Democratic Sovereignty and The Responsibility to Protect

Abstract

Despite the truism that grave humanitarian crises shock the human conscience, when – if ever – states may act to protect populations from genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes remains contested. Inaction (Rwanda), inadequate response (Darfur and the Congo), and military intervention (Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo) invite criticism – from moralists who decry the international community’s uneven, selective, and generally ineffective response to humanitarian nightmares, and from sovereigntists, who reify sovereignty’s corollary, non-intervention. Morality and sovereignty appear hopelessly contradictory; common ground seems as elusive as it is necessary. Substantial movement towards common ground came on two recent occasions. At the behest of United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Canadian government, with input from major foundations, multiple non-state actors, and the UN General Assembly (UNGA), established the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) in 2000 to wrestle with the legal, moral, and logistical issues bound with humanitarian intervention. Its 2001 final report, published under the title The Responsibility to Protect, single-handedly changed the terms of the debate from ‘the right to intervene’ (which too often ‘focuses attention on the claims, rights, and prerogatives of the potentially intervening states’) to a ‘responsibility to protect’ communities from egregious acts of violence, including ‘mass killing ... systematic rape and ... starvation’ (ICISS, 2001: 16ff.). World leaders adopted in principle a ‘responsibility to protect’ during the September 2005 world summit honouring the UN’s 60th anniversary and called upon the UNGA to continue consideration of it and its implications (World Summit Outcome, 2005: ¶139). Adoption of the principle opens up at least two avenues of inquiry. First, it signifies willingness on the part of states to delimit sovereignty practices visà-vis minimal standards of decency, order and human rights. Placed in a wider historical context, this agreement constitutes part of a seismic, yet under-