New GPF Report on R2P : In whose name ?

/52620-new-gpf-report-on-r2p-in-whose-na

  • New GPF Report on R2P: In whose name?

    http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/265-policy-papers-archives/52620-new-gpf-report-on-r2p-in-whose-name.html

    Global Policy Forum and Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung—New York Office publish a joint report on the concept of a Responsibility to Protect (R2P). "In whose name? A critical view on the Responsibility to Protect” by Lou Pingeot and Wolfgang Obenland provides an overview of the history and content of R2P, its positive contributions and its flaws. It concludes that R2P does not give a satisfying answer to the key question it is supposed to address: how best to prevent and, if prevention fails, respond to large-scale human rights violations and killings? The concept is particularly dangerous as it amalgamates arguments and proposals, mixing uncontroversial and widely accepted notions (that states have a responsibility towards their citizens) with more dubious claims (that military intervention is an appropriate tool to protect civilians).

    • Rather than unhelpfully pitting one internationally
      agreed principle (non-intervention) against another (the
      protection of human rights) and focusing on building a
      last resort option (military intervention) for when all else
      fails, there is a dire need to devote attention and energy
      to ensuring that the system does not fail to begin with.
      We should work to strengthen parts of the international
      system that are promising: existing legal instruments and
      institutions that fulfill many of the functions of R2P
      without undermining the principles of peaceful dispute
      settlement or the equal sovereignty of states.

      Que de voeux pieux ! Ce papier semble prend l’hypothèse que la résolution humanitaire des crises est le but et non une justification de l’intervention lorsque l’intérêt de l’intervenant est aligné avec la résolution de la crise... Ca me parait naïf. Il s’étonne que la R2P est “elastic with little oversight” et “politically convenient” alors que c’est tout son intérêt - pour l’intervenant !