim chance to turn the table around unless there can reach some levels of compromise and understandings. Obviously, there is a threat in which R2P could “facilitate Western inaction” since R2P can be overused. (Hehir 2010) One could suggest UNSC’s permanent members to transcend their narrow national interests to pursue the goal of international community – an anarchical society, and in fact, to diminish the obsession with state sovereignty and fulfil its obligations to its citizens. Another suggestion could point to the UN’s reform of its avant-garde role in international affairs that it should review its central structure of UNSC, of whether to increase permanent members in order to avoid monolithic power. Though recommendations may sound reasonable and crucially revolutionary, the decision lies under goodwill and cooperation among member states that, perhaps, the UN needs to seriously review and evolve its own structure to avoid the severity of radicalization.
Finally, the outcomes of implementing R2P might be impeded as hindrance lies under ethical controversy, typically in the relation between blue-helmet troops and the UN’s mandates. R2P has ever set a reliable framework for international reactions to civilians’ protection, hence it generates an increased expectation in areas where mass atrocities occur. As there is no perceptible pattern in reaction of the international community to some humanitarian-emergency situations: there was military intervention and sanctions in Kosovo and Libya, but none in Rwanda and Syria – or has yet to come. Thus, populations suffering in uprisings are able to hope for international actions to save their lives. In other words, R2P sends a very clear signal to dictators and aggressors about consequential events once they impose aggressive and lethal hostilities because mass atrocity interests international community by its very nature. Consequently, there is no room for nominal expectations that mass atrocities could stay under ‘pseudonym’ of domestic affairs and crimes cannot hide behind the mighty shield of sovereignty. However, when states are too conscious and reserved about state’s sovereignty as they reject unitedly working on the reliable framework, it illustrates the hesitance of the international community as a whole, and thus far triggers the conflicts to escalate. The situation in Syria falls into this question as there has no any proactive measures to seize the sufferings while the death counter keeps increasing, particularly with the recent chemical weapon attack on citizens. Another blockage is referred to the ambiguity of the concepts of ethics in R2P against the UN’s mandate. The concepts of ethics when sending troops to conflict areas might fall into either compassion or sympathy, or consequentialism. The ethics of compassion or sympathy lays a concrete platform of what can be called the “emotional core” of R2P-arguments. (Diggelmann 2013) The international community as a whole when facing such abhorrent violence cannot stand aside passively and provides inactions. In current era, thanks to the development of technology, human rights violations can instantly broadcast in the media even in those countries international community knows very little before, such as in Myanmar and Tibet in 2007 and 2008 respectively. (Stacy 2009) The strong feelings of compassion and ethical impulse as human beings fuel the necessity to implement intervention to halt the disasters. On the other hand, from consequentialist perspective, it ups the ante of how to balance the consequences to reach the outcomes. Because the consequences of military interventions are unpredictable, even with the most high-end analyzing systems, the conclusion of such interference might cause even more problems than the situations have already been. There are three traits under this view: firstly, military intervention often causes more victims than foreseen; secondly, post-conflict situations cannot be predicted reliably; thirdly, failure in such interventions can negate efficacy and creditability of the international community and the UNSC in future R2P situations. (Diggelmann 2013) Last but not least, the criticism may point to the international law itself in the field of human rights violations as it has been considered as both a cause to situations and the framework for solutions. The principle of state sovereignty, as discussed above, provides a factual protection against interference when mass crimes are committed. This even get worse since the principle of self-determination can contribute to exacerbate the destabilizations of existing states. (Diggelmann 2013) Indeed, states, typically those of Global South, uphold sovereignty as priority since they fear the potentiality in legal paternalism because they believe R2P is another ruse of western individualism and human rights concept – the “Trojan Horse of Western neoimperialism.” (Weiss 2013) Nonetheless, moral principles should be respected and well protected under the international law. States only have values and are legitimately recognized if they reserve their populations’ moral interests and existence, and that states cannot have any immunity and indifference when their citizens’ wellbeing is not respected. (Hylton 2009) Thence, it is necessary to overcome the current international law to advance it without such shortcomings. Possibly, the UN should review the veto power within the UNSC in regard to R2P situations, and deliberately consider the potentials in new agendas to improve R2P, say to be more explicit and in details, to cope with more complex scenarios – the ideas from the Responsibility While Protecting (RwP) on the premise of established guidelines of Resolution 46/182 in response to humanitarian crimes. Moreover, the mandates must be given a broad and explicit as well as they are given sufficient resources to conduct those mandates. (The United Nations 2000) Although deploying R2P is a sense of ethical duty of international community against humanitarian crimes, the endorsed doctrine itself has to be fully exercised in accordance with the UN Charter. (The United Nations 2005) As so, involvements and advocacies from other UN agencies, such as UNICEF, UNFPA, the Human Right Council extremely embody crucial roles in lobbying and manifesting outcomes at grass-root levels as they encourage the UN, the UNSC to cooperatively respond to crimes against humanity.
In conclusion, though dilemmas are unavoidable, these drawbacks extricate the doctrine of R2P to evolve to a clearer and more in-depth framework as the UN evolves itself from the political constrains. To achieve what is called universal rights and insofar as to protect people from humanitarian rights violations, it requires all parties to participate in taking actions, and more importantly the United Nations have to be the central hub to mainstream its influence and call for cooperation worldwide.