The dramatic and saddening events in Minneapolis, the city where I grew up, have reminded me of the ”Responsibility to Protect,” a concept developed about twenty years ago. The objective was to create a new international norm, clearly giving states the main responsibility for protecting populations from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, or ethnic cleansing. The international community (admittedly a vague concept) would assist states to that end. States that failed in their responsibility to protect could face pressures up to and including the use of collective force under a UN mandate.
The UN World Summit in 2005 made a political commitment to the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principles, though they have proved difficult to implement. In fact, R2P now seems quaint, a relic of a bygone, more optimistic time. The international community’s failures in Syria and elsewhere have seen to that. And we seem to have entered a more Hobbesian “war of all against all” moment, with the Trump Administration, for one, abandoning the concept of a rules-based international order.
Nonetheless, we should value R2P’s focus on the primary responsibility of states to protect their populations, and the idea that we all should hold states to account when they fail in that mission. The state has many things to protect. The safety of citizens when they encounter the legitimate police functions of the state is certainly among them. And we have just seen the costs when the state fails in such cases. All citizens have the right to express their opinions openly and peacefully, a right that must be protected, although in many states it is denied outright. It is also the responsibility of the state to protect the safety and wellbeing of all citizens, including their property. (Property is not a dirty word.) In practice, these requirements can be difficult to reconcile, as we are seeing. But the responsibility to protect is undeniable.
Tags: Hobbes, Minneapolis, R2P, the state, UN World Summit 2005
Eric, very good debut as a blogger. I hope you will persist. I liked your R2P thoughts, and they provoked two of my own. First, the length of your comment was just right. It took a nice swipe at an important issue without getting bogged down in the details. Too much of what I see is ponderous and ultimately exhausting. In these fast-paced days, a quick but satisfying take is just what we need. Second, there is a lot of best practice in our Foreign Service experience that can be turned around and deployed on our national situation to everyone’s advantage. I learned lots from my experience with the CSCE/OSCE, which is a treasure trove of best practices, even if aspirational. J E
Thanks. I often ask myself what would be said about some issue in an OSCE review conference.