LATimes: R2P and the Libya mission. When does 'responsibility to protect' grant countries the right

[pampango]

to intervene?

One of the issues privately discussed by foreign ministers at the United Nations was the "responsibility to protect," or R2P. ... R2P's core idea is that all governments have an obligation to protect their citizens from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. It is primarily a preventive doctrine. However, R2P also acknowledges that we live in an imperfect world and if a state is "manifestly failing" to meet its responsibilities, the international community is obligated to act. It is not a right to intervene but a responsibility to protect.

The challenge after Libya is how to improve our capacity to respond to future R2P risk situations. Those of us whose business is preventing mass atrocity crimes need to get better at monitoring countries, states and conflicts before they reach "boiling point." When things do reach a critical stage, we need to ring alarm bells in a way that not only provides adequate warning but mobilizes meaningful responses.

We need to coordinate these responses locally, regionally and internationally. We need better policy instruments, learning not only from Libya and Ivory Coast but also Guinea, Kenya and other places where R2P has been invoked but military force was unnecessary. The standard Security Council menu — which ranges from envoys and mediation, to referral to the ICC, sanctions or a no-fly zone — is inadequate. We need a wider range of preventive, mediated and coercive options.

The bottom line is we don't need to choose between prevention or intervention, or between sovereignty and universalism. We need timely, proportional, multidimensional reactions to all R2P risk situations. We need a U.N. Security Council dedicated to nuance. Hesitation and inaction remain a recipe for complicity with evil.

Simon Adams is executive director of the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect in New York.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-adams-r2p-20110928,0,1033520.story?track=rss