Libya and the state of intervention

Abstract

The international response to the crisis in Libya has been remarkably quick and decisive. Where many other cases of mass atrocity crimes have failed to generate sufficient and timely political will to protect civilians at risk, the early response to Libya in 2011 has shown that the United Nations Security Council is able to give effect to the ‘responsibility to protect’ norm. While not an implementing party in a legal sense, the Australian government has taken a forward-leaning diplomatic stance in helping to mobilise broad support for addressing this crisis. In light of the ongoing political controversy over armed humanitarian intervention, the Libya case shows that state-based advocacy for R2P matters, given the on-going need to bolster the legitimacy of the principle. A discussion of Canberra's diplomatic activity is a prelude to an examination of the proceedings of the UN Security Council and the two key resolutions, the second of which gave effect to the forcible action. The article then considers three dimensions of the Security Council's implementation of the responsibility to protect: the language of the resolutions and the intriguing absence of a textual reference to the international community's responsibility to act; the expansive mandate for civilian protection in Security Council resolution 1973; and the first unanimous referral to the International Criminal Court, with novel support from the United States of America.

Keywords:

• Australia
• humanitarian intervention
• Libya
• responsibility to protect
• Security Council

Acknowledgements

The Asia-Pacific Centre is funded by a joint initiative from UQ and AusAID. We would like to thank Alex Bellamy and Richard Devetak for their advice; and Luke Glanville, Ian Hall, Nick Wheeler, Paul Williams and Andrew O’Neil for their constructive feedback on an earlier draft. Any errors are the responsibility of the authors alone

Notes

1. R2P is of course much wider in scope than the kinds of muscular interventionism identified during the 1980s. The current UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, helpfully characterises a ‘three pillar’ approach to promoting and implementing R2P. Pillar one refers to the protection responsibilities of sovereign states; pillar two refers to international assistance and capacity-building; pillar three relates to timely and decisive international responses to actual and potential atrocity crimes. It was the fact of Libya's failure to uphold its pillar one responsibilities that triggered the call for international action (hence the pillar three focus of this article).

2. Chesterman (2011: 1) refers to the legal implications of Libya as being ‘interesting but not exactly ground-breaking’.

3. Holzgrefe (2003: 18) defines ‘humanitarian intervention’ as ‘the threat or use of force across state borders by a state (or group of states) aimed at preventing or ending widespread and grave violations of the fundamental human rights of individuals other than its own citizens, without the permission of the states within whose territory force is applied’. It is commonplace to make the absence of consent a defining marker of humanitarian intervention—although the meaning of consent is seldom reducible to an either/or framing.

4. Weber's concept of ideological innovator has clear parallels with the constructivist notion of norm entrepreneurs, as pioneered by Finnemore and Sikkink (1998).

5. This understanding of how contentious norms operate falls far short of what Risse et al. (1999) would call ‘rule consistent’ behaviour. For an account of the status of R2P as a norm, see Bellamy (2010b).

6. Details of this case are in Jess Gifkins’ PhD thesis, Security Council Decision-Making: The Case of Darfur, University of Queensland.

7. This data has been compiled from Security Council records. See <http://www.un.org/Depts/dhl/resguide/scact.htm>

8. BRIC is the conventional way of referring to Brazil, Russia, India and China.

9. As advocated by ICISS 2001.

10. The BRIC became the BRICS after South Africa was invited to join in 2011. South Africa voted for the resolution despite the AU being opposed to ‘any foreign military intervention’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tim Dunne

Tim Dunne is Professor of International Relations and Director of Research at the Asia-Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland. His latest book, with Ken Booth, is Terror in our time was published in September 2011

Jess Gifkins

Jess Gifkins is a researcher at the Asia-Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect and a PhD candidate in the School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland