Is the international community failing to protect vulnerable civilians?

In 2011, popular uprisings against repressive leaders were sweeping the Arab
world. In Libya, then-President Moammar Gaddafi responded to challenges of his rule
quickly and brutally by attacking protesters and targeting citizens, threatening to
cleanse Libya house by house. The United Nations sprang into action: Its Security
Council authorized military intervention and a NATO-led force carried out airstrikes
that ousted Gaddafi from power. The effects of this intervention are still being felt
throughout the Middle East, but today even more crises are at hand.
In Burundi, a country seemingly on the brink of civil war, watchdog
organizations have found evidence of mass graves and extrajudicial killings. In Nigeria,
Boko Haram extremists have killed about 20,000 people (recentlyfirebombing refugees
and children), with the government seemingly unable to stand against them. Even
though a cessation of hostilities has been planned in Syria, conflict is very much
ongoing and tens of thousands of civilians have died.

Why intervene in Libya and not elsewhere?

Libya has been the only military application of the Responsibility to Protect, a
relatively new international norm endorsed by all of the U.N. member states in 2005.
R2P, as it is known, is an attempt to prevent mass atrocities genocide, war crimes and
crimes against humanity from occurring in a time when large, structured interstate
wars have been replaced by violent internal conflicts in which the casualties are mainly
civilian. The international standard for intervention emerged after the Rwandan
genocide of 1994 and the Srebrenica massacre of 1995, when the international
community largely stood by as disaster occurred, seemingly due to limited
peacekeeping mandates meant to preserve neutrality and state sovereignty.
R2P rests on three pillars, each demanding a separate level of responsibility.
First, governments carry the primary responsibility for protecting their populations from
genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and their incitement. Second, the
international community has the responsibility to encourage and assist these
governments in fulfilling that responsibility. Third where the principle can become a
source of conflict the international community has a responsibility to use appropriate
diplomatic, humanitarian and other means to protect populations from such crimes. If a

government is manifestly failing to protect its populations, the international

community should be prepared to take collective action, including military action, in
accordance with the U.N. Charter.
These norms are a fairly recent shift from the idea of humanitarian
intervention, which Global South countries, still smarting from the wounds of
colonialism, called an encroachment on their hard-won state sovereignty and a Trojan
horse for great powers to pursue their own interests. R2P is an affirmation of selfdetermination with intervention as an agreed-upon and well-constrained last resort.
Although it outlines grounds for military intrusion, R2P is meant to respect and
encourage the role that states can and should play in resolving their own internal
conflicts.
Today, the doctrine is still universally affirmed, but its efficacy and application
are questioned. Although the R2P framework has been the basis for both successful and
disappointing action in the past, critics claim that it has not been able to provide an
adequate response in crises that are currently occurring.
Indeed, recent events pose a number of questions: Why does intervention happen
in some countries and not others, or at a certain level of disorder and not before? When
we do intervene, are our responses effective? Is a system predicated on the notion
of international cooperation realistic, considering the geopolitical challenges of
respecting sovereignty while also generating consensus among world players? How
does the responsibility to protect hold up today?

Fonte:

EMBA,

Christine.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-

theory/wp/2016/02/15/is-the-international-community-failing-to-protect-vulnerablecivilians/?tid=a_inl. 15 de fevereiro de 2016.