quote:

---

. . to review progress since the Millennium Declaration and to address key issues related to UN Reform. In preparation, Member States asked Secretary General Kofi Annan to report on the implementation of the Millennium Goals. His report, In Larger Freedom, proposed a bold agenda of "highest priorities" for the September Summit.

The Secretary General's report urges states to "embrace the 'responsibility to protect' as a basis for collective action against genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity." The prominent role given to this Canadian-led concept, in both the HLP and the Secretary General's response, reflects Canada's active engagement in debates around UN renewal to date. This ongoing commitment to contribute to UN reform is part of the new multilateralism, by which Canada aims to foster a more results-oriented, effective and accountable system of global governance.

---

quote:

---

At the UN Millennium Assembly in September 2000, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien announced that an independent International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) would be established as a response to Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s challenge to the international community to endeavour to build a new international consensus on how to respond in the face of massive violations of human rights and humanitarian law.

Launching the Commission on 14 September 2000, then Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy said that the mandate of the Commission would be to promote a comprehensive debate on the issues, and to foster global political consensus on how to move from polemics, and often paralysis, towards action within the international system, particularly through the United Nations. Much as the Brundtland Commission on Environment and Development in the 1980s took the apparently irreconcilable issues of development and environmental protection and, through the process of an intense intellectual and political debate, emerged with the notion of “sustainable development,” it was hoped that ICISS would be able to find new ways of reconciling the seemingly irreconcilable notions of intervention and state sovereignty.

The Canadian Government invited to head the Commission the Honourable Gareth Evans AO QC, President of the International Crisis Group and former Australian Foreign Minister, and His Excellency Mohamed Sahnoun of Algeria, Special Advisor to the UN Secretary-General and formerly his Special Representative for Somalia and the Great Lakes of Africa.

---

The first item quoted above is from a newsletter tagged "jutta-r2p." R2p is short for Responsibility to Protect. "Jutta" is, I believe, University of Toronto Law Professor Jutta Brunee whose interests include international law and international relations theory, compliance with international law, the use of force, and the domestic application of international law.
Originally an environmentalist, she was a Board member of the Sierra Legal Defence Fund but seems to be a significant advisor to the government on the Responsibility to Protect. Perhaps Jeff House knows her?

This seems to be the key concept in Canada's new external affairs policy as well as our defence policy. Its implications will require us to confront the UN's failure in Rwanda, and what the "new multilateralism" means. It implies a more assertive approach to failed and failing states than the UN has usually been able to take.

Who decides when there is "an international consensus on how to respond in the face of massive violations of human rights and humanitarian law?"

The Report recommended:

quote:

---

8.28 The Commission recommends to the General Assembly:
That the General Assembly adopt a draft declaratory resolution embodying the
basic principles of the responsibility to protect, and containing four basic elements:
❏ an affirmation of the idea of sovereignty as responsibility;
❏ an assertion of the threefold responsibility of the international community of states – to prevent, to react and to rebuild – when faced with human protection claims in states that are either unable or unwilling to discharge their responsibility to protect;
❏ a definition of the threshold (large scale loss of life or ethnic cleansing, actual or apprehended) which human protection claims must meet if they are to justify military intervention; and
❏ an articulation of the precautionary principles (right intention, last resort, proportional means and reasonable prospects) that must be observed when military force is used for human protection purposes.

8.29 The Commission recommends to the Security Council:
(1) That the members of the Security Council should consider and seek to reach agreement on a set of guidelines, embracing the “Principles for Military Intervention” summarized in the Synopsis, to govern their responses to claims for military intervention for human protection purposes.
(2) That the Permanent Five members of the Security Council should consider and seek to reach agreement not to apply their veto power, in matters where their vital state interests are not involved, to obstruct the passage of resolutions authorizing military intervention for human protection purposes for which there is otherwise majority support.
8.30 The Commission recommends to the Secretary-General:
That the Secretary-General give consideration, and consult as appropriate with the President of the Security Council and the President of the General Assembly, as to how the substance and action recommendations of this report can best be advanced in those two bodies, and by his own further action.

---

[ 18 August 2005: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

But from skimming the article, I can say that I hope for sincere UN reform... Unfortunatly, in the case of Rawanda, and Sudan, hope does not save lives. Decisive action does.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Reason:
in the case of Rwanda, and Sudan, hope does not save lives. Decisive action does.

---

I believe, for one thing, that Michael Ignatieff was involved in the report's composition? The new liberal champion of "Empire Lite"? A man whose commitment to the UN seems at least complicated?

There is an interesting article on this complex of issues by Jim Laxer in the current issue of The Walrus. I'll check to see whether it's online, although I doubt it.

[ 19 August 2005: Message edited by: skdadl ]

Principles like 'last resort' and 'proportionality,' mentioned in the document Wilf Day cites above, have routinely been invoked in bad faith by powerful nations trying to cloak their actions in 'just war' rhetoric. If the United States, for example, can twist the UN charter to invent for itself an anticipatory right to self-defence under whatever circumstances and by whatever means it deems necessary, there's little to prevent it from using the 'responsibility to protect' in a similar way.

I've recently been re-reading Noam Chomsky's book, The New Military Humanism, a critique of the idea of 'humanitarian military intervention' as practiced by powerful nations in general, and in by NATO in Kosovo in particular. Among the analyses of the Kosovo case he relies on is that of Israeli defence expert Amos Gilboa, who argued that NATO's bombing of Serbia would send a clear message to other potential rogues that Weapons of Mass Destruction (of which Milosevic, thankfully, had none) were the only deterrent of US/NATO ('the international community') intervention. In short, the bombing of Serbia would act as a spur to proliferation among regimes that might be targetted.

(Of course, as Chomsky points out in his book, an even better deterrent to 'humanitarian intervention' by NATO is to be an ally of the West: at the same time Milosevic was being criticized, NATO ally Turkey was carrying out terrible repression and violence against its Kurdish population, receiving huge military support from the US to do so.)

Canada's new foreign policy documents, which heavily stress both humanitarian military intervention in 'failed or failing states' (about 50 in number, by DFAIT's count), and WMD non-proliferation seem to be caught up in a contradiction, if Bilboa's analysis is correct (and I think there's good reason to think it is).

Not every government on the periphery of the newly 'outward-looking NATO,' with its 'proven capacity' to stabilize Aghanistan and the Balkans will look with calm at these actions. Some may wish to make preparations to fend off any such intervention, whatever words or facts are used to justify it. Those preparations could very easily be WMD. So, as our foreign policy de-centers the UN in favour of swifter, more 'results-oriented' UN-regional alliance cooperation (read: NATO) in military humanitarian intervention, we may be undercutting our other stated foreign policy goal of non-proliferation.

Look, for example, at North Korea. That brutal government very likely wants a nuclear deterrent so that it can avoid going the way of Iraq, its former ally in the 'axis of evil.' If this kind of situation were to multiply, with weak countries relying on bunkers full of WMD to deter 'regime change' or invasion, and powerful countries seeking more destructive ways to blast that deterrent away, we'd be in a very bad situation indeed.

Our 'responsibility to protect' could end up preventing us from fulfilling our 'responsibility to deny terrorists and irresponsible governments from acquiring weapons of mass destruction that could destroy millions of innocent people.'

In closing, I actually think we should take that 'responsibility to deny' a bit more seriously for, if we broadened it to include not only WMD but also all the other forms of diplomatic, economic and military support we've given to any number of brutal, repressive governments over the decades, we might in the future have fewer cases of humanitarian catastrophe to respond to (or overlook, as policy may demand) in the first place.

quote:

---

Originally posted by sgm:
While I'm sure this effort to create a 'responsibility to protect' is well-intentioned by those championing it, I'm very fearful of how it will be used by powerful nations

---

They don't usually take kindly to either restrictions on national sovereignty (which might restrict their own) or restrictions on when military force can be used for human protection purposes. Just as they objected to the International Criminal Court, they may object to anything which implies they have a responsibility to protect human rights in, for example, Guantanamo. (Not that R2P implies Castro would be justified in military intervention to protect Guantanamo prisoners.)

Neither the USA nor Russia will like being told when they should use their veto.

If it turns out that R2P gets more support from Canada, France, Germany and Spain than anywhere else, could that mean NATO becomes the vehicle again?

[ 20 August 2005: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

I did run across a speech by a Counselor to the department who appears to be presenting official policy. He has this to say about state sovereignty in today's world:

quote:

---

The Westphalian order that placed state sovereignty above all has significantly eroded. But we should not return to the dualism of a hundred years ago, when the choice was portrayed placing states and wicked nationalism on one side, and globalization and pacific internationalism on the other. What is emerging instead, and what this government favors, is a more interesting hybrid between those extremes. States remain the essential building blocks in common edifices of public order and opportunity. The way states are governed may now be wide open to peer review. And the world is no longer so neutral in judging between freedom and tyranny. Nations will still make the fundamental choices, and they will be increasingly accountable for them.

---

Accountable to whom, he doesn't explicitly say, but his historical review of American foreign policy in general, along with his defence of the Iraq invasion in particular, makes it clear which 'peer' will be doing the 'reviewing' and 'judging.'

I also ran across this mention of the 'responsibility to protect' from Condoleeza Rice, the current Secretary of State:

quote:

---

The United States of America and its coalition decided that it was finally time to deal with the threat of Saddam Hussein. There had been multiple resolutions against Saddam Hussein and his activities, everything from concerns about his weapons of mass destruction programs and his continued unwillingness to answer the legitimate questions of the international system about those programs, his having used weapons of mass destruction in the past, everything concerning the way that he treated his own people. After all, we found more than 300,000 people in mass graves.

You know, people are talking about in the UN reform a responsibility to protect. We happen to think that the Security Council is the place that that discussion ought to take place. When you consider what the Iraqi people had gone through in the Saddam Hussein regime's reign, what about the responsibility to the Iraqi people? We finally undertook an action that got rid of one of the worst dictators in modern times sitting in the center of the world's most troubled region. And sitting here today in Jerusalem, I can tell you, George, that this region is far better for it.

---

The comment is from this recent interview with George Stephanopolous. Obviously, with its veto at the Security Council, the US will determine in its own interests when the 'responsibility' should be fulfilled. The same would go for the other great powers as well: the Russians aren't going to accept NATO or the UN exercising a 'responsibility to protect' Chechens.

On Cuba, obviously the Guantanamo situation is deplorable, but do you think it would fall under the 'extreme' heading mentioned by the authors of the Intervention and State Sovereignty report? Obviously, the prisoners' rights are being violated, but it's not a case of 'slaughter,' 'starvation' or 'ethnic cleansing.'

I think you will see more support for this idea coming from potential intervenors (e.g. Canada, US, Britain) than from the potentially 'intervenees,' and I do think NATO will be a crucial vehicle. The report's authors raise the possibility of 'regional organizations' acting when the Security Council won't. The African Union is mentioned, but NATO would be an obvious vehicle as well.

[ 20 August 2005: Message edited by: sgm ]

I don't believe in any more liberal standard than that, because I do not believe that a Canadian soldier should be obliged to protect people scattered across the globe.

It would be nice if we had such power, but we don't.

In practical terms, this responsibility to protect others would only be exercised in conjunction with the US. And, as their latest attempts to protect Iraqs from Saddam's government make clear, the potential for disaster would loom large.

Although I share your suspicions about the practical reality underlying the nice rhetoric, I thought that you were in favour of international forces stepping in in cases where disaster -- genocide, state collapse, etc -- seemed imminent -- Rwanda, Bosnia, and Kosovo, eg. No?

quote:

---

Originally posted by Wilf Day:
Has anyone found an American reaction to this report in the past three and a half years?

---

quote:

---

I thought that you were in favour of international forces stepping in in cases where disaster -- genocide, state collapse, etc -- seemed imminent -- Rwanda, Bosnia, and Kosovo, eg. No?

---

There will be rare occasions when the intervention of an internationally-approved force will be justified.

The only difficulty with the present model, that of approval by the UN Security Council, is that sometimes a genocide will not threaten "world peace", but will threaten either regional peace, or will be threaten millions of lives.

I haven't figured out the agendas here. Does Kofi Annan, with this Summit Sept. 14 - 16, actually hope to kickstart UN Reform? Or is he just trying to look relevant while other players work on the other parts of their new multilateralism (Canada says "This ongoing commitment to contribute to UN reform is part of the new multilateralism . . ." so what are the other parts?)

[ 22 August 2005: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

quote:

---

Oxfam International today praised the British government for supporting a new agreement designed to stop genocides like Rwanda from ever happening again. However Oxfam has also urged the Prime Minister to go further and use his influence with the US in particular, but also Brazil, India and Russia to get them to back the deal ahead of crucial talks which resume at the UN today.

A new measure committing governments to take timely and decisive action to stop atrocities like genocide is on the agenda for the UN Summit, the biggest meeting of world leaders in history, to be held in New York on 14-16 September. Governments are on the brink of a historic agreement on their collective responsibility to protect civilians facing genocide or atrocity.

The final negotiations on what world leaders will announce at the Summit start today. The current Summit draft agreement would establish a new standard, that states “share responsibility to take collective action in a timely and decisive manner” to protect civilians from large-scale killing including genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

This agreement would oblige the international community to act were there to be another Rwanda or a similar mass murder of civilians where the government was unwilling or unable to do anything to stop the bloodshed.

The UK, along with other governments such as Japan, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, the EU, Rwanda and Kenya have strongly supported the agreement so far but pressure will build on them to compromise and weaken the language of the Summit declaration that world leaders will sign.

---

[ 22 August 2005: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

Everyone knows that the United States will use its veto to make sure that only regimes that it disapproves of will suffer collective intervention, while its friendly client regimes (and the USA itself) will be free to carry on with mass atrocities and war crimes.

I know there are many here who think that this kind of selective collective intervention is acceptable, or even laudable (as in the wars against Serbia and Afghanistan, and the UN-backed intervention in Haiti to prop up the current unpopular regime). But I would argue that it does real harm to the international community and the UN in particular to adopt positions of "principle" that are not principles at all, but justifications for the United States and its posse of ad hoc coalition members to pursue regime change under the guise of "humanitarian intervention."

This project is a futile attempt to salvage some of the tattered threads of international criminal law, which now lies in shreds as a result of the rogue actions of the world's only superpower. Even if it succeeds, it will only result in law that applies to some nations but not others. And frankly I can't see that as being better than no law at all.

[ 24 August 2005: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

quote:

---

If it turns out that R2P gets more support from Canada, France, Germany and Spain than anywhere else, could that mean NATO becomes the vehicle again?

---

National Security Strategy of the United States of America

quote:

---

There is little of lasting consequence that the United States can accomplish in the world without the sustained cooperation of its allies and friends in Canada and Europe. Europe is also the seat of two of the strongest and most able international institutions in the world: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which has, since its inception, been the fulcrum of transatlantic and inter-European security, and the European Union (EU), our partner in opening world trade.

---

quote:

---

For its part, Canada has championed a change to the UN Charter which would lay down clear guidelines for the Security Council to take military action against regimes that cannot or will not protect their citizens from genocide or ethnic cleansing.

Among the changes that Mr. Bolton is demanding is the deletion of a clause that would urge the five permanent members of the Security Council not to veto action aimed at halting genocide or ethnic cleansing.

Paul Heinbecker, a former Canadian ambassador to the UN, said the Bush administration is torn between its desire for genuine UN reform in key areas and placating Republican hard-liners who deeply mistrust the institution.

---

quote:

---

Russia is reportedly concerned the principle would be applied to its actions in Chechnya; India and Pakistan think it would be used to interfere in the dispute over Kashmir; and Iran and Egypt have general concerns.

The United States basically supports the idea, but says the UN charter authorizes the Security Council to act.

'I've met with ... some of the fiercest opponents of the Responsibility to Protect, and we have tried to find language that would accommodate their concerns, and at the same time express the principle strongly and clearly,' Mr. Rock said.

'I think we're coming close to language that will satisfy the Americans, who don't want to see this as part of a legal obligation on the part of the Council, and some of the other countries that are feeling vulnerable with the idea that intervention can be authorized.'

---

Rock: World summit next week: 'We're up to our eyeballs in 25 issues involving 191 countries'

Steven Edwards
CanWest News Service.

UNITED NATIONS - The Canadian ambassador to the United Nations says the United States is getting a bad rap over accusations it is torpedoing chances for success at next week's world summit at the United Nations.

Allan Rock points out other countries are biting away at key proposals for a global deal on development, security and human rights

The divisions have raised fears the final document, which Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, hoped would be an ambitious blueprint for tackling poverty and injustice around the world, will be diluted into a few pages of pious expectations......

[ 11 September 2005: Message edited by: outlandist ]

Since this is all I have to work with --

quote:

---

The divisions have raised fears the final document, which Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, hoped would be an ambitious blueprint for tackling poverty and injustice around the world, will be diluted into a few pages of pious expectations ...

---

-- I'll make a bad joke:

So that's down now from a whole lot of pages of pious expectations?

Sorry, but the few glimpses we've had there of what Rock has had to say have left me wondering: did that man always talk that much flannel?

quote:

---

Originally posted by skdadl:
Well, don't violate copyright for us, outlandist.

Do you mean that you have asked the NP for permission to reprint here? I would be very surprised if they would give it, y'know.

---

The reason for asking permission is to not violate copyright.

What I have asked for is a clarification of rules pertaining to permission.perhaps they have a staledate after which permission is granted or the copyright reverts to the owner.

quote:

---

Diplomats trying to prepare a document for the leaders to sign when the three-day summit concludes Friday admitted that the UN's ambitious 40-page blueprint for overhauling both the international system and the world body itself was now more likely to be cut by a third, and have little teeth on crucial issues.

The biggest casualties are human rights enforcement and UN management reform.

---

Here's Martin, summing up his view of the R2P:

quote:

---

"If a Rwanda were to occur again, what the responsibility to protect says is that the UN will not find itself engaged in either turning its eyes, averting its gaze, nor will it find itself in lengthy discussions about legalisms," he said. "The fact is, when human tragedy occurs, the UN will act."

---

Link.

To call this optimistic would be kind, since the UN only acts in the ways its member states permit, and the powerful states are going to see to it that it never acts except in accordance with their sense of their own interests.

Martin's loud crowing over this doubtful accomplishment seems worse, however, when you consider some of the other measures our diplomats didn't work quite so hard to achieve:

quote:

---

To reach their compromise, the diplomats dropped the firm commitments contained in Mr. Annan's blueprint, including a convention against terrorism and a development-aid target of 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product by 2015.

---

(Globe editorial--sub only, sorry)

It's obvious why Martin wouldn't have had Allan Rock burning the midnight oil to meet the .7% target: he doesn't care to meet this target himself, since it would actually cost him something to achieve.

Ottawa's Afghan warning
Bill Graham expected to tell nation troops will die

Mike Blanchfield; with files from David Pugliese
CanWest News Service

Thursday, September 15,2005


OTTAWA - Defence Minister Bill Graham will head across the country in coming weeks to prepare Canadians for the likelihood of casualties during the Forces' new mission in southern Afghanistan, where they are expected to engage insurgents.

Military insiders are referring to Mr. Graham's foray as the "pre-body bag" speaking tour.[end quote]

The CF is reinforcing their base in Khandahar with blast shields among other efforts to provide force protection for its mission.

[ 15 September 2005: Message edited by: outlandist ]

Such is the sway of Bono that, as of noon yesterday after a second U2 concert message had been performed and the plea repeated, the PMO had been besieged with ... um ... two dozen calls. The "vast majority" of those, a PMO spokesman said, were grunts as callers hung up without saying a word.

The lesson is hard to miss: Paul Martin has little to fear from foot dragging on the foreign aid file.....

But that faint ringing at the PMO switchboard is Canada leaving Martin a message -- that more spending on health, education, military and environmental protection takes priority over massive foreign aid boosts

http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/editorialsletters/story.html?id=72c8a23b-0dd4-413a-9d0a-6792d32f5ef6&page=2

There is no cure for the UN
Mark Steyn

http://www.pm.gc.ca/eng/news.asp?id=584