Crimes of War Project on R2P UN Debate

The ever useful and interesting Crimes of War Project website has posted a useful background web article on the debate in the General Assembly over the scope and status of ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P).  I’ve blogged at OJ about this before, citing to an Economist article summarizing the debate and some other things.  The COW report, by Katherine Iliopoulos, can be read here.  It is brief, and offers a well written summary of the state of debate.  (I’ll go back and put up some links to earlier OJ discussions of R2P.

I do not entirely agree with the legal analysis of the article, which seems to me going to some lengths to try and reconcile some things that other parties did not think could be reconciled – notably, those opposed to the whole concept in the General Assembly or, for that matter, on of the chief witnesses invited to give testimony against the idea, Noam Chomsky.  At this stage, I would have thought that the conflict is so firmly on the table at the legal, political, and moral level that it is a bad idea to pretend that a formula of words can make it go away.  The conflict exists at the level of ideas and actions, not surface diplomatic language.

I also think it a mistake for those, like me, who support R2P, to suggest that the language of the 2005 GA final outcome document in the UN reform process was not as much – more, really – a step backwards from where R2P had been at the time of the Kosovo intervention than it was.  The acknowledgment of R2P in the GA 2005 document was a compromise language in which a clear part was to require the assent of the Security Council.  As the Economist article recognized, Garth Evans understood that plainly and adjudged it the best deal he could get in the circumstances. There is a time for clever diplomatic ambiguities, and a time when it becomes a distraction.  By the time you’ve brought Chomsky into the argument, the time for diplomatic ambiguities is over; the debate over the principle is on the table.

There is another group of voices in this debate that we international lawyers sometimes are not aware of – this debate has also been had in the development community.  William Easterly and Paul Collier (The Bottom Billion) had a thorough airing of disagreement over the idea in international development forums.  I’ll go back and post up some of that discussion, too.