A. State
sovereignty implies responsibility, and the primary responsibility for the
protection of its people lies with the state itself.
B. Where a
population is suffering serious harm, as a result of internal war, insurgency,
repression or state failure, and the state in question is unwilling or unable
to halt or avert it, the principle of non-intervention yields to the
international responsibility to protect.
The foundations of the responsibility to protect, as a guiding principle
for the international community of states, lie in:
A. obligations
inherent in the concept of sovereignty;
B. the
responsibility of the Security Council, under Article 24 of the UN Charter, for
the maintenance of international peace and security;
C. specific legal
obligations under human rights and human protection declarations, covenants and
treaties, international humanitarian law and national law;
D. the developing
practice of states, regional organizations and the Security Council itself.
The responsibility to protect embraces three specific responsibilities:
A. The responsibility
to prevent: to address both the root causes and direct causes of
internal conflict and other man-made crises putting populations at risk.
B. The
responsibility to react: to respond to situations of compelling human
need with appropriate measures, which may include coercive measures like
sanctions and international prosecution, and in extreme cases military
intervention.
C. The
responsibility to rebuild: to provide, particularly after a
military intervention, full assistance with recovery, reconstruction and
reconciliation, addressing the causes of the harm the intervention was designed
to halt or avert.
A. Prevention
is the single most important dimension of the responsibility to protect: prevention
options should always be exhausted before intervention is contemplated, and
more commitment and resources must be devoted to it.
B. The exercise
of the responsibility to both prevent and react should always involve less
intrusive and coercive measures being considered before more coercive and intrusive
ones are applied.
Military intervention for human protection purposes is an exceptional and
extraordinary measure. To be warranted, there must be serious and irreparable
harm occurring to human beings, or imminently likely to occur, of the following
kind:
A. large scale
loss of life, actual or apprehended, with genocidal intent or not,
which is the product either of deliberate state action, or state neglect or
inability to act, or a failed state situation; or
B. large scale
'ethnic cleansing', actual or apprehended, whether carried out
by killing, forced expulsion, acts of terror or rape.
A. Right
intention: The primary purpose of the intervention, whatever other
motives intervening states may have, must be to halt or avert human suffering.
Right intention is better assured with multilateral operations, clearly
supported by regional opinion and the victims concerned.
B. Last resort: Military
intervention can only be justified when every non-military option for the
prevention or peaceful resolution of the crisis has been explored, with
reasonable grounds for believing lesser measures would not have succeeded.
C. Proportional
means: The scale, duration and intensity of the planned
military intervention should be the minimum necessary to secure the defined
human protection objective.
D. Reasonable
prospects: There must be a reasonable chance of success in halting
or averting the suffering which has justified the intervention, with the
consequences of action not likely to be worse than the consequences of
inaction.
A. There is no
better or more appropriate body than the United Nations Security Council to
authorize military intervention for human protection purposes. The task is not
to find alternatives to the Security Council as a source of authority, but to
make the Security Council work better than it has.
B. Security
Council authorization should in all cases be sought prior to any military
intervention action being carried out. Those calling for an intervention should
formally request such authorization, or have the Council raise the matter on
its own initiative, or have the Secretary-General raise it under Article 99 of
the UN Charter.
C. The Security Council
should deal promptly with any request for authority to intervene where there
are allegations of large scale loss of human life or ethnic cleansing. It
should in this context seek adequate verification of facts or conditions on the
ground that might support a military intervention.
D. The Permanent Five
members of the Security Council should agree 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.
E. If the
Security Council rejects a proposal or fails to deal with it in a reasonable
time, alternative options are:
I.
consideration of the matter by the General Assembly in
Emergency Special Session under the "Uniting for Peace" procedure;
and
II.
action within area of jurisdiction by regional or
sub-regional organizations under Chapter VIII of the Charter, subject to their
seeking subsequent authorization from the Security Council.
F. The Security
Council should take into account in all its deliberations that, if it fails to
discharge its responsibility to protect in conscience-shocking situations
crying out for action, concerned states may not rule out other means to meet
the gravity and urgency of that situation - and that the stature and
credibility of the United Nations may suffer thereby.
1.1 "Humanitarian intervention" has been controversial
both when it happens, and when it has failed to happen. Rwanda in 1994 laid
bare the full horror of inaction. The United Nations (UN) Secretariat and some
permanent members of the Security Council knew that officials connected to the
then government were planning genocide; UN forces were present, though not in sufficient
number at the outset; and credible strategies were available to prevent, or at
least greatly mitigate, the slaughter which followed. But the Security Council
refused to take the necessary action. That was a failure of international will
- of civic courage - at the highest leveel. Its consequence was not merely a
humanitarian catastrophe for Rwanda: the genocide destabilized the entire Great
Lakes region and continues to do so. In the aftermath, many African peoples
concluded that, for all the rhetoric about the universality of human rights,
some human lives end up mattering a great deal less to the international
community than others.
1.2 Kosovo - where intervention did take place in 1999 -
concentrated attention on all the other sides of the argument. The operation
raised major questions about the legitimacy of military intervention in a
sovereign state. Was the cause just: were the human rights abuses committed or
threatened by the Belgrade authorities sufficiently serious to warrant outside
involvement? Did those seeking secession manipulate external intervention to
advance their political purposes? Were all peaceful means of resolving the
conflict fully explored? Did the intervention receive appropriate authority?
How could the bypassing and marginalization of the UN system, by "a
coalition of the willing" acting without Security Council approval,
possibly be justified? Did the way in which the intervention was carried out in
fact worsen the very human rights situation it was trying to rectify? Or -
against all this - was it the case that had the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) not intervened, Kosovo would have been at best the site of
an ongoing, bloody and destabilizing civil war, and at worst the occasion for
genocidal slaughter like that which occurred in Bosnia four years earlier?
1.3 The Bosnian case - in particular the failure by the United
Nations and others to prevent the massacre of thousands of civilians seeking
shelter in UN "safe areas" in Srebrenica in 1995 - is another which
has had a major impact on the contemporary policy debate about intervention for
human protection purposes. It raises the principle that intervention amounts to
a promise to people in need: a promise cruelly betrayed. Yet another was the
failure and ultimate withdrawal of the UN peace operations in Somalia in
1992-93, when an international intervention to save lives and restore order was
destroyed by flawed planning, poor execution, and an excessive dependence on
military force.
1.4 These four cases occurred at a time when there were heightened
expectations for effective collective action following the end of the Cold War.
All four of them - Rwanda, Kosovo, Bosnia and Somalia - have had a profound
effect on how the problem of intervention is viewed, analyzed and
characterized.
1.5 The basic lines in the contemporary policy debate, one
constantly being re-engaged at UN headquarters in New York and in capitals
around the world, have been clearly enough drawn. For some, the international
community is not intervening enough; for others it is intervening much too
often. For some, the only real issue is in ensuring that coercive interventions
are effective; for others, questions about legality, process and the possible
misuse of precedent loom much larger. For some, the new interventions herald a
new world in which human rights trumps state sovereignty; for others, it ushers
in a world in which big powers ride roughshod over the smaller ones,
manipulating the rhetoric of humanitarianism and human rights. The controversy
has laid bare basic divisions within the international community. In the
interest of all those victims who suffer and die when leadership and
institutions fail, it is crucial that these divisions be resolved.
1.6 In an address to the 54th session of the UN General Assembly in
September 1999, Secretary-General Kofi Annan reflected upon "the prospects
for human security and intervention in the next century." He recalled the
failures of the Security Council to act in Rwanda and Kosovo, and challenged
the member states of the UN to "find common ground in upholding the
principles of the Charter, and acting in defence of our common humanity."
The Secretary-General warned that "If the collective conscience of
humanity cannot find in the United Nations its greatest tribune, there is a
grave danger that it will look elsewhere for peace and for justice." In
his Millennium Report to the General Assembly a year later, he restated the
dilemma, and repeated the challenge:
if humanitarian intervention is, indeed,
an unacceptable assault on sovereignty, how should we respond to a Rwanda, to a
Srebrenica - to gross and systematic violations of human rights that offend
every precept of our common humanity?
1.7 In September 2000, the Government of Canada responded to the
Secretary-General's challenge by announcing the establishment of this
independent International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty
(ICISS). Our mandate was generally to build a broader understanding of the
problem of reconciling intervention for human protection purposes and
sovereignty; more specifically, it was to try to develop a global political
consensus on how to move from polemics - and often paralysis - towards action
within the international system, particularly through the United Nations. The
membership of the Commission was intended to fairly reflect developed and
developing country perspectives, and to ensure that we represented between us a
wide range of geographical backgrounds, viewpoints, and experiences - with
opinions, at least at the outset, reflecting the main lines of the current
international debate. If we could produce consensus among ourselves, there was
at least a chance that we might be able to encourage it in the wider
international community.
1.8 The Commission met for the first time on 5-6 November 2000, in
Ottawa. A year-long strategy for carrying out our mandate was there mapped out,
with agreement that our work process should be transparent, inclusive, and
global. The Government of Canada supported the establishment of a research
directorate, and with assistance from a number of other governments and major
foundations, sponsored and organized a series of regional roundtables and
national consultations intended to expose the Commission to a wide and diverse
range of views, while at the same time helping to inform public opinion about
our work and objectives. Particular emphasis was placed on the need to ensure
that views of affected populations were heard and taken into account, in
addition to the views of governments, intergovernmental and non-governmental
organizations (NGOs), and civil society representatives.
1.9 The Commission was strongly committed from the outset to
consulting as widely as possible around the world, including in the countries
of all five permanent members of the Security Council. Over the course of a
year, accordingly, roundtable meetings or consultations were conducted in
Beijing, Cairo, Geneva, London, Maputo, New Delhi, New York, Ottawa, Paris, St
Petersburg, Santiago and Washington. The discussions at those meetings were
invariably rich and rewarding; they are summarized in the supplementary volume
accompanying this report. In addition, individual Commissioners and members of
the research team attended a large number of conferences and seminars - often
by special invitation or in a representative capacity. The Commission has also
made a particular effort to consult a broad range of academic thinking and
expertise; much of this analysis and advice is embodied in the research papers
and bibliography contained in the supplementary volume.
1.10 The issues and preoccupations of the 21st century present new
and often fundamentally different types of challenges from those that faced the
world in 1945, when the United Nations was founded. As new realities and
challenges have emerged, so too have new expectations for action and new
standards of conduct in national and international affairs. Since, for example,
the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 on the World Trade Center and
Pentagon, it has become evident that the war against terrorism the world must
now fight - one with no contested frontiers and a largely invisible enemy - is
one like no other war before it.
1.11 Many new international institutions have been created to meet
these changed circumstances. In key respects, however, the mandates and
capacity of international institutions have not kept pace with international
needs or modern expectations. Above all, the issue of international intervention
for human protection purposes is a clear and compelling example of concerted
action urgently being needed to bring international norms and institutions in
line with international needs and expectations.
1.12 The current debate on intervention for human protection purposes is itself both a product and a reflection of how much has changed since the UN was established. The current debate takes place in the context of a broadly expanded range of state, non-state, and institutional actors, and increasingly evident interaction and interdependence among them. It is a debate that reflects new sets of issues and new types of concerns. It is a debate that is being conducted within the framework of new standards of conduct for states and individuals, and in a context of greatly increased expectations for action. And it is a debate that takes place within an institutional framework that since the end of the Cold War has held out the prospect of effective joint international action to address issues of peace, security, human rights and sustainable development on a global scale.