“For those of us who believe that, whatever the compelling attractions of traditional sovereignty,  we cannot simply turn a blind eye to mass atrocity crimes, and that the 2005 cannot be the high water mark from which the tides now recede, there is still a big job ahead.  The immediate objective must be to get to the point where, when the next conscience-shocking case of large-scale killing, or ethnic cleansing, or other war crimes or crimes against humanity come along, as they are all too unhappily likely to, the immediate reflex response of the whole international community will be not to ask whether action is necessary, but rather what action is required, by whom, when, and where…

“There is no point in simply mourning the absence of political will: this should be the occasion not for lamentation, but mobilization by those both within and outside the decision-making system in question…

“Let us work together, in all our different capacities, to ensure that, however many of the world’s problems we are unable to solve in the years ahead, we at least make sure that when it comes to mass atrocity crimes we never again –have to look back with anger, comprehension and shame after some new and terrible catastrophe, wondering how we could possibly have let it all happen again - as we’ve done so often in the past, after the Holocaust, after Cambodia, after Rwanda, after Srebrenica.”

The latest speech by Gareth Evans on the subject of the Responsibility to Protect - delivered to a group of senior military officers in Asia - is the probably best available detailed introduction to the concept, including its origins, significance and current challenges. (It is also highly relevant to the notion of individual engagement as proposed by iR2P.) Read the full transcript here.

Kenya’s National Commission on Human Rights has released its report into January’s post-election violence. Entitled On the Brink of the Precipice, the report (promised to appear on the KNCHR website shortly) concludes that some of the violence was premeditated, financed by local politicians and business people, and included crimes against humanity. Naming planners and perpetrators, and making recommendations on changing the prevailing culture of impunity, it warns that the prerequisites for genocide were in place, and continue to pose risks for Kenya:

Kenya presently exhibits characteristics which are prerequisites for the commission of the crime of genocide. One such feature is the dehumanisation of a community using negative labels or idioms that distinguish the target group from the rest of society. Communities such as the Kikuyu and Kisii resident in the Rift Valley were referred to by some Kalenjin politicians as “madoadoa” (stains) before and during the post?election violence. Another characteristic present in Kenya is the impunity subsequent to which past acts of violence in 1992, 1997 and 2005 have gone unpunished. Consequently, unless the state and Kenyans take remedial measures, the probability of genocide happening in Kenya at some future point in time is real.

Over four months of research, and using leads from a public hotline as well as reports from other sources (e.g. HRW), the Commission gathered over a thousand statements describing more than 7,500 episodes of violence or incitement to violence. The Commission has compiled a list of more than 200 named individuals for the police and the International Criminal Court to formally investigate. The list includes five cabinet ministers, current and former Members of Parliament, senior police officers, provincial officials, religious leaders, radio station bosses and ordinary citizens.

While, in general, “Kenya’s political leadership failed to prevail on their supporters not to perpetrate violence against other Kenyans“, the report notes that:

In instances where leaders intervened, violence did not escalate to the levels experienced elsewhere. This was the case in Narok where elders prevailed on the Maasai community not to involve themselves in violence, and Mombasa where religious leaders and the Police prevailed on local youth to desist from violence.

Kenya’s security forces were found to have used excessive and lethal force in efforts to quell the violence, although in some cases the police showed proper restraint and helped to protect victims of the violence.

The report applauds Kenyan civil society calls for unity as well as the role of the Kenya Red Cross and other humanitarian organisations in reducing the suffering of people displaced by the violence.

The report will be presented to the President, the Attorney General, Parliament, and an independent commission established by the mediation process. Earlier this year, in a March press release (PDF) the Commission said,

At this historical moment, the current generation must say no to impunity; our leadership must bold enough to “follow truth wherever it may lead” unless we want to go through the same again or worse in 2012 and beyond. Kenya as a whole has been the victim of the post-election violence: let us now not also be the victim of impunity.

Individual responsibility is highly relevant to the lofty goal of genocide prevention, because we need to reach a critical mass of people who understand it as a duty and a reflex in practice, not just a moral position. People who can help each other identify the answer to the question ‘What can I do?’

It is also related to the well-established and important legal principle of individual accountability (currently in the news - see previous posts), as well as the more obscure principle of individual ministerial accountability enshrined in many constitutions. Finally, it is consistent with a focus on the needs and concerns of people at risk, with whom we should talk if we wish to take up their cause.

I have signed the individual Responsibility to Protect (iR2P) pledge to express these beliefs and ideas, not as an end in itself but for what it may lead to.

(NB first posted at Change.org)

Radovan Karadžic - a former poet, psychiatrist, politician, ally of Slobodan Miloševic and (from December 1992) Supreme Commander of the Serbian armed forces - is charged with six counts of genocide and complicity in genocide, including the mass execution of over 7,800 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995, in which victims were targeted solely on the basis of their identity. (Many bodies were subsequently removed from mass grave sites and reburied by the Serb army in a cover up operation. In 2004, a UN-instigated Serb commission identified 7,800 victims and acknowledged that their capture and mass murder had been planned.) Karadžic is also accused of ordering the shooting of civilians during the siege of Sarajevo, in which some 12,000 civilians died.

After years in hiding, Karadžic is in the hands of the Serbian authorities and, following a Serbian court ruling to approve his extradition, must now be transferred to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

A BBC correspondent linked the arrest to last month’s formation of a new, pro-European government in Belgrade, followed by the appointment of a new Serbian intelligence chief.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt spoke for many when he said, “This is late, late, late, but good, good, good.”

Ratko Mladic, the military commander under Karadzic’s command, and Goran Hadzic, accused of war crimes against Croats in the city of Vukovar, are still at large.

[link to BBC video report]

Prosecuting Genocide

Many aid workers and diplomats suffered a panic attack when the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court sought an arrest warrant this week for the president of Sudan, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, for committing genocide. They feared that Mr. Bashir would retaliate by attacking peacekeepers and humanitarian workers.

But instead of wringing our hands, we should be applauding. The prosecution for genocide is a historic step that also creates an opportunity in Sudan, particularly if China can now be induced and shamed into suspending the transfer of weapons used to slaughter civilians in Darfur.

If China continues — it is the main supplier of arms used in the genocide — then it may itself be in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention. Article III of the convention declares that one of the punishable crimes is “complicity in genocide”; that’s the crime that China may be committing if it goes on supplying arms used for genocide, even after the I.C.C. has begun criminal proceedings against the purchaser of those weapons.

Beijing seems unabashed. Incredibly, China and Russia are acting as Mr. Bashir’s lawyers, quietly urging the United Nations Security Council to intervene to delay criminal proceedings against him. Such a delay is a bad idea, unless Mr. Bashir agrees to go into exile.

Still, China does care about its image. Beijing supplied arms to Pol Pot’s genocidal regime in Cambodia but later distanced itself from the Khmer Rouge as international criticism grew. China also supported Slobodan Milosevic until he was indicted, but then almost immediately let him hang out to dry.

One test of China’s attitudes will be whether President Bashir is welcomed at the Olympic Games’ opening ceremony next month. (If President Bush is not careful, he may find himself seated at the ceremony between Mr. Bashir and Robert Mugabe.)

If Beijing reacts to Mr. Bashir the same way it did to its other war criminal pals and suspends arms transfers, then there is real hope for Sudan. If Mr. Bashir feared losing his weapons and spare parts, he would be willing to make significant concessions that would make a peace deal more likely — and ultimately an enforceable peace agreement is the only way that Darfur can recover.

According to United Nations data, 88 percent of Sudan’s imported small arms come from China — and those Chinese sales of small arms increased 137-fold between 2001 and 2006. China has also sold military aircraft to Sudan, and the BBC reported this week that two Chinese-made A-5 Fantan fighter aircraft were spotted on a Darfur runway last month. The BBC also said that China is training Sudanese military pilots in Sudan.

Likewise, Human Rights First, in a report on Chinese weapons sales to Sudan, suggests that Chinese engineers supervise arms production at the Giad industrial complex outside Khartoum. Chinese military companies have also helped set up arms factories outside Khartoum at Kalakla, Chojeri and Bageer.

Instead of lashing out in reaction to the prospect of an arrest warrant, Mr. Bashir may be forced to take the opposite tack: He may become more cooperative.

Mr. Bashir first used brutal methods — militias and a proxy invasion of a neighboring country — in his long war against South Sudan. He didn’t pay a steep price, so he adopted the same scorched-earth policy in the Nuba Mountains. When he again went unpunished, he quite rationally adopted the same measures to suppress insurgency in Darfur.

Now, finally, we have a stick that has Mr. Bashir alarmed, and that gives us leverage. So far, Mr. Bashir is responding by trying to win support from the African Union and the Arab League, and that may restrain him from killing and raping too many aid workers and peacekeepers in the coming months. It may even induce him to cooperate with the U.N. in permitting more peacekeepers.

Unfortunately, the Arab League’s secretary general, Amr Moussa, who quite properly denounces abuses when suffered by Palestinians, has chosen to side with Mr. Bashir rather than the hundreds of thousands of Muslims killed in Darfur. If Israel bombed some desert in Darfur, Arab leaders might muster some indignation about violence there.

A final thought: this prosecution for genocide offers a hint of historical progress.

Throughout most of history, genocide was simply what happened to losers in a conflict. In the Bible, if we are to take it literally, there are cases when God gives a nod to genocide (“Now go and completely destroy the entire Amalekite nation — men, women, children, babies”). Such divinely sanctioned ethnic cleansing reflected the norms of war for much of history, finally beginning to yield in the last couple of centuries.

Now this prosecutor’s pursuit of a head of state suggests that human standards truly are changing — and that is a prerequisite for ending genocide itself.

“There is an important technical point at stake. UN security council resolutions exist as a mechanism to address urgent global peace and security issues. It is in clear contravention of the UN charter to use them to deal with domestic concerns within individual states.”

This is a direct challenge to the Responsibility to Protect principle, as agreed at the 2005 World Summit, and should be vigorously protested, not least by Russians everywhere. The following response from iR2P is now on the Guardian website:

It is surprising that the Ambassador is more worried about the charge of ‘inconsistency’ than that of abetting widespread and systematic political violence in Zimbabwe, or indeed that of further discrediting the UN Security Council.

As he points out, Russian diplomats have been remarkably consistent in blocking attempts by the Security Council to put pressure on regimes that persecute their own citizens. I’m sure they have some legitimate concerns, but to pass off the crisis in Zimbabwe as a mere ‘domestic concern’ and not ‘an urgent peace and security issue’ appears deeply cynical. And to conclude by suggesting that the Zimbabwean authorities should bring themselves to justice smacks of indifference.

Legitimacy and credibility are determined not only by democratic credentials, but also by responsible leadership and respect for the rule of law. This isn’t jargon, it’s fundamental to peace and security and the spirit of the UN charter.

At the 2005 World Summit, world leaders accepted their ‘Responsibility to Protect’: the obligation to protect their citizens from mass atrocities and to assist each other in doing so. In case a state fails to act appropriately, the responsibility to do so falls to that larger community of states. The Russian Federation was among a small number of states that tried to block this agreement, and insisted on various caveats. Is this how Russian citizens wish to be represented?

We would like to encourage iR2P enthusiasts and pledge signatories to look out for relevant news articles and to contribute to the public debate by commenting on news websites, calling radio phone-ins and writing letters to newspapers.

In a speech earlier this week, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon declared his “deep and enduring” personal commitment to the Responsibility to Protect. Appealing for a common understanding of what R2P is and is not, he said “it is not a new code for humanitarian intervention. Rather, it is built on a more positive and affirmative concept of sovereignty as responsibility”. And he recalled that the principle has been adopted by the 2005 World Summit - “the largest gathering of Heads of State and Government the world has seen” - and subsequently endorsed by both the General Assembly and Security Council.

Pointing out that in Kenya, “the combined efforts of the African Union, influential Member States, the UN, and my esteemed predecessor, Kofi Annan, were instrumental in curbing the post-election violence”, the Secretary General continued:

“As the 2005 Summit recognized, there are times when persuasion and peaceful measures fall short… If Member States can indeed summon the will to act collectively in some cases like this, then others may be deterred from inciting or committing such atrocities. Likewise, if UN rules, procedures, and practices are developed in line with this bold declaration, then there is less likelihood of RtoP principles being used to justify extra-legal interventions for other purposes.”

“In other words, the responsibility to protect does not alter the legal obligation of Member States to refrain from the use of force except in conformity with the Charter. Rather, it reinforces this obligation.”

Nicely timed to coincide with the speech, the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect has produced a useful R2P Primer and FAQ (both PDFs), both highly recommended reading. The Primer concludes:

“Crises threatening large-scale loss of life are bound to continue to arise, and with them debates over issues such as the most appropriate response to the killing of civilians in Darfur, Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar, and to the violence surrounding the elections in Zimbabwe. The international community of states will encounter extremely difficult and painful questions about the applicability of R2P, which only demonstrates the need for clarity over the reach and limits of this new principle.

“The attempt to forge political consensus in any given case will depend in part on reaching agreement over exactly what it was that the states agreed to do wwhen they adopted R2P in 2005. But it will depend as well on an evolution of public sentiment. Leaders will take real risks only if citizens demand it; and publics have only recently begun to demand that their leaders confront the issue of human rights violations abroad. As the clamor grows, so will the likelihood of action.”

In this video, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) say the fighting in Somalia is more intense than it has been in 15 years. Hundreds of thousands have fled Mogadishu. A single clinic has treated over a thousand civilians for war wounds since September. Malnutrition indicators are above the emergency threshold; a third of the population are in urgent need of food aid, but very little is available due to a combination of insecure conditions. MSF has been forced to evacuate frequently and to use armed security guards, but this was not enough to prevent 3 staff being killed on 28 January this year.

As well as saluting the courage of MSF’s humanitarian action, we should be listening to their appeals to pay more attention to the long-running crisis in Somalia. This is a situation of widespread violence. It is not necessarily systematic in the sense of being orchestrated, but many agree that the concept of R2P certainly applies. In March, UN Envoy Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah told the Security Council:

What is needed now is engagement by the international community. I am not asking outside countries to become active for moral or altruistic reasons. They have a clearly mandated responsibility to become involved in a country where there are widespread violations of human rights and humanitarian law (…)

The report of the Secretary-General and the interagency fact-finding mission to Somalia (S/2008/178) clearly illustrates that the international community has a clear and unambiguous responsibility towards the people of Somalia. That responsibility obliges the Security Council to look beyond the limitations that the current security situation imposes and to reflect on a possible outcome and come up with ideas as to what is possible (…) We are asking for real engagement by the United Nations and the Security Council.

The Security Council also has the responsibility to protect and assist the legitimate Government in Somalia as it does in other conflicts. Silence and lack of action are not viable options at this time. The international community in general, and the Security Council in particular, must participate in a serious manner in a peacebuilding process in Somalia.

One of our number is currently at a conference on implementing the Responsibility to Protect, and raising, naturally, the question of how we can ensure that this responsibility is felt at the individual level.

On a different topic, but in line with the spirit of that question, is the following extract from an article on The Green Issue by Michael Pollan:

“The Big Problem is nothing more or less than the sum total of countless little everyday choices, most of them made by us … and most of the rest of them made in the name of our needs and desires and preferences. For us to wait for legislation or technology to solve the problem of how we’re living our lives suggests we’re not really serious about changing — something our politicians cannot fail to notice. They will not move until we do. Indeed, to look to leaders and experts, to laws and money and grand schemes, to save us from our predicament represents precisely the sort of thinking — passive, delegated, dependent for solutions on specialists — that helped get us into this mess in the first place. It’s hard to believe that the same sort of thinking could now get us out of it.” 

The answer is yes, he concludes; genocide is the ultimate human crime. It is interesting to read some of the comments that readers posted on Kristof’s blog in response, particularly those that discuss why the US hasn’t done more about Darfur. Although some accuse him of hypocrisy, the great majority (and there are even more on his Facebook page) are far more supportive and keen to take action.

One comment in particular I’d like to highlight. Somebody called Alex Waldauer remembers the sobering effect of a documentary on the Holocaust and reflects that “to know what genocide is, one must experience that jolt of the conscious”.