.
July 1st marked the 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, when 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed by Bosnian Serb forces during the Bosnian War. It marked a day of ignominy for the international community, who failed to respond to the largest massacre of civilians on European soil since the end of World War II. Speaking at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, General Secretary Ban Ki Moon paid tribute to the victims of the Srebrenica genocide who will "forever weigh on the collective conscience of the international community."
"The United Nations, which was founded to prevent such crimes from recurring, failed in its responsibilities to protect the lives of innocent civilians seeking protection from the conflict and violence around them. The UN Secretariat, the Security Council and Member States share the blame."
After the fall of the Former Republic of Yugoslavia, the Balkan region experienced a period of intense political and economic crisis. A week central government, militant nationalism, and dogmatic nationalist rhetoric fueled mistrust and suspicion between the different Yugoslavian ethnic groups. As Yugoslavia broke apart in the 1990s, the bloodiest conflict would be in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. The massacre at Srebrenica would be the single worse atrocity of a war defined by violations of human rights. The international community and UN Peacekeepers in the region failed to respond to the horrors of Srebrenica, and the scars of that failure still remain in the Balkans.
Following the humanitarian catastrophe in Srebrenica, the UN attempted to reform its system of intervention. Leading the charge was a new, groundbreaking norm called the "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P). However, as Ban Ki Moon admitted in his address on July 1, "It is clear we must do more. The international community is still failing too many people in desperate need. From Syria to South Sudan, people face unspeakable violence and terror."
So despite the bloodbaths of Srebrenica, Rwanda, East Timor, and Cambodia, why has the United Nations been unable to respond to Syria and South Sudan with the new tools of R2P?
R2P has been one of the most innovative and influential aspects of international policy in the last decade. It's a border-crossing norm that has the potential to revolutionize humanitarian interventions. However, the UN has yet to truly apply this policy to prevent mass murders around the world. R2P has languished as nothing more than grand theory, while thousands around the globe are victims of governments that disregard their mandate to protect the people.
R2P is a normative framework that is able the bridge the theory of the old with the demands of a new global order. Designed in 2001 by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty and diplomatic thought-leaders Gareth Evans, Mohamed Sahnoun, and Michael Ignatieff, R2P is a radical redefinition of sovereignty. R2P argues that sovereignty entails not only rights for a state, but also responsibilities—and in particular, a responsibility to protect its citizens from gross violations of human rights. At the 2005 World Summit, the UN unanimously adopted the core concepts of R2P, and established specific instruments for its implementation within the framework of the UN.
Perhaps the most limiting factor of R2P is the requirement for Security Council approval. This is designed to represent international consensus, but instead has hampered the process of intervention. Despite R2P being the premier guideline for humanitarian interventions by the UN, it is yet to be implemented to its full extent in the face of humanitarian disasters like South Sudan and Syria.
The blame for this international inaction is shared across the globe. The Security Council as the mechanism for international approval of humanitarian intervention in R2P is one that properly fits the boundaries of the United Nations. The Security Council is tasked with the "maintenance of international peace and security," and thus needs to shoulder the burden of humanitarian intervention. However, the international community has failed to meaningfully support the implementation of R2P, with the doctrine susceptible to the unfolding nature of power politics of the P5 in the Security Council. Finally the UN's lukewarm acceptance of the doctrine has left the entire concept of humanitarian intervention in a nebulous zone. It's clear that some governments are not fully sure what exactly R2P is—and the ersatz implementation of it in Libya in 2011 has set an awkward precedent for the future use of the norm.
The UN has to build a stronger framework for implementing the R2P with multilateral support. For the last 20 years, the world has reacted to massacre upon massacre with outrage and little action. When it comes to creating mechanisms to prevent or intervene in cases of major violations of human rights, we have failed. The UN needs to become more proactive in the development of R2P. The cogs of international diplomacy are slow to turn, but once they do, great change can be achieved.
Photo: Srebrenica massacre memorial gravestones 2009, by Michael Büker. Licensed under Creative Commons via Wikimedia Commons.
The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.
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Lessons from Srebrenica and the Responsibility to Protect
July 24, 2015
July 1st marked the 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, when 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed by Bosnian Serb forces during the Bosnian War. It marked a day of ignominy for the international community, who failed to respond to the largest massacre of civilians on European soil since the end of World War II. Speaking at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, General Secretary Ban Ki Moon paid tribute to the victims of the Srebrenica genocide who will "forever weigh on the collective conscience of the international community."
"The United Nations, which was founded to prevent such crimes from recurring, failed in its responsibilities to protect the lives of innocent civilians seeking protection from the conflict and violence around them. The UN Secretariat, the Security Council and Member States share the blame."
After the fall of the Former Republic of Yugoslavia, the Balkan region experienced a period of intense political and economic crisis. A week central government, militant nationalism, and dogmatic nationalist rhetoric fueled mistrust and suspicion between the different Yugoslavian ethnic groups. As Yugoslavia broke apart in the 1990s, the bloodiest conflict would be in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. The massacre at Srebrenica would be the single worse atrocity of a war defined by violations of human rights. The international community and UN Peacekeepers in the region failed to respond to the horrors of Srebrenica, and the scars of that failure still remain in the Balkans.
Following the humanitarian catastrophe in Srebrenica, the UN attempted to reform its system of intervention. Leading the charge was a new, groundbreaking norm called the "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P). However, as Ban Ki Moon admitted in his address on July 1, "It is clear we must do more. The international community is still failing too many people in desperate need. From Syria to South Sudan, people face unspeakable violence and terror."
So despite the bloodbaths of Srebrenica, Rwanda, East Timor, and Cambodia, why has the United Nations been unable to respond to Syria and South Sudan with the new tools of R2P?
R2P has been one of the most innovative and influential aspects of international policy in the last decade. It's a border-crossing norm that has the potential to revolutionize humanitarian interventions. However, the UN has yet to truly apply this policy to prevent mass murders around the world. R2P has languished as nothing more than grand theory, while thousands around the globe are victims of governments that disregard their mandate to protect the people.
R2P is a normative framework that is able the bridge the theory of the old with the demands of a new global order. Designed in 2001 by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty and diplomatic thought-leaders Gareth Evans, Mohamed Sahnoun, and Michael Ignatieff, R2P is a radical redefinition of sovereignty. R2P argues that sovereignty entails not only rights for a state, but also responsibilities—and in particular, a responsibility to protect its citizens from gross violations of human rights. At the 2005 World Summit, the UN unanimously adopted the core concepts of R2P, and established specific instruments for its implementation within the framework of the UN.
Perhaps the most limiting factor of R2P is the requirement for Security Council approval. This is designed to represent international consensus, but instead has hampered the process of intervention. Despite R2P being the premier guideline for humanitarian interventions by the UN, it is yet to be implemented to its full extent in the face of humanitarian disasters like South Sudan and Syria.
The blame for this international inaction is shared across the globe. The Security Council as the mechanism for international approval of humanitarian intervention in R2P is one that properly fits the boundaries of the United Nations. The Security Council is tasked with the "maintenance of international peace and security," and thus needs to shoulder the burden of humanitarian intervention. However, the international community has failed to meaningfully support the implementation of R2P, with the doctrine susceptible to the unfolding nature of power politics of the P5 in the Security Council. Finally the UN's lukewarm acceptance of the doctrine has left the entire concept of humanitarian intervention in a nebulous zone. It's clear that some governments are not fully sure what exactly R2P is—and the ersatz implementation of it in Libya in 2011 has set an awkward precedent for the future use of the norm.
The UN has to build a stronger framework for implementing the R2P with multilateral support. For the last 20 years, the world has reacted to massacre upon massacre with outrage and little action. When it comes to creating mechanisms to prevent or intervene in cases of major violations of human rights, we have failed. The UN needs to become more proactive in the development of R2P. The cogs of international diplomacy are slow to turn, but once they do, great change can be achieved.
Photo: Srebrenica massacre memorial gravestones 2009, by Michael Büker. Licensed under Creative Commons via Wikimedia Commons.
The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.
