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Abstract
The International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty's report, The Responsibility to Protect, argues that when a state is unable or unwilling to uphold its citizens’ basic human rights, such as in cases of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, the international community has a responsibility to protect these citizens by undertaking humanitarian intervention. An essential issue, however, remains unresolved: which particular agent in the international community has the duty to intervene? In this article, I critically examine four ways of assigning this duty. Although I highlight the benefits of institutionalising the responsibility to protect, I argue that we should adopt, in the short term at least, a consequentialist solution: humanitarian intervention should be the responsibility of the intervener that will be the most effective.
Acknowledgements
Earlier versions of this paper were presented to the Newcastle Ethics, Legal and Political Philosophy Group and at the British International Studies Association's Annual Conference in December 2006. I would like to thank, in particular, Derek Bell, Simon Caney, Peter Jones, Graham Long, and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments.
Notes
1. I define humanitarian intervention as ‘forcible military action by an external agent in the relevant political community with the predominant purpose of preventing, reducing, or halting an ongoing or impending grievous suffering or loss of life.’ I will use the ‘responsibility to protect’ to imply a responsibility or duty to undertake humanitarian intervention. As such, I am concerned with cases, first, when the state primarily tasked with the responsibility to protect is unable or unwilling to uphold its citizens’ basic human rights and, second, when other options, short of military intervention (such as targeted sanctions), have not been effective, or are unlikely to be so. These other aspects are important parts of the responsibility to protect doctrine, but not the focus of this article.
2. To be sure, the notion of a duty to intervene is one of the most ambitious aspects of the R2P and the hardest for certain states to swallow. This is reflected in the agreement reached at the 2005 World Summit, which watered down the legal obligation to intervene. Yet even the language used in this document retains the sense that humanitarian intervention is not morally optional in certain circumstances.
3. For a discussion of the problems with defining ‘international community’, see the symposium in this journal (Hodge Citation2003, Kovach Citation2003, and Lucas Citation2003).
4. There are other potential ways of identifying who has the duty to intervene, but these four options are the most morally interesting.
5. For a more detailed account of how effectiveness should be defined, see Seybolt (Citation2007: 30–46) and Pattison (Citation2008a; Citationforthcoming).
6. This list is not meant to be exhaustive. There may be other qualities that are important for effective intervention; I focus on the qualities commonly cited as essential.
7. See, further, Seybolt (Citation2007), who claims that this is the central factor in an intervener's success.
8. An institutional assignment of the responsibility to protect may also be able to generate this duty, given duties to fulfill institutional responsibilities.
9. See, further, Lango (Citation2001) on this issue.
10. For defence of these principles, see Caney (Citation2005), Farer (Citation2005), ICISS (Citation2001a), and Tesón (Citation2005). I consider the importance of internal and external support for humanitarian intervention in Pattison (Citation2007b).
11. Similarly, Tan (Citation2006a, 106) argues that the duty to protect implies a duty to ensure that this duty is properly discharged, which in turn implies a duty to set up a permanent international humanitarian defence force. Note that the duty to prevent human suffering of noncompatriots is not the only, or even, always the primary responsibility that a government owes. As discussed above, its fiduciary obligations to its own citizens will sometimes mean that it should not act on this duty if, for instance, intervention is likely to be excessively costly to its citizens and soldiers. Likewise, a government may have a duty to refrain from intervention that destabilises a surrounding region. These countervailing duties not to act may, then, sometimes outweigh the duty to prevent human suffering, and therefore the duty to intervene. How these conflicting duties should be weighed will depend on the particular contingencies of the case, such as the seriousness of the humanitarian crisis, the likelihood of success, and degree of the costs that the intervener will have to bear.
12. Some of the objections that I raise will also show that, even if one adopts a General Right Approach, these two solutions are unconvincing.
13. These difficulties in determining causality may also apply to the institutional cosmopolitan case for the general, unassigned duty to intervene.
14. That these relationships are not sufficiently strong poses even greater problems for this solution when adopting the General Right Approach, since these relationships are required to generate, rather than specify, the duty to intervene.
15. Tan cites the opposite problem where ‘there may be more than one potential agent with historical ties to those in need of protection, in which case the agency problem reappears’ (2006a: 102).
16. Strictly speaking, even a perfect institution to undertake humanitarian intervention is a matter of non-ideal, rather than ideal, theory. This is because a humanitarian crisis involves circumstances of non-compliance – where the state primarily responsible for upholding its citizens’ basic human rights is unable or unwilling to comply with its duty to do so. In general, ‘ideal theory’ concerns principles that characterise a well-ordered society under favourable circumstances, whereas ‘non-ideal theory’ concerns principles that govern how we are to deal with severe injustice (Rawls Citation1999: 8, 216). For simplicity's sake, however, I will refer to an institutional arrangement that can undertake humanitarian intervention effectively, fairly, and democratically as ‘ideal’.
17. Indeed, I defend a similar proposal in Pattison (Citation2008b).
18. See, further, Pattison (Citation2007a). Moreover, these two options may also be unfeasible in the short term. Many states may oppose formerly assigning the responsibility to protect to the UN because they wish to retain the option of unilateral action or, conversely, reject outright the permissibility of humanitarian intervention. Similarly, assigning the responsibility to protect to regional organisations is unlikely in the near future because it would require significant reform of the international system: the UN Security Council would no longer be required to authorise humanitarian intervention by a regional agency (as required by Article 53 of the UN Charter).
19. It may be responded that a non-ideal institutional arrangement is a necessary stepping stone to achieve an ideal institutional solution. But this is speculative, and the transaction costs in terms of the ineffective prevention of human suffering may be significant (and more certain).
20. I question in more detail the moral significance of international authorisation for humanitarian intervention in Pattison (Citation2007a).
21. Variations on these objections may also be levelled at the second and third solutions, which also rely on a normative consensus (i.e., that there should be a norm that ensures that the agents that have a special relationship with those suffering the crisis intervene when necessary).
22. Franck's primary focus is on cases where humanitarian intervention is morally justifiable but of questionable legality according to a strict reading of the UN Charter.
23. See, further, Lu (Citation2006: 205) who argues that non-state perspectives should be included since it is the protection of the members of the wider community of humanity that ultimately grounds the justification of humanitarian intervention.
24. As such, ‘jurying’ is best seen as a metaphor. It is less formalised than a domestic jury is and global ‘jurors’ may not meet the standards that we would expect in a domestic setting.
25. A further problem with any apparent unfairness is that it could lead to effective interveners being unwilling to intervene because they feel that they have already done their bit (see, further, Shue Citation2004: 27).
26. This is especially the case if one believes that rich states have acquired their wealth in unscrupulous ways.