Responsibility to Protect

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The responsibility to protect (also responsibility to protect ; English Responsibility to Protect , even R2P or RtoP abbreviated is) a concept of international politics and international law to protect the people from serious human rights violations and fractures of international humanitarian law .

Subject and application

The responsibility to protect initially falls on the individual state and includes its duty to ensure the well-being of the citizens who are subject to it by virtue of its personal or territorial sovereignty. In fulfilling this responsibility, he is supported by the international community, which has a subsidiary responsibility to protect. However, if the political leadership of a state is unable or unwilling to protect its citizens from serious human rights violations, the international community of states may intervene to protect the threatened population. In accordance with the United Nations Charter, it has civilian and military resources at its disposal, and the Security Council decides on their use.

Theoretical basis

Theoretical basis is the definition of sovereignty as responsibility ( sovereignty as responsibility ), according to which a state must take responsibility for the protection of its population in order to be considered sovereign. The R2P thus helps to implement universal moral concepts for the protection of people internationally. Genocide , war crimes , crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing are identified as serious human rights violations, which the R2P's subsidiary responsibility to protect can help to prevent .

development

It was largely developed by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) in 2000/2001 and disseminated internationally, although its main features have long been in the political and legal debate. At the 2005 World Summit of the United Nations in New York, it was - limited to the protection of the population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity - by almost all countries in the world in one (but not legally binding () explanation General assembly resolution 60/1 , shortly a / RES / 60/1) explicitly recognized October 24, 2005 and the following year in resolution 1674 of the UN Security Council was first mentioned in a legally binding document. In 2009, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon published a report on the implementation of the responsibility to protect, which is based on three pillars and which emphasizes in particular the importance of timely detection and initiation of preventive measures in the event of such crimes.

Structure according to the draft of the ICISS

According to the ICISS draft , the R2P is divided into three partial responsibilities: the Responsibility to Prevent , the Responsibility to React and the Responsibility to Rebuild :

  1. The duty of prevention aims at avoiding situations where there is serious human rights abuses, particularly the establishment of good governance ( good governance ) and the fight against deep-rooted causes of conflicts ( root causes ). An indictment before the International Criminal Court is also conceivable.
  2. The duty to react obliges to eliminate or prevent human rights violations. Means for this are non-military coercive measures by the international community such as arms embargoes and the freezing of bank accounts. Military interventions can also be considered as a last resort , although these should only be justified in two narrowly defined situations: in the case of 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 ) and in the case of ethnic cleansing ( large scale "ethnic cleansing", actual or apprehended, whether carried out by killing, forced expulsion, acts of terror or rape ) . However, according to the R2P, the power to authorize such a military intervention does not pass to individual states, but remains with the Security Council of the United Nations.
  3. The obligation to rebuild ultimately requires post-conflict rehabilitation . The most important means here are the disarming and reconciliation of formerly hostile groups and the rebuilding of destroyed infrastructure. The Peacebuilding Commission is there to provide support .

Furthermore, the following conditions must be met, which generally correspond to the conditions for the justified use of military means (for the bellum iustum , the just war):

  1. legitimate authority : A legitimate authority is required that allows humanitarian intervention (usually the United Nations Security Council).
  2. right intention : The intervening states must primarily have the motive to prevent and stop human rights violations.
  3. last resort : A military humanitarian intervention must be the last resort.
  4. proportional means : The proportionality of the means used must be considered.
  5. reasonable prospects : There must be a realistic prospect of success for the mission.

The responsibility to protect differs from humanitarian intervention in three ways:

  1. The compulsion to justify inherent in the concept of humanitarian intervention necessitates a strong reluctance on the part of states to actively intervene in internal conflicts. This reluctance was particularly evident during the genocide in Rwanda - with devastating consequences. The responsibility to protect shifts the pressure under international law to justify action on the part of states in the event of human rights violations by formulating corresponding obligations.
  2. The sovereignty of a state and the resulting absolute prohibition of intervention, as stated in Art. 2 no. 7 of the Charter of the United Nations are redefined by the responsibility to protect. As a result of a breach of its responsibility to protect, a state forfeits its right not to interfere in its internal affairs.
  3. Humanitarian intervention only concerns the justification of military measures and thus only a partial aspect of the responsibility to protect. With its prevention, response and reconstruction elements, the latter takes a far more comprehensive approach.

World Summit 2005, final declaration

UN headquarters , venue for the 2005 World Summit.

The final declaration A / RES / 60/1 of October 24, 2005 contains the following information on the responsibility to protect:

138. Each individual state has a responsibility to protect its people from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. It is part of that responsibility to take appropriate and necessary measures to prevent such crimes, including inciting them. We accept this responsibility and will act in accordance with it. The international community should, where appropriate, encourage and assist States to assume this responsibility and assist the United Nations in establishing an early warning capacity.
139. The international community, through the United Nations, also has a duty to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means under Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter to assist in the protection of the population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity to be. In this context, we are ready, in individual cases and in cooperation with the responsible regional organizations, to take timely and decisive collective measures through the Security Council in accordance with the Charter, namely Chapter VII, if peaceful means prove to be inadequate and the national authorities are obviously involved fail to protect their people from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. We emphasize the need for the General Assembly to further review the responsibility for protecting populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and their implications, in the light of the principles of the Charter and of international law. We also intend to undertake, where necessary and as appropriate, to assist states in building capacities to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, and to stand by states particularly hard hit before crises and conflicts break out.
140. We wholeheartedly support the mission of the Secretary-General's Special Adviser on Genocide Prevention.

The R2P it establishes is more limited than the ICISS draft in that it is limited to protecting the population from a list of specific crimes (genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity). There is also no question of an obligation to intervene, but of a willingness. Nor does the declaration mention the conditions for the justified use of military means or reconstruction set out in the ICISS draft.

The R2P specified in the final declaration A / RES / 60/1 has no binding effect under international law. However, it makes it clear that a regime cannot invoke the international law requirement of non-interference in internal affairs in relation to the international community if it carries out certain crimes against its own people.

Developments after 2005

The responsibility to protect was once again important during the civil war in Libya . In the two resolutions in 1970 and 1973 , the Security Council admonished the Libyan government to take its responsibility towards its own people seriously. It is not clear from these two resolutions whether the responsibility to protect is transferred from the Libyan government to the international community and whether this constitutes a basis for measures with military means on the basis of a Security Council mandate under Chapter VII of the UN Charter .

The international military operation in Libya in 2011 is considered a precedent for the application of the R2P.

After Resolution 1973, the Security Council referred expressly to A / RES / 60/1 or Resolution 1674 in several resolutions. Other resolutions, without mentioning these documents, took up the responsibility of states or the international community to protect.

The use of R2P in Libya, as well as its non-use in other situations, especially during the civil war in Syria , has repeatedly been the subject of disputes and criticism. For example, the German Society for the United Nations writes : “In the course of the massive criticism in the wake of the NATO intervention, western states were accused of having misused the actual goal of protecting the civilian population from serious human rights violations for their own purposes. The reluctance of the UN Security Council towards the violence in Syria exacerbated the debates and raised the question of why there was no comparable decisive action based on the responsibility to protect. "

Since the application of the norm in the NATO military operation in Libya, political science has also considered the possible exploitation of UN mandates for their own purposes by the authorized actors more closely and systematically. There is a general trend towards more control of operations by the UN. The basic problem of such operations is the need to delegate them to third parties who can take advantage of this authorization. There are two different scenarios to be distinguished: The first case deals with those in which one or more of the member states of the Security Council carry out the military operation themselves (such as in Libya). There, the relevant Security Council members can use their institutional power to keep the control mechanisms low. The second case concerns all the missions where the implementing actors are not part of the Security Council. There, stronger control mechanisms lead to less mandate utilization by the authorized states or alliances in the implementation of the UN resolution.

criticism

It is criticized that the R2P is not fulfilling its own mandate: it is not neutral because it remains attached to the party politics of the great powers; its universal validity is not credible, especially since there is no consensus on the conditions for the assertion of R2P; as a consequence of a lack of neutrality and universality, their legitimacy is in question.

Critics of the principle also argue that the responsibility to protect nullifies the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of a state, which is anchored in the UN Charter as a legal principle. A concept of the responsibility to protect that is not applied without taking the circumstances into account loses its importance and acceptance, and the decision between protection and non-interference becomes a question of political opportunity . Another objection is that not every act of war within a state is to be regarded as genocide and that the difficulties of a democratic state-building without a historical foundation and after an externally forced regime change are often underestimated. Proponents of the norm, however, argue that the responsibility to protect represents a historic step towards preventing the most serious human rights violations.

See also

literature

  • International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (Ed.): The Responsibility to Protect: Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty . Ottawa 2001. ISBN 0-88936-960-7 . PDF (434 kB) ( Memento from May 13, 2005 in the Internet Archive ).
  • Francis Deng et al: Sovereignty as Responsibility. Conflict Management in Africa . Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1996. ISBN 0-8157-1827-6 .
  • Gareth Evans: The Responsibility to Protect. Ending Mass Atrocities Once and For All . Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2008. ISBN 0-8157-2504-3 .
  • Alex J. Bellamy: Responsibility to Protect . Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-7456-4348-9 .
  • Irene Etzersdorfer, Ralph Janik: State, War and Responsibility to Protect , facultas / utb, Vienna 2016, ISBN 3-8252-4408-3
  • Christopher Verlage: Responsibility to Protect: A New Approach in International Law to Prevent Genocide, War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity . Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009. ISBN 978-3-16-149812-1 .
  • Anne Rausch: Responsibility to Protect. A legal consideration . Frankfurt a. M .: Peter Lang, 2011. ISBN 978-3-631-60576-9 .
  • Philip Cunliffe: Critical Perspectives on the Responsibility to Protect: Interrogating Theory and Practice . Oxon: Routledge, 2011. ISBN 978-0-415-58623-8 .
  • Cristina Gabriela Badescu: Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect. Security and human rights . London: Routledge, 2011. ISBN 978-0-415-58627-6 .
  • Hugh Breakey (2012): Review and Analysis: The Responsibility to Protect and the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict 'Working Paper developed from Responsibility to Protect and the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflicts- Academic-Practitioner International Workshop, Sydney, Australia. Nov. 17-18, 2010. PDF (1830 kB)
  • Lou Pingeot and Wolfgang Obenland: In whose name? A critical view on the responsibility to protect . Bonn / New York: Global Policy Forum 2014. ISBN 978-3-943126-15-0 . PDF (885 kB)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Peter Rudolf , Responsibility to Protect and Humanitarian Intervention , Federal Agency for Civic Education, September 2, 2013
  2. ^ Andreas von Arnauld : Völkerrecht , CF Müller Verlag, 2016, ISBN 978-3-8114-4322-8 , p. 134 .
  3. ↑ UN Doc. A / RES / 60/1 of October 24, 2005, paras. 138–140, German. Translation: RESOLUTION 60/1
  4. ↑ UN Doc. S / RES / 1674 (2006) (PDF; 1.7 MB) of April 28, 2006, para. 4.
  5. ↑ Implementing the Responsibility to Protect: Summary of the UN report on the international community's responsibility to protect. genocide-alert.de, April 5, 2009, archived from the original on November 16, 2012 ; Retrieved May 22, 2013 .
  6. ↑ UN Doc. A / 63/677 of January 12, 2009 ( German version )
  7. ↑ ICISS report ( Memento of May 13, 2005 in the Internet Archive ), 2001, Rn. 4.19.
  8. ↑ International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty: The Responsibility To Protect. (PDF) Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. International Development Research Center, 2011, archived from the original on January 9, 2016 ; accessed on January 29, 2016 .
  9. ↑ UN Doc. A / RES / 60/1 of October 24, 2005, paras. 138–140. Quoted from the German version of the UN Doc. A / 63/677 of January 12, 2009.
  10. ^ Christian Schaller: The international legal dimension of the "Responsibility to Protect". In: SWP-Aktuell 2008 / A June 46 , 2008, accessed on September 2, 2017 : “The 'Responsibility to Protect', as it was reflected in the final document of the World Summit, does not in itself establish any rights or obligations under international law, neither for individual states or for the international community. ” ( PDF ).
  11. ↑ Robin Geiß, Maral Kashgar, UN Measures against Libya: An International Law Consideration ( Memento of the original from June 21, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dgvn.de archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: United Nations , Volume 59, 2011, Issue 3, pp. 99-104. P. 100.
  12. ^ Daniela Haarhuis: 10 Years Responsibility to Protect: A Victory for Human Rights? - A political and legal analysis. (PDF) In: MRM - MenschenRechtsMagazin issue 1/2015. Retrieved September 2, 2017 . Pp. 19-28. See Chapter II, Section “2. Legal binding effect ”, pp. 22–23.
  13. ↑ Tina Schmidt: Responsibility to Protect - What Next to Libya? German Society for the United Nations, May 7, 2012, accessed on September 2, 2017 .
  14. ↑ N. Blokker: Is the authorization authorized? Powers and practice of the UN Security Council to authorize the use of force by 'coalitions of the able and willing' . In: European Journal of International Law . tape 11 , no. 3 , January 1, 2000, ISSN  0938-5428 , p. 541-568 , doi : 10.1093 / ejil / 11.3.541 ( oup.com [accessed December 14, 2017]).
  15. ^ Erik Voeten: Outside Options and the Logic of Security Council Action . In: American Political Science Review . tape 95 , no. 4 , December 2001, p. 845-858 , doi : 10.1017 / s000305540101005x ( cambridge.org ).
  16. ↑ Jules Lobel, Michael Ratner: Bypassing the Security Council: Ambiguous Authorizations to Use Force, Cease-Fires and the Iraqi Inspection Regime . In: The American Journal of International Law . tape 93 , no. 1 , 1999, p. 124-154 , doi : 10.2307 / 2997958 , JSTOR : 2997958 .
  17. ^ A b Oliver Weber: The Risk of Authorization. Explaining Mandate Exploitation in delegated UNSC Missions . Research Gate, Mannheim 2017.
  18. ↑ Yf Reykers: Constructive ambiguity or stringent monitoring? Towards understanding UN Security Council oversight over non-UN-led forces . In: Global Affairs . tape 3 , no. 1 , January 1, 2017, ISSN  2334-0460 , p. 17-29 , doi : 10.1080 / 23340460.2017.1297684 .
  19. ↑ Yf Reykers: Delegation without control? Institutional choice and autonomy in UNSC-authorized military interventions . Leuven International and European Studies (LINES), Leuven 2017.
  20. ↑ Siddharth Mallavarapu, "Responsibility to Protect as a New Instrument of Power", in: APuZ 37/2013, p. 3 f. Quoted (as “source text: responsibility to protect: claim and reality”) from: Heike Krieger: The concept of the international responsibility to protect. Federal Agency for Civic Education, July 7, 2015, accessed on September 2, 2017 .
  21. ↑ Gaddafi declares UN resolution to be invalid , Kleine Zeitung of March 19, 2011
  22. ↑ Otfried Nassauer : Over the target. In: derStandard.at. April 28, 2011, accessed September 2, 2017 .
  23. ↑ Reinhard Merkel : International law versus civil war: The military intervention against Gaddafi is illegitimate in the FAZ of March 22, 2011.
  24. ↑ Robert Schütte: A big step for mankind . In: The European . May 4, 2011. Retrieved May 22, 2013.