Responsibility To Protect
Responsibility to Protect
That is a lofty declaration, that on the international stage - and sanctioned by the United Nations, indeed moved forward, implemented by the United Nations - the collective has a moral and humane obligation to set aside sovereignty issues when the world is faced with a situation where the governing body of a country is visiting real, deliberate and wholesale harm on its population. Or, in the case of Sudan, a portion of its population.
Only one year ago, the United Nations embraced the humanitarian concept that the collective has the obligation to protect those whom their own country is not protecting, let alone lending itself to a wholesale killing field. One hundred and fifty of the world's presidents, prime ministers and monarchs, gathered in New York on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the United Nations' founding soundly endorsed a Canadian-led-and-conceived declaration and enshrined it as a principle of international law.
And where are we today? The United Nations has attempted, in the past half-decade, to persuade, cajole, plead with the Sudanese government on behalf of its black Muslim population. Khartoum insists it has matters well in hand, that the situation whereby government-sanctioned and supported Arab Janjaweed have been clearing out villages of their inhabitants, murdering thousands, raping and marauding is simply a misunderstanding.
Since the declaration was enshrined as law in the United Nations hundreds of thousands have been slaughtered, while two and a half million black Sudanese have been rendered homeless, living in squalid, unprotected refugee camps, facing disease and starvation. The African Union itself having established a truce-monitoring force has been under-funded and starkly ineffectual. The Sudanese government has, in fact, done its utmost to render the AU force helpless.
And while the United Nations Security Council, in desperation at the plight of the black Sudanese - spurred on by the horrified protests of western nations - passed a resolution to send 22,500 peacekeepers to Darfur to replace the hopelessly incapable African Union force there has been no forward momentum. Alas, responsibility appears to go just so far and no further - one must first and foremost politely ask permission of the host country to enter, the better to protect the citizens whom the country is busily murdering.
Unsurprisingly, Sudan refuses to "accept" international intervention. "We in Sudan totally reject transforming [the AU force] into a UN force", Sudan's president Omar al-Beshir told reporters at the UN General Assembly this week in New York. "We are a state, we have our insitutions. Our institutions have not collapsed." Sudan insists on its sovereign state right to continue committing murder on a grand scale. These are, after all, Sudanese citizens, and the state reserves the right to do with them as they will.
Which is entirely the point of the Responsibility to Protect law embraced by the world and by the United Nations. But first, the murderous government of the state in question must agree to permit intervention. Acting in the best interests of the country, they see no need for international concern, let alone censure, let alone intervention. The Muslim government of Sudan sees instead a western plot to invade his country - or at least that is what they maintain.
Islamists are a prickly sort, as the world is beginning finally, to understand.
The world still embraces the ideal of "constructive engagement", using the auspices of the United Nations to gently move member countries into the arena of benign governance, of social responsibility, of social maturity, of concern for all the citizenry of their country, of respect for human rights and dignity, of good relations with neighbouring countries, of a cohesive world whole.
As far as Muslim countries seem to be concerned, their idea of constructive engagement is to go amok with rage, riot, threaten, firebomb, and slaughter. This, they seem to feel, is the kind of constructive engagement they can work with and fully understand. While the west looks on, aghast, frightened by the spectre of brutal anarchy passing as respect for others.
As long as the United Nations keeps passing resolution after hopeful resolution on Darfur and calling for a UN peacekeeping force, but making no effort whatever to take punitive and real actions, countries like Sudan will continue shrugging off sanctions and world condemnations as mere irritatants they need not be concerned with let alone respond to.
Might it conceivably be a trifle more effective should a union of Muslim or Arab countries exert pressure on this wayward regime to reform itself? Will we ever know? Do we see concern emanating from other Muslim countries on behalf of the black Muslim Sudanese who have been sacrificed on the alter of Sudan's ambitions to rule as they feel fit?
Are these crocodile tears being shed by Kofi Annan when he states:
"Sadly, once again the biggest challenge comes from Africa, from Darfur - where the continued spectacle of men, women and children driven from their homes by murder, rape and burning of their villages makes a mockery of our claim, as an international community, to shield people from the worst abuses."Yes, true, but if the international community relies on the very institution they have installed and empowered to ensure world order itself demonstrates that while it laments this dreadful disorder it feels itself powerless to act, what, exactly is the point of the United Nations to begin with?
Surely we can do better.
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, September 24, 2006
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