International Perceptions of Human Rights

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Following the atrocities of World War II, world leaders created a legally binding declaration that would act as the foundation of international human rights law. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, drafted by committee members from several continents, represents “the universal recognition that basic rights and fundamental freedoms are inherent to all human beings . . . [w]hatever our nationality, place of residence, gender, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language, or any other status” (United Nations, n.d.-a, para. 2). The leaders recognized that these rights are “inalienable and equally applicable to everyone, and that every one of us is born free and equal in dignity and rights” (United Nations, n.d.-a, para. 2). Although the United Nations declared these rights to apply to everyone, individuals from various cultures differ in terms of ethical norms, codes of conduct, and values. How do these cultural differences in ethical norms and codes of conduct affect public administrators’ perceptions of human rights?

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Select two cultures within one country (e.g., Basques and Romani people of Spain).

  • Provide an explanation of how the cultural differences in the ethical norms and codes of conduct in your chosen countries might affect a public administrator’s perception of human rights within that country.
  • Explain how both global governance structures and nongovernmental organizations might address these differences in ethical norms and values in order to improve human rights in that country.

***Provide an Introduction and Conclusion

****Properly cite in text references and use at least 2 references provided

http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-r...

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Research Articles Rethinking Nonintervention The Challenge of the UN Charter and Protecting the Dispossessed DAVE O.BENJAMIN Abstract Nonintervention remains axiomatic in affirming the sovereignty of the state and is underscored by Article 2(4)(7)ofthe UN Charter.Recentepisodes ofcrimes against humanity and genocide have revealed the glaring inadequacy ofnonintervention and the enormous challenge posed by the Charter.Furthermore,the seeming inability of the Security Council to act on manmade disasters historically has undermined the authority and ability of the UN to live up to the title of the Preamble to the Charter: “We the Peoples.” A more recentrethinking of the conceptof sovereignty lays bare the inadequacies ofArticle 2(4)(7)as protectorofthe nation-state from interference and intervention. This paper addresses the question of nonintervention, contending that there is scope for reinterpreting the Article and placing greater demands on the Security Council through nongovernmental organizations that increasingly representthe dispossessed. More than a decade after the signing of the Rome Statute in July 1998,there seems to be even less politicalwillto investigate allegations and evidence ofcrimes against humanity and prosecute those alleged to be responsible for such crimes.The ability of the internationalcommunity to achieve enforcementof internationalhumanitarian law has been hampered by a number of factors:the unwillingness of key states, especially the United States, China, and India, to ratify the Rome Statute; shifts in state policies and laws that have exacerbated violations of international human rights and humanitarian law;and a failure to impose sanctions on states thatwould pressure governments to hand over those accused of crimes againsthumanity to the InternationalCriminalCourtfor prosecution. Human rights violations,especially againstwomen and children,are more prevalent.The United Nations Security Council, long bolstered by the Permanent Five (the United States,Russia,China,France,and the United Kingdom,also known as the P-5) and the veto,has failed to actto preventor stop genocide. The internationalcommunity is increasingly accepting the principle thatthe conPublic Integrity,Summer 2010,vol.12,no.3,pp.201–218. © 2010 ASPA.Allrights reserved. ISSN 1099-9922/2010 $9.50 + 0.00. DOI 10.2753/PIN1099-9922120301 Dave O.Benjamin ventionaldefinition ofsovereignty is flawed.The notion thatsovereignty is inviolable is flawed.At one level of analysis,there is a reliance on a measure of neutrality in internationallaw in setting outcriteria for statehood thatcan be applied universally. Atanotherlevel,there is an almostMachiavellian notion thatthe state does allitcan to protect its people but has a duty to keep the nation together even if that means permitting acts of cruelty againstthe people by those who govern. The dawn of the millennium saw the adoption of two landmark principles by the United Nations:first,thatthe state is notan abstraction thatis entitled to protection in international law in all circumstances; second, that the most basic measure of the sovereignty of the people rests in the materialwell-being of the population.The outcome has been two constructs:human security,and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).The notion thatstate sovereignty,as defined in customary internationallaw and the Montevideo Convention 1933,is a largely abstractsetofprinciples that subsume the responsibility of those who hold power to the sovereign will of the people is supported by Kofi Annan’s (1999) “Two Concepts of Sovereignty.” Human security and the MDGs are a response to the failure of the conceptof state sovereignty in customary internationallaw and the Montevideo Convention. This study contends that Article 2(4)(7) of the UN Charter is fundamentally flawed. It presumes a construct of the state and sovereignty that is outmoded and inapplicable to much ofthe postcolonialworld.Itis inconsistentwith the long history ofintervention by permanentmembers ofthe Security Councilin the internalaffairs ofpostcolonialstates,and disregards humanitarian intervention by nongovernmental organizations.Finally,Article 2 precludes the imperative ofintervention,especially humanitarian intervention, in an era of ethnic and resource conflict in which the victims are countless civilians who are murdered,raped,and maimed in pursuitof absolute politicalpower and wealth.The following section examines evolving concepts of security and sovereignty,and introduces the “responsibility to protect.” Background This section addresses the background to the contemporary discourse abouthumanitarian intervention in the contextofa definition ofsovereignty thatgoes beyond law, the complementary and contrasting roles played by the UN and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in protecting the vulnerable, and the historical failure of the UN Security Council to authorize humanitarian intervention,especially where genocide is either being planned or in progress. FormerUN secretary-generalKofi Annan (1999)proposed two concepts ofsovereignty:one a theoretical,abstractWestern conceptthatsees the state as a sovereign entity with institutions thatattend to its longevity and politicalsuccession;the other a notion of the responsibility to the sovereign people of those who govern in the name of state and people to protect the people from the excesses of the state.The Machiavellian rightof the state to actwithoutrestriction has thus been replaced by the responsibility of the state to its citizens. The Annan thesis was been built upon by the reports of a succession of UNsponsored international commissions and conferences.For example,a conference of NGOs hosted by the UN Department of Public Information in September 2003 devoted its proceedings and reportto human security.The Commission on Human Security defines human security as “freedom from want and freedom from fear” 202 P UBLIC INTEGRITY SUMMER 2010 Rethinking Nonintervention (2003,10).To the secretary-generaland his team,human security derived from the notion that political and economic rights are intertwined with meeting the basic needs of humans—food, clothing, shelter, water, employment, and, of course, protection from the state. The Report of the High Level Panel on Threats,Challenges and Change called attention to the immense challenge facing the internationalcommunity: Collective security institutions have proved particularly poor atmeeting the challenge posed by large scale,gross human rights abuses and genocide.This is a normative challenge to the United Nations:the conceptof State and internationalresponsibility to protectcivilians from the effects of war and human rights abuses has yetto truly overcome the tension between the competing claims of sovereign inviolability and the rightto intervene.Itis also an operationalchallenge:the challenge of stopping a Governmentfrom killing its own civilians requires considerable military deployment capacity.(Panyarachun etal.2004,18) Beyond this, the report noted “growing” acceptance of the idea that “the issue is not the right to intervene” of any state,but the “responsibility to protect” of every state when itcomes to people suffering from avoidable catastrophe—mass murder and rape,ethnic cleansing by forcible expulsion and terror,and deliberate starvation and exposure to disease” (Panyarachun etal.2004,65).Carsten Stahn (2007,100) observes thatthe Security Councilputmeaning to this interpretation in Resolution 1674 (April28,2006),in which itendorsed the World SummitOutcome Document regarding “the responsibility to protectpopulations from genocide,warcrimes,ethnic cleansing and crimes againsthumanity.” Itis worth noting,however,thatthere has historically been a significantdivide between the debates and resolutions of the GeneralAssembly and of the Security Council, especially given the dynamics of power plays and the veto in the latter organ. While the literature has focused on the material conditions that promote human security,another reality exists: that the conditions of so many civilians are affected by civilwars,including ethnic conflictand conflicts fueled by resources.Postconflict issues have centered on the plightofchild soldiers,the effects ofland mines on civilians,trafficking of women and children,and nation building after a catastrophic episode.There has been a notable failure on the partofintergovernmentalorganizations to protect the dispossessed, especially during episodes of genocide, as occurred in Rwanda in 1994 and atpresentin Sudan.The task ofprotecting the innocenthas been left,forthe mostpart,to NGOs,from providing human and materialresources forthe care of displaced persons to representing the dead and living in judicialprocesses. Nongovernmentalorganizations have been placed atthe forefrontin gathering and reporting evidence,especially statisticaldata,to the UN and the wider international community,offering recommendations based on the needs ofcivilians,and capacity building in civilsociety.The NGO community has amassed an impressive record of accomplishments (Allen and Styan 2000).Mostnotable,and probably mostwidely recognized, was the pivotal role played by NGOs in the negotiation of the Rome Statute of the InternationalCriminalCourt.On this occasion the NGO community, togetherwith “like-minded” governments,impressed on the internationalcommunity the imperative of accountability and enforcementof internationallaw on individual politicaland military leaders foracts ofcommission and omission (Allen and Styan 2000;Forsythe 2006,106;Wippman 2004). P UBLIC INTEGRITY SUMMER 2010 203 Dave O.Benjamin Therefore,while humanitarian intervention has not really occurred as foreseen by the architects of the UN and the authors of the Charter,it is occurring through NGOs,with tacitacceptance by governments in industrialand developing countries and even the countries in which humanitarian crises are occurring. A different school of thought contends that humanitarian intervention is open to political and partisan ideological abuse. Jack Donnelly notes that, while noble, “purely humanitarian intervention may threaten internationalorder” by reintroducing “human rights violations and humanitarian crises as legitimate subjects of internationalconflict” (2002,97).He argues a case againsthumanitarian intervention,even as an exception,observing quite accurately that,throughout the cold war,both the United States and the Soviet Union appealed to humanitarian intervention as justification for their incursions into either proxy or belligerent states,such as Korea, Afghanistan,and Grenada.The thesis has merit.The declarations of humanitarian crises in Korea in 1950 and Congo in 1960 were clearly motivated by the cold war. The subsequentassassination ofLumumba by the Congolese army with the assistance of the CIA made a powerful statement about the political will of the United States to use humanitarian intervention to overthrow and execute a third world leader who was considered a threatto U.S.and European hegemony (De Witte 2001).Clearly, therefore,there is a history ofArticle 2(4)(7) being invoked in military expeditions thathave less to do with humanitarian intervention and assistance than with superpower expansion.In contrast,there was an unwillingness to take action in instances of genocide and other crimes againsthumanity such as in Cambodia. Thus,state sovereignty has been radically redefined in the lastdecade,from the unlimited power and authority of the state to a responsibility to protectits citizenry. Humanitarian intervention,although necessary,has been given conservative treatment by the UN.The main obstacle,as the Security Council has seen it,is Article 2, paragraph 7, of the Charter, which asserts state sovereignty.While the UN has resisted humanitarian intervention, NGOs have been active in both advocacy and operations, although their work does not substitute for the moral authority of the UN.The section below examines humanitarian intervention in internationallaw and historicalapplication.Itchallenges the notion thatthe United Nations has resorted to humanitarian intervention to promote internationalpeace and security. Humanitarian Intervention There are a number of definitions of humanitarian intervention.Almostinvariably, they revert to the debate about the sovereignty of the state,the inviolability of the territory of the state, and the right of self-determination (Held 2002). However, the accepted wisdom has long been that humanitarian intervention occurs when a government,holding the powers of the state and representing the sovereign people, fails to protectthe people.Ellery Stowelldefines humanitarian intervention as “the reliance upon force forthe justifiable purpose ofprotecting the inhabitants ofanother state from treatmentwhich is so arbitrary and persistently abusive as to exceed the limits of that authority within which the sovereign is presumed to act with reason and justice” (1921,53). This definition has two problems. First, it views humanitarian action as essentially a bilateralissue,which is notthe norm in the contemporary dispensation.The other is thatitnecessitates the use of force.In the post–cold war era of multilateral 204 P UBLIC INTEGRITY SUMMER 2010 Rethinking Nonintervention humanitarian intervention,a certain politicalwillholds thatintervention is almostof necessity avoidance of the use of force,peacemaking if possible,and the protection of civilians and peacekeepers.1 Another definition of humanitarian intervention is propounded by Fernando Tesón: “Proportionate trans-boundary help, including forcible help, provided by governments to individuals in anotherstate who are being denied basic human rights and who themselves would be rationally willing to revolt against their oppressive government” (1988,5). This definition is more compelling because itdoes not regard the use of force as imperative.The use of force is T h e fu n d a m en t a l ch a l l en ge conditionalupon a necessity,where help otherwise is not r em a i n s t h e p a r a d ox of possible. It also assumes that humanitarian intervention is undertaken on a multilateral basis to assist communi- l ega l vs. m or a l r esp on si b i l i t y ties that, if it were possible, would revolt against their t o a ct . governments.Third,the communities are unable to revolt precisely because of the oppression meted outby their governments. Humanitarian intervention is therefore justified in a number of special circumstances:(1) an inability or unwillingness on the partof the governmentto defend its people; (2) collusion between agents of the state and those responsible for crimes againstthe population;(3)violentoppressive action by nonstate actors,withoutpunitive action taken by the state to repel such action; and (4) international knowledge of the oppressive action by the state,agents of the state,or nonstate actors with the collusion of the state. The internationalcommunity is therefore faced with a legalversus a moralchallenge in resorting to humanitarian intervention. The imperative of intervening to save lives is challenged by the principle of nonintervention enshrined in Article 2 of the Charter. The Legalvs.MoralChallenge The fundamentalchallenge remains the paradox of legalvs.moralresponsibility to act.On the one hand,Article 2(4) and (7) of the Charter recognize state sovereignty as inviolable and assertnonintervention in the internalaffairs of states.This implies prima facie thatitis illegalforthe UN to intervene “in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction ofany state,” even to protectthe citizenry.Moreover, Article 2(7)asserts thatthe UN cannot“require the Members to submitsuch matters to settlement.” Of course,it is accepted that this principle was based on the notion thatevery state accepted its responsibility to protectits nationals.On the otherhand, there is an accepted wisdom that the international community has a responsibility to act to protect the most vulnerable.Article 39 of the Charter gives the Security Council wide-sweeping authority “to determine the existence of any threat to the peace,breach of the peace,or act of aggression” and,of course,the right of binding resolutions including agreeing to the use of force.Article 2(7) also contains a proviso that state sovereignty “shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter VII,” emphasizing that enforcement supersedes the right of protection from noninterference and nonintervention. The challenge arises when the internationalcommunity,recognizing an imminent humanitarian crisis, exercises the political will to intervene in the interests of the P UBLIC INTEGRITY SUMMER 2010 205 Dave O.Benjamin dispossessed—the vulnerable civilians who are the victims ofthe crisis.This politicalwillhas notbeen manifeston occasions when threats to internationalpeace and security have involved threats to the vulnerable,including the 1935–36 bombing of Abyssinia by Italy,in the aftermath of which the League of Nations failed to take punitive action againstthe aggressor;the Holocaust,when itappeared thatthere were no enemies on the right,which included NaziGermany (where the issue was German territorialconquest,notthe Holocaust);the 1975–79 genocide in Cambodia,which was mired by the complexities ofcold wargeopolitics;the enormous crimes against humanity in Zimbabwe in the early 1980s;and,of course,the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, during which the UN actually pulled out 75 percent of its peacekeeping mission.As the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty stated: “Rwanda in 1994 laid bare the full horror of inaction.The UN Secretariat and some permanentmembers ofthe Security Councilknew thatofficials connected to the then government were planning genocide. . . . But the Security Council refused to take the necessary action.Thatwas a failure of internationalwill—of civic courage—atthe highestlevel” (2001,1). Annan is more blunt.In referring to Rwanda,and to the Balkans immediately before that,he said,“The internationalcommunity clearly had the capacity to preventthese events.Butitlacked the will” (Annan 2004).Rwanda stands outbecause itoccurred after the end of the cold war,with a unipolar internationalsystem,and yetthere was considerable debate in the finalanalysis aboutthe logisticalcostto the five permanent members of the Security Council(Moose 2004).There was even a reluctance atthe time to refer to the events in Rwanda as genocide—as George Moose (2004) putit, “one of the mostshamefulfailures thatcertainly rises rightto the top—the factthat ittook us so long to come to whatshould have been a fairly obvious conclusion.” The debate about morality and logistics aside,there is a real question about the legality of humanitarian intervention.Ahmad Ajajcontends that reading the Charter with an eye on the matter of the legality of humanitarian intervention,one has to make a delicate choice:either people die because no-one has the rightto intervene in a sovereign state;or an intervention oughtto take place.The firstsuggestion is very hard to acceptbecause itstrips us of our humanity and degrades our civilization; the second one is entirely dependenton whether or notintervention is to be undertaken unilaterally or collectively under the auspices of the United Nations.(1993,227) The Security Council failed to take the initiative during the crisis in Korea in 1950,prompting the GeneralAssembly to adoptthe “Uniting for Peace” resolution (UN GeneralAssembly 1950).Both the Security Counciland the GeneralAssembly failed to act during the crisis in Biafra in the 1960s, when the military in Nigeria laid siege and effectively starved the people of Biafra into submission. Rwanda was even more extreme.Yet the axiom that governed the notion of humanitarian intervention when the UN was being founded was “Never Again,” referring to the horror of the Holocaust. Beyond the failure to actin humanitarian crises is the reality thatso many countries in the internationalsystem do notsatisfy the basic criteria ofsovereignty (Aust 2005,16;Higgins 1994,39).Defined territory and conceptualnationality are offset by the virtualnonexistence of any competentadministration thatenjoys a mandate and is capable of delivering basic services to the people.Rather,there is evidence of collapsed state institutions,warlordism,a gross failure on the partof those who 206 P UBLIC INTEGRITY SUMMER 2010 Rethinking Nonintervention hold political and military power to deliver benefits to the people, and a manifest inability to protect the people, especially the most vulnerable, against aggression by agents of the state. Over the pastfifteen years WestAfrica has been replete with examples of failed states, warlordism, and crimes committed by agents of the state against civilian populations.Farfrom the UN acting in defense of“We the Peoples,” as Annan putit (Jentleson 2007,19),private military contractors have been hired to installordepose governments,placing civilians atthe centerofconflicts thatare resource driven,and warlords have killed, maimed, and tortured the innocentin search ofresources needed to finance theirwars.In many cases,the regimes D eca d es of ci vi l w a r s, cor r u p t i on a n d that were the cause of humanitarian crises vi ol en t r u l e, w a r l or d i sm , a n d et h n i c were proxies to superpowers that sought con i ct h a ve r esu l t ed i n gen er a t i on s spheres of influence,mineralresources,and l ost t o p over t y, r esou r ce a n d t er r i t or i a l votes in the United Nations during the cold con i ct , p ow er st r u ggl es, a n d gen oci d e. war.In othercases,agents of change were as violentin seeking and defending theirobjectives as those they sought to depose. Decades of civil war, corruption and violent rule, warlordism, and ethnic conflict have resulted in generations lost to poverty, resource and territorialconflict,power struggles,and genocide. The challenges faced by the internationalcommunity are complicated by the new emphasis on terrorism.In the process,criticalissues such as wars foraccess to fossil fueland other mineralresources,humanitarian crises as in Sudan,the impactof the floods across sub-Saharan Africa,trafficking in women and children,globalpoverty, the increasing use of mercenaries by superpowers,and extraordinary rendition and the use of secret prisons receive minimal debate and less coverage. One is left to contemplate the degree of effectiveness with which the five permanentmembers of the Security Councilare likely to impose their willon the military junta in Burma/ Myanmar to transition to democracy and end the gross violation of human rights, or to compel the government of Sudan to halt its collaboration with the Janjaweed in the destruction of Darfurians. There is a realquestion to be asked:Given the limitations of the legalauthority granted by Article 2 (4)(7)and ChapterVIIofthe UN Charter,and the moralimperative thatthe vulnerable be protected by the internationalcommunity,is there a case for arguing that the international community does have an obligation to intervene to protect the vulnerable and dispossessed? If it does, who sets out the mandate and on what terms? Are representatives of the dispossessed and the state in which intervention is to occur to be consulted? How and by whom? While Article 2 limits intervention by the UN,intrastate conflictclaims civilian victims who have no means ofself-defense.The issue is neitherinterstate conflictnor noninterference buthow the individualand the community can be protected against the government,paramilitaries,and even mercenaries who actwith impunity.This calls for a paradigm shiftin understanding the nature of conflict. A Paradigm Shift In many respects,a paradigm shift has occurred.While realists may contend that the internationalsystem is based on states competing for power in a hierarchy,and P UBLIC INTEGRITY SUMMER 2010 207 Dave O.Benjamin the terms determining the place ofa state in thathierarchy are based on war,the harsh reality is thatthe Eurocentric conceptof nation-statehood is largely irrelevantto the existence ofmuch ofthe population ofthe world.The increasing alienation between state and individualand between state and community is indicative ofthe reality that the abstractstate has been replaced by a self-appointed government thatabuses its people in order for the members of the governmentto acquire wealth and absolute power.Alliances between these quasi-states (Jackson 1990) and the superpowers that are the five permanent members of the Security Council increasingly alienate the sovereign people and,more especially,the mostvulnerable in society. Modern conflict is often not between and among states.Rather it falls into one or another of four main categories: • con icts between states and “shadowy networks of individuals” (White House 2002) who are involved with broader nonstate groups • con icts between the government and the citizenry, not necessarily civil war • con icts between nonstate actors and civilians where transnational corporations seek collusion of mercenaries,governments,or nonstate actors to further their economic ambitions (e.g.,Zaire in the later days of Mobutu, or the adventures of the private military company Executive Outcomes in Sierra Leone in the early 1990s,or,for thatmatter,the events thatled up the execution of leaders of the Ogonipeople in Nigeria in 1993) • con icts between or among warlords in which civilians are the direct targets (e.g.,Liberia and Somalia) There is need for a new paradigm shift,a recognition that the inability of the government—the state in the Eurocentric construct—to legitimately protect all its citizens represents a fundamental loss of sovereignty that leads ultimately to chaos and anarchy or, worse, the use of the resources of the state against the vulnerable in society. It is therefore imperative that the international community act, not in defense of the government—the quasi-state—but in defense of the vulnerable who become the targets of the military and police apparatus of the government.An inability to protect the vulnerable represents not even a gross violation, but a clear dereliction of duty. If the apparatus of the government is not willing or able to protect the innocent,the international community needs to do so—at the level of self-interest if nothing else,just so the industrial countries do not have to accept hordes of people seeking refugee status. The international community cannot afford to be blind as it was in the 1960s during the Biafra crisis (when ignorance of the event could have been presented as a defense), or worse, as it was during the Rwanda genocide (known worldwide), or Sudan today. International law has progressed significantly since the end of World War II. Myriad conventions and treaties intended to protect civilians during peace and conflicthave been ratified,butthey have proved largely ineffectual. Public InternationalLaw The universalapplication ofpublic internationallaw has evolved since 1945 through a numberoftreaties and conventions,including the UN Charter1945,the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948, the Geneva Conventions 1949, the Genocide 208 P UBLIC INTEGRITY SUMMER 2010 Rethinking Nonintervention Convention 1949, the Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989, and the Rome Statute.Arguably,these conventions aimed atsetting down universalstandards and codes of conduct for states and individuals in peace and wartime. They are also intended to hold all governments, political leaders, and military commanders and officers responsible fortheiractions in relation to civilians and combatants alike.The HelsinkiFinalAct1975 “was a complex compromise between the Sovietdesire for recognition ofits hegemony in Eastern Europe and Western desire foran international codification of human rights among other things” (“A Caviar Ending” 1977). The culmination of these legalinstruments is found in the Rome Statute,which came into effect in 2002. It created the International Criminal Court, which tries individual political leaders and public officials, military commanders, and rankand-file military personnel for acts of commission and omission (ICC 1998).As Brownlie observes, there are four categories of binding multilateral conventions protecting human rights: • the two “comprehensive” International Covenants on Economic, Social, and CulturalRights,and on Civiland PoliticalRights,adopted in 1966 • the comprehensive regional conventions: the European Convention on Human Rights 1950,the American Convention on Human Rights 1969,and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’Rights 1981 • the conventions prohibiting speci c wrongs: genocide, torture, and racial discrimination • conventions protecting the rights of speci c categories of people: women, children,refugees,and migrantworkers (Brownlie 2003,536;Gurowitz 2004) Although signatories are obligated to abide by the principles outlined in these conventions and treaties,there are caveats aboutthe functioning ofallofthem.First, public knowledge of the commission of crimes: Only when there is public knowledge,and the pressure of public activism,is prosecution likely to occur.Moreover, knowledge is often notsufficient,as in the case of an unnamed U.S.Marine Corps corporalwho was notcourt-martialed forexecuting an unarmed Iraqiata mosque in Fallujah,Iraq,in 2004 (Chadwick 2005).On another occasion,a group of marines was charged with the murder of twenty-four Iraqis in 2005,chiefly because of reporting of the incidentby the media (Whitaker 2007).The other caveatinvolves the use ofprivate military contractors,ormercenaries,in combatoperations.According to ProtocolI to the Geneva Conventions: A mercenary is any person who:(a) is specially recruited locally or abroad in order to fightin an armed conflict;(b) does,in fact,take a directpartin the hostilities;(c) is motivated to take partin the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact,is promised,by or on behalf of a Party to the conflict,materialcompensation substantially in excess of thatpromised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of thatParty;(d) is neither a nationalof a Party to the conflict nor a residentof territory controlled by a Party to the conflict;(e) is nota member of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict;and (f) has notbeen sentby a State which is nota Party to the conflicton officialduty as a member of its armed forces.(ICRC 1977) A mercenary is therefore an unlawfulcombatantand does notenjoy the protections granted to lawful combatants.A mercenary does not fulfill the basic criteria for identification as a lawfulcombatant: P UBLIC INTEGRITY SUMMER 2010 209 Dave O.Benjamin • • • • being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates having a xed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance carrying arms openly conducting operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war. (Roberts and Guelff 2000,202) Mercenaries are not agents of either the state or any resistance to conflict in international law and are therefore not entitled to the protections afforded the state military apparatus or volunteer corps that are banded together in defense of the state or nation. Yet mercenaries are granted license to act without restraint because they will not be held responsible under any national or international code of conduct or operations.Antonio Cassese summarizes the debate about the status of mercenaries using the 1970s,when “the number of mercenaries became conspicuously large in Africa,where they were used both by the ruling elites (for internal security,intelligence,the training of specialcommandos,etc.) and by foreign powers as tools for organizing or strengthening movements to destabilize African regimes” (Cassese 2001, 333). The African states regarded them as unlawful combatants, while the West regarded them as lawful combatants entitled to the protection of the Geneva Conventions.The Protocolrepresented a compromise with significantconcessions on the part of the West.Today the involvement of mercenaries in conflict and the implications for protection of civilians is manifest in Iraq where the United States has contracted a number of companies to supplementand replace the U.S.military in operations (Singer 2003). To date,public internationallaw has notcaughtup with the transition from the old style of mercenary activity to the use of military contractors by states to represent either public or private interests in conflict.Mercenaries,like paramilitaries led by warlords,targetcivilians withoutfearofprosecution underinternationalhumanitarian law.This is especially the case where ethnic conflictprevails. The Reality of Ethnic Conflict Ethnic, including religious, conflict is nothing new. It is, however, having a dramatic impact today. This may be because of the communications revolution that has broughtconflictto the home of the civilian in realtime,thanks to satellites and on-site reporters. There is also greater public outrage both at ethnic conflict and at the seeming failure of the international community to respond in defense of the vulnerable.Social activism has cut across ethnic,religious,and even class lines to demand an end to conflicts, episodes of genocide, and crimes against humanity, irrespective of the culprits and collaborators. Ethnic conflictis exacerbated by economic issues:resource endowment,resource depletion, failure of economic programs, the manifest absence of economic programs altogether.Itis also a catalystfor corruption and malfeasance,authoritarian rule,and absolute dictatorship.The language of genocide is often heard—referring to subject peoples in dehumanizing terms—to justify their extermination and to whip up support among the majority population. Ethnic conflict is indicative not necessarily of secession,butof a major cleavage in society thathas the potentialto fracture the geography of the state. The international community faces an imperative, therefore.When the state is 210 P UBLIC INTEGRITY SUMMER 2010 Rethinking Nonintervention unable or unwilling to protectcivilian populations,the UN is expected to intervene. This, after all, is part of the mission of the organization in two respects: “We the Peoples” and “NeverAgain.” The Responsibility to Protect The internationalcommunity has a duty to protectthe vulnerable.According to the InternationalCommission on Intervention and State Sovereignty,the “responsibility to protect” clause implies that“The principle of non-intervention in internalaffairs cannotbe used to protectgenocidalacts or other atrocities,” because there is a “collective internationalresponsibility to protectpopulations from genocide,warcrimes, ethnic cleansing,and crimes againsthumanity” (Jentleson 2007,20). The notion that Article 2(4) and (7) of the UN Charter offer protection to the state such that the government can actwith impunity against its people,especially when the state does not exist as a collective of political,economic,and legislative institutions capable of guaranteeing protections to the people against abuse of the instruments ofcoercion ofthe state represents atbesta misconstruction ofthe intent of those sections of the charter.Atworst,itis a recipe for collaboration between the internationalcommunity,which swore “neveragain,” and those who hold office and are directing the resources and apparatus of the government against the sovereign people.Beyond this,itis clear thatthere is an implied loss of sovereignty when the state is unable to guarantee protection of its population. The challenge ofArticle 2(4)and (7)has deeperimplications.Thomas Fues (2005) condenses the “deficits in legitimacy”—the undercutting of the moral authority of the UN—as follows: • dictatorships and unlawful regimes enjoy the same rights as democracies (e.g.,Zimbabwe and Sudan) • the UN is an organization not of abstract states but of real governments, even those thatshow little regard for principles such as accountability and transparency • the UN is a collective of member states whose governments pursue their nationalinterests in and through the organization • the Security Council has supranational powers that members of the UN willingly agreed to on acceeding to membership The UN,therefore,has to be more resolute in making a distinction between states that live up to the responsibility to protect their populations and those that do not butexpectthatthe UN willnotinterfere in their internalaffairs. Formersecretary-generalAnnan has observed thatthe UN Charteris an agreement among governments on behalfofthe peoples ofthe world;hence the declaration “We the Peoples” (Annan 1999).Beyond this, the responsibility of the UN to preserve international peace and security has to be interpreted broadly. If there is a natural disaster in a member state and its governmentis incapable of meeting the needs of the people,the governmentasks the UN for humanitarian assistance.If the governmentofa memberstate fails to observe some standard accepted by the international community as a norm (by virtue of the many conventions asserting the rights of civilians, children, women, ethnic and religious groups, and any other groupings thatmay be targeted),there is going to be a “knock-on” effecton bordering states. P UBLIC INTEGRITY SUMMER 2010 211 Dave O.Benjamin Displaced persons will seek the protection of neighboring states,imposing spatial and resource pressures on thatstate.There is,therefore,an impacton international peace and security. The UN is thereby required to act in defense of those who are targeted by their governmentorgroups supported by the government.Ellery Stowell, writing on the eve of the Holocaust,asserted:“When ...the conductof a state,not excused by some untoward eventlike revolution orcivilwar,constitutes,on the part ofthe responsible governmenta deliberate violation ofthatminimum ofsecurity and justice to which every individualin a civilized community is entitled,itbecomes the rightand the duty of other states to intervene in so far as itis practicable to prevent or lessen such severities” (1939,734).Annan has been equally direct: “The sovereignty of states must no longer be used as a shield for gross violations of human rights” E t h n i c con i ct i s exa cer b a t ed b y (Evans 2004). econ om i c i ssu es: r esou r ce en d ow m en t , Negotiating with an oppressive regime r esou r ce d ep l et i on , fa i l u r e of econ om i c for access to target populations defeats the p r ogr a m s, or a m a n i fest a b sen ce of very ethos of the United Nations with regard to humanitarian intervention.Targetpopulaecon om i c p r ogr a m s a l t oget h er. I t i s tions are dehumanized and isolated,and the a l so a ca t a l yst for cor r u p t i on a n d signalsentto the internationalcommunity is m a l fea sa n ce, a u t h or i t a r i a n r u l e a n d that the problem is being dealt with. Target a b sol u t e d i ct a t or sh i p . populations are referred to as blight on the landscape that will be remedied by further isolation,dislocation,or death.This makes the notion of negotiating access counterproductive.As Bronwyn Leebaw puts it, “The idea of negotiating with leaders for access to civilian populations makes little sense when the primary goalof those leaders is to murder civilians” (2007,227). There is no compulsion on the partofthe internationalcommunity to recognize a governmentthatdoes nothold a mandate accepted by the United Nations.Although the Khmer Rouge held politicalpower in Cambodia during the 1970s,the UN recognized Prince Sihanouk as the legitimate rulerand,thereby,granted him the seatat the United Nations.The UN also suspended South Africa during apartheid.Atone levelthis could be construed as intervention in the internalaffairs of a member state and,therefore,a violation ofArticle 2(4) and (7).Atanother level,the international community deemed apartheid sufficiently objectionable thatitresolved to suspend South Africa from membership. The responsibility to protect is based on a notion that member states, having voluntarily agreed to the rights and obligations of membership in the UN,commit themselves to living up to the duties of members. Included is the duty to protect the citizens of states on a collective and mutual basis.States and governments are recognized as custodians of the peoples of the world. Inasmuch as the UN has responsibility for protection and preservation of internationalpeace and security— generally regarded as conflicts between and among states—it has a responsibility to protect the peoples of states from acts by the state and agents thereof that are injurious to communities.To that extent,Article 39 of the Charter clearly extends to the Security Councilthe authority to “determine the existence of any threatto the peace,breach ofthe peace,[and to]make recommendations,ordecide whatmeasures shallbe taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42,to maintain or restore internationalpeace and security.” The obvious harm done to civilians,including death and 212 P UBLIC INTEGRITY SUMMER 2010 Rethinking Nonintervention dislocation,combined with the movementof civilians across borders,constitutes a threatto internationalpeace and security.The arming ofgovernments and extremist organizations—as the French armed the Hutu in Rwanda in 1994—constitutes an even greater threatto internationalpeace and security (McNulty 2000). Moreover,much has been said and written aboutpunishmentfor crimes against humanity including genocide.The UN Genocide Convention 1948 soughtto address prevention,butdid notlay outa platform for either prevention or punishment.The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court lays out a set of procedures for investigation,prosecution,and punishmentof those responsible for crimes against humanity.However,the central issue remains that tens of thousands or millions of innocent people have to die in order for investigations and prosecutions to occur. Neither the Genocide Convention nor the Rome Statute 2002 makes provision for the prevention of crimes againsthumanity including genocide (Fowler 2003).This leaves a centralconclusion:thatwhereas punishment—including investigation and prosecution—is essentially a legal action, prevention is based on a moral imperative. This leads to the conclusion that there is no requirement that states pursue humanitarian intervention as a legalaction beyond the provisions ofthe UN Charter. Moreover,if,as in the Clinton administration,there is no politicalwillto use the term “genocide,” states can absolve themselves of responsibility to act and consequent responsibility for failure to act. Furthermore, crimes against humanity are often associated with state collapse, whether current or impending, actual or potential. The Charter places no legal obligation on the community of states to keep collapsing or collapsed states together. Recognition of Kosovo by the United States and some European powers, contrasted by the refusal of Russia to do likewise,makes the point that there is no binding obligation on UN member states, and certainly not on the P-5, to recognize new states. By the same token, there is no obligation to intervene to prevent humanitarian crises, including crimes against humanity (Held 2002). That is one of the reasons for the continued stalemate in Sudan,the involvementof the African Union notwithstanding. The burning question,then,as Gareth Evans has putit,is: “Is there” a “responsibility to protect?” (Evans and Sahnoun 2002).The International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty proposed such a responsibility on the basis that “millions of human beings remain at the mercy of civil wars, insurgencies, state repression and state collapse” (ICISS 2001,11).The commission further expressed its belief that “the responsibility to protect implies an accompanying responsibility to prevent” (ibid., 19). The commission based its view on the implications of localized conflict for international peace and security, a responsibility on the part of the UN to actbased on numerous GeneralAssembly and Security Councilresolutions, and the report of the UN secretary-general, Prevention of Armed Conflict (UN GeneralAssembly 2001).Atthe very outsetthe reportof the secretary-general noted that“Conflictprevention is one of the primary obligations of Member States setforth in the Charter of the United Nations,and United Nations efforts in conflict prevention must be in conformity with the purposes and principles of the Charter. Conflict prevention is also an activity best undertaken under Chapter VI of the Charter” (ibid.,2). However, the report qualified responsibility for prevention with national governments primarily, and declared that the main role of the UN and the internaP UBLIC INTEGRITY SUMMER 2010 213 Dave O.Benjamin tional community is “to support national efforts for conflict prevention and assist in building national capacity in this field” (UN General Assembly 2001, 2). To Secretary-GeneralAnnan,“the Charter provides the United Nations with a strong mandate for preventing armed conflict” on two bases: Conflict prevention is more cost-effective than post-conflictreconstruction;and peacefulprevention of conflict preserves internationalpeace and security,and is consistentwith Article 2(3) of the Charter (ibid.,9). In 2003,the GeneralAssembly essentially skirted the necessity of intervention to prevent armed conflict and crimes against humanity by reaffirming support for the Millennium DevelopmentGoals,the commitmentof 0.7 percentof GNP in foreign assistance by developed countries,and the implementation of the Program of Action to Prevent,Combatand Eradicate the IllicitTrade in SmallArms and Light Weapons.While reaffirming supportfor the Millennium DevelopmentGoals has a certain appeal in principle, it is not a substitute for intervention to prevent human catastrophe.The UN effortin Rwanda in 1994 failed notbecause of economic and social conditions, but because the United Nations Observer Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR) was understaffed and ill-equipped. The memorandum from General Dallaire to GeneralBarilwas ignored by the UN Secretariatand the Security Council,and,rather than increasing the contingent,the Security Councildrastically and regrettably cutthe peacekeeping force. The responsibility to protect rests on three basic tenets: that there is a legal obligation to act where a humanitarian crisis is in evidence; that there is a moral responsibility to act, especially in the light of the post-Holocaust axiom “Never Again”; and that failure to exercise the political will needed to save the lives of the vulnerable and dispossessed might be regarded as a crime against humanity in time to come. First,Article 2 (7) of the Charter is unambiguous;while the state enjoys the right ofnonintervention,“this principle shallnotprejudice the application ofenforcement measures under ChapterVII.” Article 39 is equally unambiguous in the authority it gives to the Security Councilto “determine the existence of any threatto the peace, breach ofthe peace,oractofaggression and shallmake recommendations,ordecide whatmeasures shallbe taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42,to maintain or restore internationalpeace and security.” The Counciltherefore enjoys a legalright and responsibility to employ measures appropriate and necessary for the maintenance or restoration of international peace and security. If the Council is satisfied thatpeacefulmeans,including sanctions,are notsuccessful,then itreserves the right to “take such action by air,sea,or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security.Such action may include demonstrations, blockade,and other operations by air,sea,or land forces of Members of the United Nations.” It clearly enjoys an unchallenged right of the use of force to prevent an internationalcatastrophe given the emphasis placed on conflictprevention.Article 50 extends to the Council a right of preventive measures, clearly requiring that peacekeepers be subscribed by member states. Moreover, the Charter offers the perfect operational mechanism in resorting to regional arrangements (Chapter VIII).Article 53 authorizes the Security Council, “where appropriate,[to]utilize such regionalarrangements oragencies forenforcementaction under its authority.” Regionalorganizations can be involved in dispute settlementwith the authority ofthe Council.While this may have been a concession 214 P UBLIC INTEGRITY SUMMER 2010 Rethinking Nonintervention to the Organization of American States when the Charter was being negotiated, it has real application today when Africa is seeking to resolve its internal ethnic and politicalissues. Finally, the Charter authorizes the secretary-general to take the initiative in informing the Security Council of threats to the international peace and security (Article 99).Although the secretary-generalwas envisioned as a chief executive of the UN,there is a history ofholders ofthe office initiating programs and approaches to issues thathave been revolutionary in theirtime.Dag Hammarskjöld took the UN into the development era chiefly because he was persuaded that development and underdevelopment were the major issues of the day,not the cold war.Kofi Annan, in his second term in office, sought to initiate a debate about human security that yielded results in the Millennium Declaration and the Millennium Development Goals.Conversely,the failure of the UN to actduring the Rwanda genocide was as much a bloton the copybook of Secretary-GeneralBoutros Boutros-Ghali(and the assistant secretary-general responsible for peacekeeping, Kofi Annan) as it was a lack of politicalwillon the partof the self-appointed P-5. Itis ironic that,while there has been a failure of politicalwillon the partof governments and of the UN as an institution,NGOs have succeeded in mobilizing the vitalhuman,technical,material,and financialresources in industrialand nonindustrialcountries needed for humanitarian efforts in conflictzones,especially in cases of conflict within states. The appointment of Bernard Kouchner, a co-founder of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors WithoutBorders),as foreign ministerofFrance in 2007, it can be argued, is more than tacit acceptance of both the work and the political will of NGOs, especially those involved in treating and assisting civilian victims of manmade disasters. Conclusions Nonintervention remains a contentious principle ofpublic internationallaw because it continues to offer protection to regimes that do not protect their peoples. The challenge posed by Article 2(4)(7) of the UN Charter is less real than theoretical, because internal conflict that threatens the lives and safety of civilians,displacing them in some way, is indicative of the collapse of the state in the first place. Furthermore,a state that is unable to guarantee security of individual and community is a failed or collapsed state,devoid of institutions of government and governance thatprotectsubjectpeoples from victimization and crimes againsthumanity.In such circumstances,invocation ofArticle 2(4)(7) strains credulity. Rather,the invocation of2(4)(7)is indicative ofthe failure ofpoliticalwill,both in the Security Councilas an institution and among the nations of the P-5,which have veto power.Despite precedentin “Uniting for Peace 1950,” the GeneralAssembly has also manifested a failure of politicalwillin notcalling on the Security Council to authorize humanitarian intervention in internal civil conflict, especially crimes against humanity and genocide. While political will was not absent in the Korea and Congo incidents—largely an ideologicalmatter—itwas glaringly absentduring the Rwanda tragedy in 1994.The failure to actin Rwanda and now Sudan suggests thatthe obstacle to effective action is notthe legalinstrumentbutthe politicalwill of the five permanentmembers of the Security Council. Finally,the notion of nonintervention in the internalaffairs of the state is flawed P UBLIC INTEGRITY SUMMER 2010 215 Dave O.Benjamin at its root. It presupposes the existence of a nation-state bound by ideals and loyalties that transcend ethnicity, language, and the common history of the colonial experience.Fractured states,devoid of institutions of governmentand governance, with no binding agents,with genocidal regimes in power,are quasi-states that are simply incapable of guaranteeing the physical security and safety of minority and subject peoples. Such states cannot be held to the same standard as those with institutions of government and governance, some measure of accountability and transparency, and a concept of the responsibility to the sovereign people of those who controlthe institutions ofstate and government.In such circumstances,Article 2(4)(7) becomes a legal instrument that protects genocidal regimes against their own subjectpeoples. NOTE 1.There is recognition offundamentalflaws in the mandate thatthe Security Council gave to UN peacekeepers in the Balkans in the early 1990s allowing Blue Berets to defend themselves but not civilians through the use of force—this led to the debacle of Srebrenica as a case in point. REFERENCES Ajaj,Ahmad M.1993.“Humanitarian Intervention:Second Reading of the Charter of the United Nations.” Arab Law Quarterly 7,no.4:215–236. Allen,Tim,and David Styan.2000.“A Rightto Interfere? Bernard Kouchner and the New Humanitarianism.” JournalofInternationalDevelopment12,no.6 (August): 825–842. Annan,Kofi.1999,September 18.“Two Concepts of Sovereignty.” Economist,available atwww.un.org/News/ossg/sg/stories/kaecon.html. ———.2004,January 26.“Genocide Is a Threatto Peace,Requiring Strong,United Action.” Address delivered to the Stockholm InternationalForum in Sweden,available atwww.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/2004/issue1/0104p4.asp. Armstrong,David,Theo Farrell,and Hélène Lambert.2007.InternationalLaw and InternationalRelations.Cambridge:Cambridge University Press. Aust,Anthony.2005.Handbook ofInternationalLaw.Cambridge:Cambridge University Press. Bohman,James.2007.Democracy Across Borders: From Démos to Démoi.Cambridge,Mass.:MIT Press. Brownlie,Ian.2003.Principles ofPublic InternationalLaw,6th ed.Oxford:Oxford University Press. Cassese,Antonio.2001.InternationalLaw.Oxford:Oxford University Press. “A Caviar Ending.” 1977,August15.Time (in partnership with CNN).Available at www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,915253,00.html. Chadwick,Alex.2005,May 10.“No CourtMartialfor Marine Taped Killing Unarmed Iraqi.” Day to Day (NPR),available atwww.npr.org/templates/story/story. php?storyId=4646406/. Commission on Human Security.2003.Human Security Now.New York:United Nations,available atwww.humansecurity-chs.org/finalreport/English/FinalReport.pdf. De Witte,Ludo.2001.The Assassination ofLumumba,translated by Ann Wrightand Renée Fenby.London:Verso. Donnelly,Jack.2002.“Genocide and Humanitarian Intervention.” JournalofHuman Rights 1,no.1 (March):93–109. Evans,Gareth.2004,April1.“The Responsibility to Protect:Rethinking Humanitarian 216 P UBLIC INTEGRITY SUMMER 2010 Rethinking Nonintervention Intervention.” Paper presented atthe American Society of InternationalLaw,98th AnnualMeeting,Panelon “Rethinking Collective Action,” Washington,D.C.,available atwww.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=2561&l=1/. Evans,Gareth,and Mohamed Sahnoun.2002.“The Responsibility to Protect.” Foreign Affairs 81,no.6 (November/December):99–110. Forsythe,David P.2006.Human Rights in InternationalRelations,2d ed.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fowler,Jerry.2003.“Diplomacy and ‘The G-Word.’” Case Western Reserve Journal ofInternationalLaw 35,no.2 (spring):213–218. Fues,Thomas.2005.“Strengthening the United Nations through Deepened Cooperation with NGOs,the Private Sector,and Parliaments.” Briefing Paper 1,German DevelopmentInstitute,available atwww.die-gdi.de/die_homepage.nsf/6f3fa777ba6 4bd9ec12569cb00547f1b/aa2a4c2a9a995aa1c1256f810030655d/$FILE/Fues-1-05B.P.pdf. Gurowitz,Amy.2004.“InternationalLaw,Politics,and MigrantRights.” In Politics ofInternationalLaw,edited by Christian Reus-Smit,pp.131–149.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Held,David.2002.“Law of States,Law of Peoples:Three Models of Sovereignty.” LegalTheory 8,no.1 (March):1–44. Higgins,Rosalyn.1994.Problems and Process: InternationalLaw and How We Use It.Oxford:Clarendon Press. ICISS (InternationalCommission on Intervention and State Sovereignty).2001.The Responsibility to Protect.Ottawa:InternationalDevelopmentResearch Center, available atwww.iciss.ca/pdf/Commission-Report.pdf. ICRC (InternationalCommittee of the Red Cross).1977,June 8.ProtocolAdditional to the Geneva Conventions of12 August1949,and Relating to the Protection of Victims ofInternationalArmed Conflicts (ProtocolI),available atwww.icrc.org/ihl. nsf/WebPrint/470-FULL?OpenDocument/. InternationalCriminalCourt.1998.Rome Statute of the InternationalCriminalCourt, available atwww.un.org/law/icc/statute/english/rome_statute(e).pdf. Jackson,RobertH.1990.Quasi-States: Sovereignty,InternationalRelations,and the Third World.Cambridge:Cambridge University Press. Jentleson,Bruce W.2007.“A Responsibility to Protect:The Defining Challenge for the GlobalCommunity.” Harvard InternationalReview 28,no.4 (winter):18–23. Leebaw,Bronwyn.2007.“The Politics of ImpartialActivism:Humanitarianism and Human Rights.” APSA Perspectives on Politics 5,no.2 (June):223–239. McNulty,Mel.2000.“French Arms,War and Genocide in Rwanda.” Crime,Law and SocialChange 33,nos.1/2 (March):105–129. Moose,George.2004,April14.Interview on PBS Frontline,“Ghosts of Rwanda,” available atwww.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/interviews/moose. html. Panyarachun,Anand,etal.2004.A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility. Reportof the High LevelPanelon Threats,Challenges and Change.New York: United Nations,available athttp://un.org/secureworld/report2.pdf. Roberts,Adam,and Richard Guelff,ed.2000.Documents on the Laws ofWar,3rd ed. Oxford:Oxford University Press. Singer,Peter.W.2003.Corporate Warriors: The Rise ofthe Privatized Military Industry.Ithaca:CornellUniversity Press. Stahn,Carsten.2007.“Responsibility to Protect:PoliticalRhetoric or Emerging Legal Norm?” American JournalofInternationalLaw 101,no.1 (January):99–120. Stowell,Ellery C.1921.Intervention in InternationalLaw.Washington,D.C.:John Byrne. ———.1939.“Humanitarian Intervention.” American JournalofInternationalLaw 33,no.4 (October):733–736. Tesón,Fernando R.1988.Humanitarian Intervention: An Enquiry into Law and Morality.Ardsley-on-Hudson,N.Y.:Transnational. P UBLIC INTEGRITY SUMMER 2010 217 Dave O.Benjamin Organization ofAmerican States.1933.Montevideo Convention,available atwww. yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/intdip/interam/intam03.htm. UN Departmentof Public Information and Non-GovernmentalOrganizations.2003, September 8–10.Human Security and Dignity: Fulfilling the Promise ofthe United Nations.FinalReportof the 56th AnnualDPI/NGO Conference,available atwww. un.org/dpi/ngosection/annualconfs/56/56final.pdf. UN GeneralAssembly.1950,November 3.“Uniting for Peace,” GeneralAssembly Resolution 377(V),302nd Plenary Meeting,available atwww.un.org/Depts/dhl/ landmark/pdf/ares377e.pdf. UN GeneralAssembly/Security Council.2001,June 7.“Prevention ofArmed Conflict” [A/55/985–S/2001/574],Reportof the Secretary-Generalon the Work of the Organization,available atwww.reliefweb.int/library/documents/2001/un-conflprev07jun.htm. UN Office of the SpecialAdviser on Africa (OSAA).2005.Human Security in Africa (December),available atwww.un.org/africa/osaa/reports/Human%20Security%20 in%20Africa%20FINAL.pdf. Whitaker,Raymond.2007,November 1.“US Marines on Trialfor Iraq Atrocity.” Independent,available athttp://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article3081853.ece/. White House.2002.NationalSecurity Strategy,available atwww.whitehouse.gov/nsc/ nss/2002/nss.pdf. Wippman,David.2004.“The InternationalCriminalCourt.” In The Politics ofInternationalLaw,edited by Christian Reus-Smit,pp.151–188.Cambridge:Cambridge University Press. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dave O. Benjamin is assistant professor of international political economy and diplomacy atthe University of Bridgeport.He received his B.A.Hons.degree in history from Carleton University (1986),diploma in internationalrelations from the University of the WestIndies (1987),M.Phil.in internationalrelations from the University of Cambridge (1988), and Ph.D. in international studies from the University of Cambridge (1999). His articles include “Protecting the Protectors: NGO Action and the Responsibility to Protect,” International Journal on World Peace (March 2009); “Implications of Mass Terrorism for the Caribbean Community:The Case of Grenada,” University of the West Indies (February 2002); and “Sudan and the Responsibility to Protect,” International JournalofHuman Rights (June 2010). 218 P UBLIC INTEGRITY SUMMER 2010 Copyright of Public Integrity is the property of M.E. Sharpe Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. Copyright of Social Research is the property of New School for Social Research and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. Researcher Published by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc. thecqresearcher.com Stopping Genocide S ho uld the U.S . and U.N. tak e ac tio n in S udan? T en years ago, nearly a million ethnic-minority Rwandans died in a government-planned massacre. Political leaders in the United States and the United Nations later admitted they should have intervened and vowed “Never again” — just as they vowed after the Holocaust. But as ethnic killings occurring today in western Sudan make tragically clear, genocide still flourishes. The Bush administration supports sanctions against the Khartoum government, but human-rights activists say an international force is needed to protect civilians. With U.S. troops stretched thin in Iraq, however, the United States has been reluctant to act. Some question whether A mak e shift me mo r ial in Camb o dia e x hib its the r e mains o f v ic tims o f the Khme r Ro ug e r e g ime in the late 1970s. Americans, preoccupied with terrorism, have the appetite for humanitarian military actions. The U.N. has tried to improve its poor record of mobilizing troops by authorizing Western powers to lead forces in recent crises. But many believe the U.N. is politically paralyzed by the competing interests of the five major members of the Security Council, who can veto any military action. The CQ Researcher • Aug.27,2004 • www.thecqresearcher.com Volume 14,Number 29 • Pages 685-708 RECIPIENT OF SOCIETY OF P ROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS AWARD FOR E XCELLENCE ◆ AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION SILVER GAVEL AWARD I N S I D E THIS REPORT THE ISSUES ......................6 8 7 CHRONOLOGY ..................6 9 5 BACKGROUND ..................6 9 6 CURRENT SITUATION ..........6 9 8 AT ISSUE ..........................7 0 1 OUTLOOK ........................7 0 2 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................7 0 5 THE NEXT STEP ................7 0 6 STOPPING GENOCIDE CQ Re se arc he r T H E THE IS S UES 687 • Is the United States doing enough to stop and prevent genocide? • Is the United Nations doing enough to stop genocide? • Will the International Criminal Court prevent genocide? BACKGROUND 696 696 699 699 699 702 Ge noc ide Conv e ntion A 1948 U.N. treaty calls for action to stop future genocides. OUTL OOK 702 U.S . Role ? American troops may be spread too thin to stop atrocities. MANAGING EDITOR: Thomas J. Colin AS S IS TANT MANAGING EDITOR: Kathy Koch AS S OCIATE EDITOR: Kenneth Jost 688 S IDEBARS AND GRAPHICS S TAF F WRITERS : Mary H. Cooper, Ge noc ide in S uda n Rampaging militiamen have left a million people homeless since early 2003. CONTRIBUTING WRITERS : Sarah Glazer, 689 The Ge noc ide Tr e a ty The 1948 convention defines genocide and calls for action. 692 Mode r n Ge noc ide s v s . the Holoc a us t Today’s ethnic killings often stem from wars or rebellions. William Triplett David Hatch, David Hosansky, Patrick Marshall, Tom Price, Jane Tanner DES IGN/ PRODUCTION EDITOR: Olu B. Davis AS S IS TANT EDITOR: Kenneth Lukas Wa r ning s Ig nor e d The United States didn’t stop killings in Cambodia in the 1970s. 695 Chr onolog y Key events since 1915. CURRENT S ITUATION 697 Ethnic Cle a ns ing in Bos nia Some 200,000 people were killed in the early 1990s. DIRECTOR, L IBRARY PUBL IS HING: Kathryn C. Suárez He a ling Rwa nda Afte r the Ge noc ide Progress has been slow. CONGRES S IONAL QUARTERL Y I NC. Punis hing Ge noc ide In 1994, a special U.N. tribunal was authorized to try suspects in Rwanda’s genocide. Hus s e in Tr ibuna l A special Iraqi court is hearing war-crimes charges against Saddam Hussein. 700 701 At Is s ue Should the U.S. support the International Criminal Court? F OR F URTHER RES EARCH Inte r na tiona l Cour t The United States opposes joining the International Criminal Court. 704 F or Mor e Infor ma tion Organizations to contact. 705 Bibliog r a phy Selected sources used. Cr is is in Da r fur At least 50,000 Sudanese have been killed since 2003. 706 The Ne xt S te p Additional articles. 707 Citing The CQ Researcher Sample bibliography formats. Cover:A youth examines the remains of victims of the Khmer Rouge in a makeshiftmemorial. Two million Cambodians died under the murderous regime in the late 1970s. (AFP Photo) 686 Aug . 2 7 , 2 0 0 4 Volume 1 4 , Numbe r 2 9 The CQ Researcher A Div is ion of Cong r e s s iona l Qua r te r ly Inc . S ENIOR VICE PRES IDENT/ GENERAL MANAGER: John A. Jenkins DIRECTOR, EDITORIAL OPERATIONS : Ann Davies CHAIRMAN: Paul C. Tash VICE CHAIRMAN: Andrew P. Corty PRES IDENT AND PUBL IS HER: Robert W. Merry Copyright © 2004 CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc. (CQ). CQ reserves all copyright and other rights herein, unless previously specified in writing. No part of this publication may be reproduced electronically or otherwise, without prior written permission. Unauthorized reproduction or transmission of CQ copyrighted material is a violation of federal law carrying civil fines of up to $100,000. T he CQ Re se arc he r (ISSN 1056-2036) is printed on acid-free paper. Published weekly, except Jan. 2, April 9, July 2, July 9, Aug. 6, Aug. 13, Nov. 26 and Dec. 31, by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc. Annual subscription rates for institutions start at $625. For pricing, call 1-800-834-9020, ext. 1906. To purchase a CQ Re se ar c he r report in print or electronic format (PDF), visit www.cqpress.com or call 866-427-7737. A single report is $10. Bulk purchase discounts and electronic-rights licensing are also available.Periodicals postage paid atWashington,D.C.,and additionalmailing offices.POSTMASTER:Send address changes to T he CQ Re se arc he r, 1255 22nd St., N.W., Suite 400, Washington, D.C. 20037. Stopping Genocide BY S ARAH GL AZER THE ISSUES although experts say the 1948 treaty is notspecific aboutwhat that entails. (S e e b o x , p . 689.) fter Arab nomads Even some ofthe mostcomraided the Sudanese mitted activists have been revillage of Korneiand luctantto bandy abouta word killed Hatum Atraman Bashir’s like genocide, concerned that husband, she fled with her itshould be reserved for clearseven children. But when cut cases. As of mid-August, Bashir and a few other mothgroups like Amnesty Internaers crept out one day to find tionaland Human Rights Watch food, the raiders raped them. said they did nothave enough “They said, ‘You are black information to callthe violence women, and you are our in Darfur genocide, even as slaves,’ ” she recalled, weepthey called for tougher action ing softly.“One ofthe women by the international commucried, and they killed her. nity. The African Union also Then they told me, ‘If you declined to label the situation cry, we will kill you, too.’ ” genocide even as it was sendBashir, already pregnant ing 150 troops to Darfur to by one of the rapists when protect its cease-fire monitors she told this story earlier this and was expressing interest in S ur v iv o r s o f e thnic v io le nc e r e st in a r e fug e e c amp in summer, was camping in the sending more troops with a we ste r n S udan’s e mb attle d Dar fur r e g io n, whe r e 50,000 shade of a tree after stumbroadened mandate to prop e o p le hav e b e e n k ille d and a millio n le ft ho me le ss. On July bling across the border into tect civilians. 8 22, the U.S . Co ng r e ss de c lar e d the v io le nc e “ g e no c ide .” Chad in search of help from Complicating the question one of the overburdened aid agencies been bombed by Sudan’s air force and ofwhether the situation in Darfur could then attacked by Arab militias. 4 serving Sudanese refugees. 1 be called genocide is the fact that Although the violence began in some of the victims of the militias are Bashir is part of a wave of more than a million people from the west- early 2003, it took until July of this Arab, and not all Arab groups particern Darfur region of Sudan left home- year for the U.S. government and the ipated in the killings. 9 less by rampaging nomadic militia- international community to back up Yet critics in Congress and humanmen on horseback, known as the statements of concern with threats of rights groups called the response to Janjaweed. Since early 2003, the Arab serious action. On July 30, the Unit- Darfur too slow and — in some eyes militias have been killing and raping ed Nations Security Council passed — too weak. They said it bore a disblack Africans, who traditionally farm a U.S.-drafted resolution giving the turbing resemblance to the world’s inthe land, and have burned many of Sudanese government 30 days to dis- action 10 years ago, when close to a their villages to the ground. The Unit- arm and prosecute the Arab militias million Rwandans died in killings now ed Nations estimates that violence in or face unspecified sanctions. 5 widely described as genocide.10 In 1994, Congress declared the violence “geno- the Clinton administration also had inDarfur has killed 50,000 and left 2 million short of food and medicine. 2 cide” on July 22 and urged President tentionally avoided describing the RwanThe Agency for International Devel- Bush to do the same. 6 But as of mid- da crisis as genocide because Pentagon opment warns that between 300,000 August, Secretary of State Colin L. Pow- lawyers had advised that using the term and a million people could die by ell studiously avoided using the word could commit the United States “to acyear’s end, depending on how much “genocide” on the advice of govern- tually do something” under the interment lawyers, he explained. 7 Under national genocide convention. 11 aid reaches the refugees. 3 Human-rights groups have accused the International Convention on the Both former President Bill Clinton the Sudanese government of arming Prevention and Punishmentofthe Crime and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan the militias in an effort to root out and of Genocide, the United States and have since traveled to Rwanda to exthreaten rebels from Darfur’s black other participating countries are oblig- press regret over the world’s failure to African tribalgroups.Some villages had ed “to prevent and punish” genocide, stop the genocide. “We did not act AFP Photo/Marco Longari A Av a ila ble online : www.the c qr e s e a r c he r.c om Aug . 2 7 , 2 0 0 4 687 STOPPING GENOCIDE Ge noc ide in S uda n S udan is Afr ic a’s lar g e st c o untr y — almo st fiv e time s the siz e o f F r anc e . In the we ste r n Dar fur r e g io n, r amp ag ing Ar ab militiame n o n ho r se b ac k , k no wn as the Janjawe e d, hav e le ft mo r e than a millio n p e o p le ho me le ss sinc e e ar ly 2003. T he militias hav e b e e n k illing and r ap ing b lac k Afr ic ans, who tr aditio nally far m the land. T he v io le nc e has k ille d so me 50,000 and le ft 2 millio n sho r t o f fo o d and me dic ine . Aid o ffic ials e stimate up to a millio n r e fug e e s c o uld die b y y e ar ’s e nd witho ut suffic ie nt sup p lie s. T he v io le nc e b e g an in e ar ly 2003, b ut it to o k until July 2004 fo r the wo r ld c o mmunity to thr e ate n se r io us ac tio n. Altho ug h Co ng r e ss c alle d the k illing s “ g e no c ide ” o n July 22, as o f mid-Aug ust, S e c r e tar y o f S tate Co lin L . Po we ll has av o ide d the wo r d. On July 30, the U.N. S e c ur ity Co unc il p asse d a U.S .-dr afte d r e so lutio n g iv ing S udan 30 day s to disar m and p r o se c ute the Ar ab militias o r fac e unsp e c ifie d sanc tio ns. Aswan Ri yadh R E G Y P T L IB Y A S A U D I E Lake Nasser D Wadi -Hal fa r D a rfu ElFasher Kassal a Asmera ERITREA Lake Tana Bl S U D A N ue N ile DJIBOUTI Dj i bouti Addi sAbaba e N ile hit E T H IO P IA S O M A LIA UGANDA Ki sangani K E N YA Mogadi shu Ki sumu n Kampal a Ta Lake Nai robi Victoria RWANDA Kigal i Bukavu Mwanza Buj umburo Mombasa a Kananga BURUNDI TANZANIA Lake Tanganyika S o ur c e s: CIA Wo r ld F ac tb o o k 688 Berbera W B om u ZAIRE YEMEN Wad Medani ElObei d CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC ngo C o A Khartoum E Atbara CHAD A R A B IA S Port N ubian D esert Sudan The CQ Researcher Dodoma Ki smayu IN D IA N OCEAN Zanzi bar Dar-es-Sal aam quickly enough after the killing began,” Clinton told hundreds of genocide survivors after hearing harrowing eyewitness accounts of the massacre. “We did not immediately call these crimes by their rightful name: genocide.” 12 Two months later, after touring a memorialcontaining the bones of3,000 genocide victims, Annan somberly acknowledged, “The world failed Rwanda at that time of evil. The international community and the United Nations could not muster the political will to confront it.” 13 Instead, Clinton officials had urged the Rwandan government to negotiate with rebel militants from the Tutsi ethnic minority — the group the Hutuled Rwandan government had targeted for killing. An estimated 800,000 minority Tutsi and moderate Hutu’s were killed in three months — most hacked to death with machetes. The daily death rate exceeded even Hitler’s killing machine. Many observers now agree Rwanda’s leaders used their participation at the peace table as a cover for the killings they were planning and executing elsewhere in the country. Similarly, Bush administration officials have stressed their role in encouraging north-south peace talks between the Sudan governmentand rebel groups, which want a share of Sudan’s oil wealth. (The African rebel groups from Darfur charge they have been largely excluded from those agreements, which is one reason they are rebelling.) “Once again, the world is turning its back on a defenseless people,” said Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., ranking minority member of the House International Relations Committee.He had warned State Department officials earlier this spring that Sudanese government leaders were “masters of manipulating” the internationalcommunity,even as they engaged in the peace process. 14 What does it take for a country like the United States to intervene in an ethnically driven massacre abroad — particularly if it puts American soldiers at The Genocide Treaty T he United States and 135 other nations have signed the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide since the United Nations General Assembly approved it on Dec. 9, 1948. The treaty recognizes that genocide “is contrary to the spirit and aims of the United Nations and condemned by the civilized world” and that “in order to liberate mankind from such an odious scourge, international cooperation is required. . . .” Key treaty provisions: • The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish. • In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in risk?Increasingly,observers seem to concur with former journalist Samantha Power, a lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Her 2002 book, A Pro b le m fro m He ll, argues that American presidents from Franklin D.Roosevelt to Clinton have been reluctant to intervene unless they perceive it to be in their political interest. And humanitarian intervention is widely viewed as unlikely to be popular with voters. It’s hard to argue for a compelling U.S. interest in far-off Sudan, even if it once harbored al-Qaeda terrorists. But proponents of humanitarian intervention say genocidalcountries could indeed threaten the United States because they often become breeding grounds for terrorism and disease. “Sudan’s chaos is destabilizing surrounding countries, especially Chad, which is an increasing source of oil for us,” Ne w Yo r k T ime s columnist Nicholas D. Kristof recently argued, adding that recent outbreaks of ebola virus and polio in Sudan could also spread to neighboring countries. 15 whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. • The Contracting Parties undertake to enact, in accordance with their respective Constitutions, the necessary legislation to give effect to the provisions of the present Convention, and, in particular, to provide effective penalties for persons guilty of genocide. . . . • Persons charged with genocide [or attempted genocide or related crimes] . . . shall be tried by a competent tribunal of the State in the territory of which the act was committed, or by such international penal tribunal as may have jurisdiction with respect to those Contracting Parties which shall have accepted its jurisdiction. • Any Contracting Party may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide. . . . In a recent example of how ethnic persecution can spread to surrounding countries, a Hutu rebel faction in Burundi on Aug. 13 shot or hacked to death at least 189 Tutsi refugees from neighboring Congo, who had fled to a refugee camp in Burundi to escape a civil war at home. 16 Rwandan President Paul Kagame later said the massacre “proves . . . that there have been incidents that are ignored by the international community and the U.N. where people are being killed in eastern Congo, being targeted for who they are.” 17 U.N. officials were investigating whether the killings were perpetrated by Hutu insurgents from neighboring Rwanda, who fled to Congo after participating in the 1994 genocide against Rwanda’s minority Tutsi ethnic group. Some of President Bush’s harshest critics have given his administration credit for publicly condemning the killings in Sudan — if late in the game. In early July, Powell visited Sudan and received pledges from Sudanese offi- Av a ila ble online : www.the c qr e s e a r c he r.c om cials to disarm the militias. The continuing killings in late July spurred the United States to push the Security Council to threaten punitive measures if a 30-day deadline was not met. 18 According to Power, 10,000 peacekeeping troops would be needed to stop the killing.19 Butwith its forces stretched thin in Iraq, the United States has so far been unwilling to committroops to Darfur. In July, the United States was instead urging countries in the African Union and Europe to help, according to Pierre-Richard Prosper, U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues. 20 “What about the Europeans, Spain — all those people not helping us in Iraq?” he asks. “Why don’t they help us? We’re pretty locked down in Iraq right now.” American and U.N.reliance on Sudan’s government to pacify the same Arab militias they have been charged with arming means “the wolf will guard the henhouse,” in the opinion of John Prendergast,who handled African affairs during the Clinton administration. Only an international military force backed by Aug . 2 7 , 2 0 0 4 689 STOPPING GENOCIDE the United States and Europe is likely to succeed, he has suggested. 21 Complicating matters, the current scandal over American soldiers’ abuse of Iraqi prisoners may have fatally undermined the United States’moralcredibility if it calls for international military action in Sudan, argues Holly Burkhalter, U.S. policy director for Physicians for Human Rights. “The U.S. has no authority in the world right now. We couldn’t get consensus on a lemonade stand much less United Nations intervention,” says Burkhalter, who favors sending troops to protect the delivery of food, medicine and shelter to Sudanese refugees, many of them in unprotected camps inside Sudan. Some critics blame international inaction on the fact that the Security Council must approve the mobilization of U.N. peacekeepers. Any one of the five permanent members — including nations like Russia and China, which have themselves been accused of human-rights abuses — can veto a resolution. “In this case, it’s not the U.S. that’s the spoiler as we were with Rwanda,” Burkhalter notes. This time, however, the Security Council has an option that was not available in 1994: It could seek action by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, Netherlands, established in 1998 to try crimes against humanity. 22 But such a move would be “difficult for us to even contemplate supporting,” Prosper says. Expressing concern that American peacekeepers abroad could be hauled before the court on politically motivated warcrimes charges, the Bush administration has refused to join the court. Human-rights activists say the administration’s opposition to the court reflects its overall disdain for international law. Similarly, some see the administration’s choice of an Iraqi-led tribunalto try Saddam Hussein on charges of genocide as just another chance to reject international justice. 690 The CQ Researcher “You’ve got an effort to deliberately hold at arms length international involvement and expertise in the name of an Iraqi-led effort while behind the scenes you have a U.S.-motored effort,” says Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch. Bush administration officials counter that the Iraqi court could prove to be an improvement over the tribunals the U.N. set up after the genocides in Rwanda and Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Those tribunals were criticized for being slow to bring cases to trial and for being held outside the countries where the crimes occurred. As the United States struggles over its roles in Sudan and Iraq, here are some of the debates taking place in Congress and the international arena: Yet other analysts say Rwanda has sensitized the administration to the need for earlier action. The United States has taken “the strongest public stance” of any nation against the situation in Darfur, Human Rights Watch declared in May, amid what it called a “shameful” void in international response. 25 In April, Bush called on Sudan to stop the militia attacks. “I condemn these atrocities, which are displacing hundreds of thousands of civilians, and I have expressed my views directly to President [Omar Hassan Ahmed al] Bashir,” Bush said. Author Power saw Bush’s statement as an improvementover Rwanda.“President Bush called Bashir, which is one more phone call than Clinton made to Rwanda in 1994,” she said. “At least he’s not saying, ‘We’re not going to send troops, so let’s stay mute,’ which Is the United States doing enough is what happened before. That’s a verto stop and prevent genocide? sion of progress.” 26 Sudan may be the test case for deIt’s too early to say how much more termining whether the United States Bush might be willing to do in Sudan. learned any lessons from Rwanda. But some experts say American presSome human-rights activists have crit- idents only risk military intervention if icized the United States for doing too they see some political payoff. little too late, waiting more than a “We don’t intervene because the year after the attacks began on Su- political risks of not acting are less danese civilians to consider stronger than the political risks of acting,” says steps. But as of August, despite con- Jerry Fowler, staff director of the Comtinued killing and raping, the admin- mittee on Conscience, which guides istration still was not contemplating the genocide-prevention activities of military action, despite the urging of the United States Holocaust Memorial some human-rights groups. 23 Museum. For the first time in its hisHuman rights in Darfur started to tory, the committee declared a “genodeteriorate after two rebel groups at- cide emergency” on July 26, saying tacked Sudanese troops in February that genocide in Sudan “was imminent 2003 over the government’s failure to or actually happening.” 27 protectcivilians there or to include DarOther observers suggest that Amerfur in ongoing peace negotiations. 24 icans tend to be far less sympathetic Some activists say the Bush adminis- to genocide in remote continents like tration’s slowness to act shows the Africa, where black people are vicUnited States has not learned the main tims, than to similar events in Europe. lesson of Rwanda — act early, before In 1999, an American-backed NATO crimes escalate to genocide. bombing campaign to end ethnic killing “We wouldn’t be facing hundreds in Kosovo, in the former Yugoslavia, of thousands of deaths in western came after enormous media attention Sudan today if we’d learned enough,” and political pressure, in contrast to Burkhalter says. scant press attention to Rwanda. 28 AFP Photo/Alessandro Abbonizio Noting the handful of reporters cov- dicators that lead to a legal definition protecting peace and security,notes Dickering a May 6 hearing on Darfur before of genocide. And that’s the advice of er of Human Rights Watch. the International Relations Committee, my lawyers.” 30 However, the international convenRep.Donald M.Payne,D-N.J.,an AfricanOn July 1, the liberal grass-roots tion does commit participating counAmerican, said, “Perhaps if this was in group MoveOn.org urged its members tries to undertake to “prevent and punEurope, we’d have TV cameras all over to lobby the administration to declare ish genocide,” an obligation weighty the place.But since it’s just another gov- genocide in Darfur: “Formally recog- enough thatadministration lawyers have ernment in Africa, we don’t.” nizing the genocide would enable the advised presidents against using the The country’s attitude toward foreign U.N.Security Councilto authorize other term. American presidents mistakenly disasters has also been influenced by countries, like Germany, France, and — and repeatedly — assume their rethe Sept.11,2001,terrorist sponse to genocide must be attacks, Ne w Yo rk T ime s either military action or nothcolumnist James Traub ing at all, Power observes. 31 argued recently. “One of President Bush demonthe consequences of 9/11 strated thatpoliticalcloutcould may be that vital interests be exerted in other ways with have come to seem so his call to Sudan’s President pressing that humanitarial Bashir on April 7 to deanism has become an unnounce the killings in Darfur. affordable luxury,” he sugAnxious to have economic gested. 29 sanctions lifted, Sudan anDuring his first presinounced an immediate ceasedential campaign, Presifire. When U.S. attention dent Bush said the “best waned, however, the killings interests of the United resumed. States” would guide his Often forgotten in the deinternationalpolicies,not bate over stopping genocide the well-being of foreign is another obligation of nanations. He indicated he tions under the internationwould not send troops if al convention — to make another Rwanda occurred genocidal leaders accounton his watch. In justifyable for their crimes. Many ing the invasions of Iraq experts see the Internationand Afghanistan, howeval Criminal Court as a cruer, Bush has recently cial ingredient in preventing borrowed the moral arfuture genocides. guments used by liberal F o r me r Rwandan Pr ime Ministe r Je an Kamb anda r e c e iv e s a life “By leaving perpetrators of se nte nc e in S e p te mb e r 1998 fo r his r o le in the de aths o f 800,000 humanitarian intervengenocide unpunished, we Rwandans in 1994. T he sp e c ial U.N. tr ib unal in T anz ania was tionists during the 1990s only make genocide more the fir st inte r natio nal c o ur t to c o nv ic t any o ne fo r g e no c ide to push for military acpossible, not less,” says Juan and the fir st to ho ld a he ad o f g o v e r nme nt r e sp o nsib le . tio n in Rwan d a an d E.Mendez,the U.N.’s recently Bosnia. appointed special adviser on Over the summer, Secretary of State Spain,which don’t have troops in Iraq, the prevention of genocide. Powell came under fire for refusing to help stop the killing in Sudan.” But the United States has refused to call the Sudan killings genocide. Contrary to MoveOn’s perception, to join the court and has sought ex“Why would we call it a genocide declaring a genocide is not needed to emptions from the court’s jurisdiction when the genocide definition has to trigger military action by either the Unit- for U.S. troops and officials, drawing meet certain legal tests?” he told Na- ed States or the United Nations under fire from human-rights groups. tional Public Radio on June 30. “And the international genocide convention. “The U.S should be leading the efbased on what we have seen, there The U.N. Charter empowers the Secu- fort to have the Security Council refer were some indicators but there was rity Councilto ordermilitary forces abroad the situation in Darfur to the Internacertainly no full accounting of all in- to protect civilians, under its mission of tional Criminal Court,” Dicker argues. Av a ila ble online : www.the c qr e s e a r c he r.c om Aug . 2 7 , 2 0 0 4 691 STOPPING GENOCIDE Modern Genocides vs. the Holocaust T he horrendous death toll from the Nazi Holocaust — 6 million Jews and another 5 million Gypsies, homosexuals and communists — prompted U.S. political leaders to vow “Never again.” And yet genocides continue with little effort to stop them. One reason — or excuse — may be that ethnic killings since World War II look very different from the Nazi atrocities. Genocide today usually occurs in the context of wars or armed rebellions, with killing occurring on both sides. This fueled the argument against intervening during the Bosnian war, when Muslims and Serbs were killing each other. “It’s been easy to analogize [the Bosnia situation] to the Holocaust,” President Bill Clinton’s secretary of State, Warren Christopher, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on May 18, 1993, “but I never heard of any genocide by the Jews against the German people.” Historian Frank Chalk, co-director of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies at Concordia University, observes, “The public has in its mind cases like that of the Holocaust, where you could never sustain the argument “The court was created to go after those who are behind the Janjaweed and the Sudanese military authorities in theircampaign of ethnic cleansing in Darfur.” The Bush administration’s opposition to the court makes that unlikely. (S e e “ At Issue ,” p . 701.) Instead, the administration supports setting up ad hoc courts to punish perpetrators as each new genocide arises — as in Rwanda, Yugoslavia and most recently Iraq. But the court’s advocates say ad hoc tribunals take too long to establish and are too expensive. Ambassador Prosper disagrees.“The world has learned over the years and is more efficientin creating those mechanisms,” he maintains. He notes that a tribunal set up in about 45 days in Sierra Leone last year indicted those bearing the greatest responsibility for atrocities committed during a civil war that ended in 2002. The administration also objects to the international court because it does not come under Security Council jurisdiction. If it did, State Department officials argue, the Security Council would preventpoliticized prosecutions by the court. 692 The CQ Researcher that the Jewish people were lethal enemies of the Nazis or that the killing was part of military necessity.” But when both the government and the armed opposition are using famine as a weapon to starve civilians on the opposing side, he adds, “It’s very hard to tell the public that both sides are doing that, and then mobilize the pressure for intervention.” Rwanda is a case in point. In 1994, the Rwandan government was battling an armed rebellion by the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front at the same time that it was exhorting Hutu mothers and fathers to machete their Tutsi neighbors. But Joyce Leader, the U.S. deputy chief of mission to Rwanda in 1994, says her State Department superiors had enough information to distinguish military from civilian killings. “That was a clear situation where the violence could have been stopped if there was a show of force by the international community; but the U.S. didn’t want to get involved in a civil war — even when the killing of Tutsis was separate from the Tutsi rebel group fighting with government forces,” Leader says. “We did inform the higher-ups that different kinds of killings were occurring, but they initially didn’t hear it or didn’t want to hear it.” Moreover, as an independent entity, the international court doesn’t have the political clout to force a state to give up a genocide suspect, Prosper argues. On June 23, however, the Bush administration backed down from its attempt to get the U.N. to exempt U.S. military personnel serving as U.N. peacekeepers from international court jurisdiction. Secretary-General Annan had criticized the move in light of the accusations that American soldiers in Iraq were torturing prisoners. “The U.S. is engaging in torture and pretending that it’s not,” Burkhalter says. “It puts us in a uniquely bad position to be rallying around a moral cause.” 32 cide, citing what happened in Rwanda. Some critics blame the weak record on the structure of the Security Council, the only U.N. organ empowered to authorize military force. Any one of the five permanent members — the United States, England, France, China or Russia — on the 15-member body can block council action. Human-rights groups have accused Russia of genocidal abuses in Chechnya, and China of violating human rights in Tibet. The qualifications for Security Council membership need to be changed to eliminate members who practice genocide, says William Pace, who heads the Coalition for the International Criminal Court. Likening the council to a fire deIs the U.N. doing enough to stop partment, he says: “We shouldn’t have and prevent genocide? pyromaniacs on the Security Council.” Annan has spoken outforcefully against The Security Council’s makeup has the killings in Darfur and sent a special been blamed for the U.N.’s paralysis on envoy there this summer. The U.N. also several occasions. In June, the council surprised some critics on July 30 when failed to pass a U.S.-backed resolution the Security Council threatened punitive criticizing Sudan because of opposition measures if Sudan did not disarm the from Pakistan and Algeria,the two MusArab militias. But human-rights activists lim countries currently on the council, say the U.N.has a weak record on geno- and China. 33 When the Clinton administration wanted the Security Council to charge Iraq’s Hussein with war crimes, the opposition of a few permanent members — Ch in a, Ru ssia an d Fran ce — blocked any action, according to David J.Scheffer,then-U.S.ambassador-at-large for war-crimes issues. They were more interested in protecting their oil interests in Iraq, he has charged. 34 In Rwanda, the council responded to the 1994 ethnic killings by reducing its peacekeeping force to just 270 soldiers — one-tenth its original size. Many believe a larger contingent could have saved lives. Author Power has argued thatAnnan,who then headed U.N. peacekeeping operations, had so internalized the paralysis governing the veto-prone Security Council that he did not even bother to ask for a council vote in response to an urgent cable from the U.N. troop commander in Rwanda, Romeo Dallaire, warning of an impending massacre. In the cable, Dallaire said he planned to seize arms that he had been informed were being assembled by local Hutu militias to exterminate Tutsi’s. Annan’s cable rejected the proposed arm raids telling him,“the United States in particular would not support such an aggressive interpretation ofhis mandate,” Power writes. 35 “We’ve acknowledged our responsibilities in failing the people of Rwanda,” says U.N.spokesman Farhan Haq. However, Mendez, the special adviser, notes when it comes to genocide, “In the last 10 years there hasn’t been a veto on action by any of the permanent five members. I don’t see it as having been the main reason the international community failed to act.” Rather, the council’s inaction may stem from individual members’ desire to avoid a veto, Mendez suggests. In the case of Kosovo, for example, the NATO countries decided not even to seek Security Council authorization for military intervention because they feared a veto, Mendez notes. Instead, they acted on their own,sending in a NATO force in 1999. “It seems to me the U.N. is sometimes scapegoated for the lack of will of some member states: If you don’t want to do something, you can argue, ‘I can’t do it because there will be a veto,’ ” Mendez says. The U.N.GeneralAssembly has discussed proposals to abolish the council’s veto power, but U.N. spokesman Haq says, “Frankly, I don’t think it will be resolved any time quickly.” In April, Annan announced that he wanted his main legacy to be a U.N. better equipped to prevent genocide. Saying regrets over Rwanda had “dominated” his thoughts ever since, Annan announced a plan built around giving early warning ...
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