Presentation to Canadian Studies Centre Symposium
The University of Innsbruck
12 November 2009
R2P vs State Sovereignty: The Last Refuge of Scoundrels
- by James V. Arbuckle
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.[1]
- Dr. Samuel Johnson, 1775
Introduction
The responsibility for the conduct of states towards their people has long been a subject of controversy. None of any outsider’s business, said Hitler in 1933 (to the League of Nations), and Stalin in 1948 (to the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights). However, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted by the General Assembly (GA) of the United Nations on 10 December 1948, and changed forever the concept of the relationship of a state to its people, and its responsibility for them.
Despite the apparent ease of the Assembly vote on rhe UDHR (there had been abstentions, but no votes against), the subsequent approval, ratification and implementation by the member states was by no means a forgone conclusion (nor is it yet). The Soviet Union objected to what it saw as setting a precedent for outsider interference in its domestic jurisdiction. They and eight other members abstained from the General Assembly vote, and the USSR was never a signatory to the Declaration. A good many member states tacitly agreed – and do still - with the Soviet view that the UDHR was a potential threat to their sovereignty (thus coincidentally agreeing also with Hitler and Stalin); among them were the United States and China, indeed, all of the P5 agreed on that one thing, if on nothing else: their own sovereignty, and for Britain that included her empire, was their primary concern.
The Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe was born of the Helsinki Final Act of 1975, which entailes a “comprehensive view of security”, giving human rights equal weight with the more traditional military and political factors of peace and security. Thus human rights, a long-standing taboo in East-West relations, became by virtue of the Final Act a legitimate subject of dialogue[2]; the peace agenda might never be the same.
In any event the appearance of a policy and associated doctrine had been established, and history unfolded into the Twenty-first Century with that altered background.
Discussion
It was in this apparently altered climate that the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) released its report in December 2001 (see Annex A for summary). Now generally referred to as The Responsibility to Protect (R2P), the document ostensibly became U.N. policy when it was embraced by the Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations, and by nearly all member states of the U.N., in September 2005. That “policy” as it was written is largely based on military action in accordance with Article 42 of the Charter[4]. However, it is today very clear that the Security Council will seldom authorize a forced intervention in a member state – the issues of consent of the “hosts” and respect for their “domestic jurisdiction” are as strong as ever.
