Adoption of the principle Group Photo of 2005 World Summit. Though the concept adopted omitted some of the aspects proposed initially by the ICISS, it retains its fundamental aspects in relation to prevention of and response to the most serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. Neither report asserted a basis to use force for this purpose other than Security Council authorisation under Chapter VII of the Charter as a last resort, in the event of genocide and other serious international crimes.Īt the 2005 high-level UN World Summit meeting, Member States finally committed to the principle of the responsibility to protect by including it into the outcome document of that meeting ( A/RES/60/1).
The subsequent report of the High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, entitled A more secure world: our shared responsibility ( A/59/565) and the Secretary-General’s 2005 report In Larger Freedom: towards development, security and human rights for all ( A/59/2005) endorsed the principle that State sovereignty carried with it the obligation of the State to protect its own people, and that if the State was unwilling or unable to do so, the responsibility shifted to the international community to use diplomatic, humanitarian and other means to protect them. However, a ‘residual responsibility’ also lied with the broader community of states, which was ‘activated when a particular state is clearly either unwilling or unable to fulfil its responsibility to protect or is itself the actual perpetrator of crimes or atrocities’ Consequently, the primary responsibility for the protection of its people rested first and foremost with the State itself. The concept of the responsibility to protect drew inspiration of Francis Deng’s idea of “State sovereignty as a responsibility” and affirmed the notion that sovereignty is not just protection from outside interference – rather is a matter of states having positive responsibilities for their population’s welfare, and to assist each other. The challenge was taken by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), set up by the Canadian Government, which at the end of 2001 issued a report entitled The Responsibility to Protect. He repeated the challenge in his 2000 Millennium Report, saying that: “if humanitarian intervention is, indeed, an unacceptable assault on sovereignty, how should we respond to a Rwanda, to a Srebrenica, to gross and systematic violation of human rights that offend every precept of our common humanity?” In September 1999, while presenting his annual report to the UN General Assembly, Kofi Annan reflected upon “the prospects for human security and intervention in the next century” and challenged the Member States to “find common ground in upholding the principles of the Charter, and acting in defence of common humanity”.
#PRINCIPLE OF INTERVENTION HOW TO#
Backgroundįollowing the atrocities committed in the 1990s in the Balkans and Rwanda, which the international community failed to prevent, and the NATO military intervention in Kosovo, which was criticized by many as a violation of the prohibition of the use of force, the international community engaged in a serious debate on how to react to gross and systematic violations of human rights.
It seeks to narrow the gap between Member States’ pre-existing obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law and the reality faced by populations at risk of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
The first Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect was appointed by the Secretary-General in 2008. Following the ground breaking adoption by all Heads of State and Government of the responsibility to protect principle, as articulated in the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document ( A/RES/60/1), in 2007 the Secretary-General addressed a letter ( S/2007/721) to the President of the Security Council in which he recognized the need to further operationalize the Responsibility to Protect principle and designated a Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect with the main task of conceptual development and consensus- building. The responsibility to protect embodies a political commitment to end the worst forms of violence and persecution.
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