Preserve me if you can: the failures of the responsibility to protect in Africa
Photo by maxime niyomwungeri on Unsplash
Photo par maxime niyomwungeri sur Unsplash
Camille Dubreucq
(FR) Cet article vise à comprendre les faits concernant la responsabilité de protéger (R2P), un sujet mentionné dans la presse depuis 40 ans. La responsabilité de protéger assume la responsabilité de protéger les populations du genocide, des crimes de guerre, de purification ethnique et des crimes contre l'humanité, ce qui mène à des actions collectives dans l'intérêt des pays ayant besoin de ce principe. Cependant, ce devoir juridique fait face à de nombreuses controverses. En effet, dans le contenu de cet article nous verrons que de nombreux États craignent l'ingérence des pouvoirs de l’ouest dans leurs affaires économiques et leurs systèmes de gestion de ressources naturelles. De plus, nous examinerons les conséquences de la légitimation de certaines interventions fondées sur les principes des droits humains ainsi que les solutions qui pourraient être trouvées pour répondre à ces préoccupations. Les exemples empiriques utilisés dans cet article sont tous des cas africains, puisque la majorité des missions de la R2P ont lieu sur le continent. Nous nous concentrerons donc principalement sur la Libye, la Somalie et le Rwanda.
In the early 1990s, after witnessing the failure of various missions in Africa, the international community started to discuss the right to intervene, which would allow for Western intervention in Africa to counter massive crimes, such as ethnic genocides. The word “intervene” tends to be associated with unlawful missions and colonization and, therefore, possesses negative connotations. Nonetheless, the United Nations found the urge to use it. In 2001, during the drafting of the report of the International Commission, which created the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), the phrase responsibility to protect came into effect. In 2005, Resolution A/63/677, unanimously signed by all member states of the United Nations, formalized the enactment of the concept of responsibility to protect in the Security Council (Cardinal St-Onge, 2017).
After years of work and debate by international organizations, what did the concept of R2P result in? What does it consist of? The United Nations World 2005 Summit agreed that R2P refers to a duty to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
With the ratification of Resolution A/63/677, the responsibility to protect became a general standard in public international law. The conflict requiring the application of the concept of responsibility to protect must first be discussed in front of the United Nations General to determine a possible military intervention. It only becomes a collective action when it complies with Article VII of the UN Charter, allowing troops to be sent to the field. Meeting humanitarian needs, this article outlines the legitimacy of an intervention when the national authorities do not ensure the safety of their populations. Article VI allows states to identify whether the actions of national authorities take the form of a genocide, a war crime, an ethnic cleansing, or a crime against humanity (Marclay, 2005). The R2P response is one of gradual involvement, requiring a discussion between the parties involved in the conflict before the intervention can take place. However, even after many crisis meetings and discussions, the R2P remains controversial.
Why are actions related to the responsibility to protect still considered a failure in some African states?
Interference in small states: Is the concept of sovereignty inviolable?
Small states tend to be opposed to the United Nations legitimizing military actions, as they fear interference from the Western powers, under the guise of advocacy for human rights. In reality, this advocacy is mainly used to serve the national political and economic interests, and to maintain alliances with African states. Thus, the preventive components of the responsibility to protect primarily meet the needs of these major powers, which hampers the success of peacekeeping missions (Mouton, 2018).
In 2011, during the Arab Spring, Libya was at the center of Western countries who used the responsibility to protect as a pretext to intervene on the territory and impose their ideas on the international scale. The civil mobilizations against the authoritarian Libyan regime of Khadafi encouraged the United Nations to write resolution 1970, which called on the government to stop all violence perpetrated on the Libyan population. A lack of results led the Security Council to write Resolution 1973, initially proposed by France and Lebanon, which aimed to overthrow the dictatorship of Khadafi to free the population from oppression (Faraj Ben Lamma, 2016). However, the former President of the French Republic, Nicolas Sarkozy, is suspected of selling arms in Libya. Thus, intervening in Libya allows France to increase its arms exports to the resistance. Furthermore, the United States being disinterested in Africa, France finds the opportunity to assert its power within Europe and in the world, since it can set up a peacekeeping mission and have it validated by the Security Council (Howorth, 2012).
Security council: a real guarantor of Human rights?
By legitimizing a military intervention related to the responsibility to protect under Article 7 of the United Nations Charter, the risk of injuring civilians increases. The use of force and the sending of peacekeepers to protect the public can increase the number of fatalities and injuries, as well as the risk of human rights violations as perpetrated by the Security Council itself. There are also numerous complaints from citizens about abuses committed by peacekeepers, such as abuse of force or rape (Mouton, 2018). Thus, the responsibility to protect, which must include a responsibility to rebuild, is not respected in all cases. Since the Security Council mainly handles military interventions, it cares little about the reconstruction of the State after the withdrawal of troops. Therefore, The Security Council does not actually protect the population from the possible consequences of the conflict, such as political or national economic instability. We can once again look to Libya as an example of an area where the post-conflict situation is causing political instability; peacekeeping operations have forced thousands of Libyans to be displaced (Faraj Ben Lamma, 2016).
Somalia is also an example that we can look to, as this country also bears witness to the lack of respect for the responsibility to rebuild. The Somali regime of the 1990s was deeply marked by capitalist/communist bipolarity and Siyad Barre’s dictatorship repressing the people. The Somali regime is heavily dependent on humanitarian aid, which is diverted by the government itself to fund militias. In 1992, the UNOSOM I mission deployed troops to organize a ceasefire and ensure the proper delivery of humanitarian aid. With the failure of this first mission, UNOSOM II was created in II by the Security Council Resolution 814 (Marchal, 2012).
To begin, the creation of two separate missions a year apart to deliver the same humanitarian aid raised doubts within the international community about the ability of peacekeepers to fulfill their role. After humanitarian aid was distributed and troops were recalled, Somalia was left in a catastrophic post-conflict position: famine still raged, diseases continued to spread, and political and economic instability persisted. Thus, the United Nations is unable to rebuild the state in which it intervened (Marchal, 2012)..
A case that discredits the concept
The case of the Rwandan Genocide raises questions about the inaction of the Security Council in some countries, due to the slowness of the process to send troops. While the Hutu massacred the Tutsi in Burgesera, Roméo Dallaire, head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR), denounced a lack of consideration by the international community towards the conflict. After the Arusha agreements were signed in 1993, the United Nations created Resolution 872 and agreed to send peacekeepers to feed the UNAMIR mission (Des Forges, 1994). However, this mission remains characterized by the inaction of peacekeepers in preventing the genocide. The painful memory of the Rwandan Genocide further undermines the concept of the responsibility to protect and the role of the Security Council in conflict resolution.
“African problems cannot be solved without Africans”
These words, spoken by Macky Sall, President of Senegal, urged all African countries to debate and find solutions to fight against economic and political interferences (RFI, 2020). As a result of these discussions within the African Union and a larger group of states, President Sall spoke on the behalf of the African continent and asked for two permanent seats on the Security Council with veto rights, in addition to two non-permanent seats.
How could those new conditions help the concept of the responsibility to protect? First, they will certainly overthrow dominant/dominated powers, and build trust between the West and Africa. According to some experts, if African leaders have a say in who can intervene in neighbouring countries, we may see a decrease in the abuse of resources. The intervention would then have a real humanitarian and ethical purpose, and would no longer take the form of an instrumentalization of humanitarian need for commercial purposes.
Nuances to be made
In this article, I addressed the problems faced by the African countries which saw the responsibility to protect put into operation on their territories. I argued that the concept of R2P may be instrumentalized by some countries, since the United Nations is not restrictive enough to prevent them to do so. However, even though we think that the R2P may not be appropriate in dealing with African conflicts, it is undeniable that the preventive part of this legal custom is still much needed in various countries to deliver humanitarian aid and to promote negotiations between parties to achieve peace.