Can R2P practice what it promises? A Case Study on the Syrian Civil War

Hoeling, Sabrina

Can R2P practice what it promises? A Case Study on the Syrian Civil War

Politics - International Politics - Topic: Peace and Conflict Studies, Security

Summary

In recent years, news from the Middle East, especially from Syria, have been devastating. Pictures of hundreds of thousands of civilians being killed, tortured, on the run, of refugees living under terrible conditions in neighbouring countries have shocked the public. The emergence of ISIS as a result of the Syrian civil war poses a threat to international security. Over and over again, politicians, human rights organisations and academics have been demanding that the international community, represented by the United Nations, steps in to stop the mass atrocities and protect the civilian victims from the radical opposition groups and Dictator Bashar Al-Assad. But is there a responsibility of other states towards the Syrian population? Is it morally and legally right to send money, weapons and possibly military personnel to risk their lives and resources?
The moral demand to do just that is supported by the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine with which the international community committed itself in 2005/6 to protect civilians from mass atrocities and marked a milestone in international politics since it changed the definition of state sovereignty from sovereignty as authority to sovereignty as responsibility. This includes a sovereign's responsibility towards his own people but also towards people outside of his jurisdiction.
But how effective is R2P in practice? Is it a mere norm without any implications for action or is it even legally binding in obliging states to protect civilians in cases of mass atrocities? If so, why does the UN not react and intervene in Syria?
This book examines the Responsibility to Protect doctrine in ist legal and political dimensions and will thus provide some answers to the questions that occupy the general public.

Excerpt

List of Abbreviations

European

Union

FSA

Free

Syrian

Army

General Assembly of the United Nations

ICC

International

Criminal

Court

ICISS

International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty

ICRtoP

International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect

IHL

International Humanitarian Law

ISIS

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

R2P

Responsibility

Protect

NATO

North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

NGO

Non-governmental

organisation

United

Kingdom

United

Nations

UNHCR

United Nations Human Rights Council

UNSC

United Nations Security Council

United

States

WSOD

World Summit Outcome Document

Introduction

"Since the Holocaust we have been required to treat others as we treat

ourselves [...] we are responsible for the other who looks at us, faces us,

who raises claims on us. We are responsible not for everyone, but

everyone who is within our reach [...]. If we do not recognize our humanity

in others we will not recognize it in ourselves" (Cooker, 2001: 148f).

With these words, Cooker (2001) summarises the development of moral theory and

international human rights in the last decades, a trend which indicates that we are all part of

an international community with a responsibility both towards our compatriots and towards

strangers. As a result, the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine was born, which was

adopted by the United Nations (UN) as part of its commitment to protect human rights

worldwide. However, the debate about R2P has been ongoing ever since, with academics

and politicians experiencing difficulties in agreeing on at which point state sovereignty can

be overridden for the protection of human rights (Welsh, 2011; Schütte, 2012).

This debate has its origin in the divided English school where pluralists, such as Bull (1977),

believe in the integrity of states and the principle of state sovereignty, whereas solidarists,

such as Fabre (2012) and Buzan (2004), argue in favour of a promotion of human rights over

non-intervention. Subsequently, the emerging literature on the theoretical concept of R2P

and its implementation can be divided into two main categories: the first group of scholars

are R2P critics who argue that R2P is mainly concerned with humanitarian interventions and

is thus likely to be abused by western states trying to dominate weaker countries (Ayoob,

2004; Hehir, 2010). In addition, they defend state sovereignty as an unalterable principle of

the international system which should never be overridden since R2P, with its new

perception of sovereignty, self-determination and humanitarian interventions, only

increases insecurity within the international system (Mason and Wheeler, 1999; Mamdami,

2010). In contrast, the second group of scholars are in favour of the concept: Bellamy (2009)

disputes the fact that the traditional understanding of sovereignty, as is understood by R2P

critics, "bears [...] resemblance to contemporary world politics" (p.60). Instead, he argues

that each state today is to some degree accountable to the international community: by

joining international institutions such as the UN, and thereby accepting some restrictions on

how to rule within state borders, sovereigns have already restrained their absolute power

(ibid; Stahn, 2007). Furthermore, the second group of scholars criticises that R2P has not

been implemented sufficiently in international law, and that more R2P ultimately leads to a

just international society (Welsh, 2004; Wheeler, 2000).

The first humanitarian intervention under R2P in Libya in 2011 fuelled the debate regarding

R2P's mechanisms and the assumed hidden interests of global players, even though R2P

advocates celebrated it as a triumph since the humanitarian intervention resulted in an end

to the civil war, and thus saved the lives of thousands of Libyans. The current Syrian civil war,

in which sexual violence, chemical weapons, torture, and killings of civilians are known to be

war strategies by all conflict parties, has led to calls for an intervention on behalf of the

Syrian civilians in the western media and by non-governmental human rights organisations.

So, why has the UN failed to intervene in Syria, as it did in the Libyan conflict? It would seem

that the international community does not to react according to a responsibility for the

Syrian civilians, even though the severity of human rights abuse exceeds the one in Libya.

Does the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) have valid reasons to not pass a resolution

legitimising a joint military intervention by UN members? That is, does the Syrian case not

fall within R2P, or are state interests responsible for preventing the UN from finding an

international consensus on how to help the Syrian population?

While the aforementioned theoretical literature on R2P might provide arguments for a

discussion about the relevance of the principles of state sovereignty versus the commitment

to respect human rights and punish severe human rights abuse, it fails to compare the legal

and political implementation of R2P with its practice. Legal scholars, such as Stahn (2007),

concentrate on the legal implementation and implication of R2P in international law,

whereas moral theorists, such as Bellamy (2009) and Weiss (2004), focus on the normative

aspects. Despite the fact that both groups of scholars refer to the other's research field,

there is no work which thoroughly investigates all aspects of R2P. In addition, academic

literature on the current situation in Syria is rare and mostly analyses the conflicts in the

context of the Arab Spring but not in the context of human rights violation, even though it is

the scale of atrocities which set Syria apart from other Arab countries (Gause, 2011;

Hinnebusch, 2012; Goldstein and Western, 2013; Ajami, 2012).

Consequently, the main objective of this study is to examine the theoretical implications of

the UN's responsibility to protect and apply these to a practical case. Syria is particularly

interesting to investigate since the Syrian civil war has been persisting since 2011 and even

though there is evidence that the scale of violence and suffering in Syria is extreme, with

over 160,000 deaths up to this point, and millions of Syrians fleeing from mass atrocities to

neighbour countries (Human Rights Watch, 2014), the international community has been

unable to end it.

This dissertation firstly postulates that the humanitarian emergency in Syria indeed falls

within the scope of R2P, and secondly that the UN has not exhausted all of its available

instruments to prevent this conflict from escalating into a civil war with mass atrocities and

to react to the existing considerable human rights abuse. Thirdly, it asserts that the Syrian

case is an example of the practical ineffectiveness of R2P, and that state interests still prevail

over the responsibility to protect strangers.

It is beyond the scope of this study to give a comprehensive analysis of R2P, but rather this

work will attempt to contribute to a better understanding of R2P in practice by highlighting

the weaknesses and strengths of a norm in its implementation. In other words, this

dissertation will assess R2P in a new light and will thus bridge the deficit in R2P literature. It

is hoped that the value of this study will bring attention to the need to do more research on

how well the international community's commitment to certain norms fares when put to the

test, and to continue the search for an international consensus on how to effectively protect

human beings from mass atrocities.

1.1

Methods and Sources

In order to find out whether R2P practices what it promises, this dissertation will use

triangulation to compensate for the weaknesses of a single method by "counterbalancing it

with the strengths of another" (Jick, 1979: 604). Therefore, quantitative and qualitative

methods will be used in the following.

As a first step, Doctrinal Legal Research, which investigates the formulation of R2P as a legal

doctrine through the analysis of legal rules, will be undertaken. The purpose of this method

is to find out the legal status of a norm (Hart, 1961; Arthurs, 1983). In other words, it will be

investigated where and to what extent R2P, developed by the International Commission on

Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), has been implemented in International

Humanitarian Law (IHL), the UN Charter, the World Summit Outcome Document (WSOD) of

2005 and UNSC Resolutions. The result will be used for the derivation of R2P criteria, which

ultimately form a set of options and instruments to be applied by the UN. They are divided

into two sub-categories: R2P criteria for the non-use of force and R2P criteria for the

potential use of lethal force.

Furthermore, a critical discourse analysis of UNSC Resolutions, presidential statements of

the General Assembly (GA) and the UNSC, as well as reports from the Independent

International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic (henceforth it will be

referred to as Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria) will be conducted to find out

how UN institutions reacted towards the massive human rights abuse in Syria, and to

establish whether their approach to fulfil their responsibility towards the suffering

population is decisive. Furthermore it will used to analyse statements by the permanent five

UNSC members to find out their interests behind actions or inaction. Critical discourse

analyses is especially useful to discover the actors' motives because it "explores how texts

construct representations of the world, social relationships and social identities and there is

an emphasis on highlighting how such practices and texts are ideologically shaped by

relations of power" (Fairclough, 1992 quoted in: Taylor, 2010: 3).

The case study approach has been selected in order to investigate the phenomenon of R2P

within its contemporary context. Since there is only a limited number of cases where R2P

has been so far applied, given the fact that the concept itself is fairly new, it is necessary to

provide a short comparison between Libya and Syria. Firstly, because the civil wars in both

countries are similar in their emergence, development, and context, and secondly, because

the difference in the UN's reaction to the humanitarian catastrophe in both cases can give

insight on how R2P is practiced.

Consequently, empirical data for the case study on Syria will be gathered from several

sources, such as the Human Rights Council of the UN (HCR), the Independent Commission of

Inquiry on Syria, the European Commission, as well as from non-governmental organisations

(NGO's) such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch which will be used to gain

an understanding on the humanitarian situation in Syria. A cross-referencing of these data

will be carried out to increase the validity of the findings. However, the fact that the

unstable situation in Syria makes it difficult to get accurate death tolls and circumstances of

death will be kept in mind. Consequently, the numbers will be unlikely to be exact, even

though the quality of sources will indicate a trend which can be used to draw conclusions on

the current situation in Syria.

1.2

Outline of the Dissertation

This dissertation will begin by elaborating the conceptual framework of R2P in Chapter Two,

as well as the legal implementation of R2P by the GA in 2005 and the UNSC in 2006. Chapter

Two will also lay out the aforementioned criteria for the analysis. Chapter Three will

commence with a presentation of the emergence of the Syrian conflict in 2011 and the

current situation, before subsequently investigating the measures already taken by the

international community. The attention will be on non-military measures, such as mediation

and sanctions, and the consensus finding process in the UN. Additionally, R2P criteria will be

applied in order to determine whether they are fulfilled in the Syrian case. Chapter Four will

go beyond current measures, and will examine whether the Syrian civil war is a case for the

use of lethal force authorised by the UNSC. It will thus focus on the scale of violence and

human rights abuse in Syria, classified as crimes against humanity and war crimes, and on its

implications on regional and global peace and security. In order to do this, the second

category of the aforementioned criteria from Chapter Two will be applied. Chapter Five will

look at the interests of the five permanent members of the UNSC to find the motives behind

their (in)action. Chapter Six will reflect on the implications of a military intervention under

R2P in Syria, and will offer an outlook on the future credibility of the UN in case of a failure

to end mass atrocities in Syria.

Conceptual Framework

2.1

From Sovereignty as Authority to Sovereignty as Responsibility

In order to prevent further humanitarian catastrophes, such as those experienced in the

Second World War, the UN was established with the aim "to form an international

community based on respect for the dignity of human beings" (Breau, 2005:221). To achieve

this goal, members of the UN passed a number of multinational treaties and created laws,

among them the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Convention and its

Additional Protocols, and IHL in general (Barry and Southwood, 2011), to ensure that

individual's human rights would be protected and peace preserved. However, these only

oblige states to respect the human rights of their own citizens: conversely they have no

obligation towards people outside of their borders (Woodhouse and Ramsbotham, 1998).

Consequently, state sovereignty became an important principle in order to protect citizens

from external threats, based on the assumption that respect for the sovereignty of other

states increases international peace (ibid). However, the possibility that a state might not

protect its population, but might instead be the perpetrator, was overlooked. In such cases,

humanitarian intervention, defined as "an act of intervention in the internal affairs of

another country with the view to ending the physical suffering caused by the disintegration

or the gross misuse of the authority of the state, and helping create conditions in which a

viable structure of civil authority can emerge" (Parekh, 1997: 55), seems to be an option.

However, during its first forty-five years of existence, the UN stressed that it promotes the

non-use of force and non-intervention in a sovereign state's affairs without the sovereign's

consent, regardless of the severity of human rights violations (Roberts, 2006). This

understanding of the UN's role was challenged in the 1990s due to internal conflicts

beginning to outnumber conflicts among states and the humanitarian emergencies in

Somalia, Rwanda and Yugoslavia, during which hundreds of thousands of people were

slaughtered and suffered mass atrocities (Weiss and Thakur, 2010:76).

Therefore, the question arises of what the international community, represented by the UN,

should do when the shared ideal of a right to life and dignity is violated to an extreme

extent. The incidents in the 1990s clearly showed that the instruments of the UN, namely

peacekeeping and conflict management, could not provide relief in situations where the

state sovereign rejected external help or was itself the abuser. Although there were calls for

a legalisation of humanitarian intervention, no consensus was reached on when and how to

intervene, and how regional organisations such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

(NATO) or individual states should be authorised to enter an internal conflict with potential

lethal force in order to protect civilians (Breau, 2005). Ultimately, the UN's credibility as the

main human rights organisation was endangered through its inability to enforce its own laws

and principles.

On the one hand, most of the UN members states were shocked by the mass atrocities in the

1990s, and the GA as well as the UNSC demonstrated their commitment to human rights in

various resolutions (Weiss and Thakur, 2010). On the other hand, a lot of countries, most of

them developing countries, worried about any practice that would challenge state

sovereignty (Roberts, 2006). According to Jennifer Welsh (2004), the international

community faced a dilemma at the end of the 20

century: how should a compromise be

found between what is legally right and what is morally right? Consequently, the Canadian

government established the ICISS with the objective to provide a doctrine for the right to

intervene, responding to the call of Secretary-General Anan (2000) who declared that the

protection of human rights must take priority over state sovereignty.

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mostly deals with a duty to react to situation where the protection of human lives and

dignity from mass atrocities is not guaranteed, and stresses that this includes political,

economic and judicial measures (ICISS, 2001). In extreme cases, the last resort is a military

intervention, and R2P2001 presents a threshold of six principles which must be fulfilled

before a military intervention is justified (Evans and Sahnoun, 2002). These include: Just

Cause, Right Intention, Proportional Means, Right Authority and Reasonable Prospects (ICISS,

2001: 32). R2P2001's last core principle is the Responsibility to Rebuild. The ICISS's intention

was to make interveners commit to rebuild that which is destroyed during the intervention

with the objective that a solid post-conflict reconstruction would create conditions for a

long-lasting peace (ibid.).

R2P2001 was deemed revolutionary since it includes original ideas from Just War Theory,

further enhancing them by adapting them to the contemporary moral demand for a better

protection of human beings from mass atrocities (Evans and Sahnoun, 2002). Nevertheless,

even though the ICISS report fuelled the debates about humanitarian intervention, it was

still only a report from an independent commission, and was not endorsed by the

international community. Therefore, the ICISS and Kofi Annan decided to present the report

to the GA during the 2005 World Summit, hoping that it would be implemented quickly

(Annan, 2000). In October 2005, the GA of the United Nations unanimously accepted R2P in

its World Summit Outcome Document (WSOD). In April 2006, after six months of

negotiations, the UNSC affirmed the result of the WSOD in Resolution 1674 (henceforth the

R2P version passed by the GA and the UNSC will be referred to as R2P2006). But what do

these resolutions mean for R2P?

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hority for

the use of force implemented in UN documents is only the UNSC (WSOD, 2005: § 139; UN

Charter Chapter VII). Therefore, the ICISS's (2001) proposition to allow the GA to legitimately

intervene in cases where the UNSC fails to react to mass atrocities in a timely and decisive

manner has not been implemented. Moreover, the criteria Reasonable Prospects and Right

Intention cannot be found in any legal or political document.

However, the UN passed a Responsibility to Prevent by agreeing to "assist[ing] those which

are under stress before crises and conflicts break out" (WSOD, 2005: § 138, 139).

Additionally, the UN accepted its Responsibility to React to mass atrocities and only

restricted it to genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity (WSOD,

2005: §138, 139), which is also partly incorporated into the Genocide Convention (1948: §8).

Therefore, the UN gave R2P more focus instead of adopting the very general proposition of

the ICISS (2011: 12) to act in cases of "large scale loss of life (actual or apprehended) and [...]

large ethnic cleansing". Likewise, the UN agreed to use "appropriate diplomatic,

humanitarian and other peaceful means [...] to help protect populations from genocide, war

crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity" (WSOD, 2005: §139). Moreover, the

UN passed the Responsibility to Rebuild by setting up the Peacebuilding Commission in order

to "[...] assist[ing] parties of conflicts to end hostilities and emerge towards recovery,

reconstruction and development and in mobilizing sustained international attention and

assistance" (UNSC Res. 1645, 2005: 1).

Nevertheless, the parts of R2P2001 which were adopted verbatim by the international

community were agreed upon in the WSOD and UNSC Resolutions which makes them legally

recommendatory for future decisions, despite not being legally binding (Stahn, 2007).

However, R2P advocates have to acknowledge that even though one cannot argue that R2P

is a law, the evidence presented above demonstrates the fact that it mirrors international

law.

Moreover, the comparison shows that most of R2P2001 principles have indeed been

implemented. This is supported by the fact that UNSC has referred to R2P2006 in twenty-

three of its resolutions since 2005, justifying its decisions to act in a certain way, mostly to

sanction, to send peacekeeping troops or to condemn mass atrocities, as a result of a state's

negligence to protect its citizens (see Table 2 in Appendix). In UNSC Resolution 1973 (2011) it

even authorised the use of force against the Gaddafi regime in Libya. Additionally, the UN

has continued to incorporate R2P in UN practice, for example by founding the Mediation

Support Unit and creating the position of the Special Representative on the Prevention of

Genocide and Mass Atrocities (Breakey, 2012).

This leads to the conclusion that, even though R2P2006 cannot be called state practice yet, it

is part of Jug Cogens which is "a body of principles recognized by the international

community as being fundamental to the maintenance of international order [...] from which

no derogation is permitted" (West's Encyclopedia of American Law, 2008). These principles,

agreed upon by the UN, concern threats to international peace and security, the use of force

and humanitarian elements, such as genocide, slavery and nowadays also considerable

abuse of human rights. In other words, R2P might not be a law, but it is a legal norm to

which the UN has committed itself. Hence, the UN can be held to maintain its pledge to

prevent and react to mass atrocities, and to rebuild post conflict. Its failure to do so will thus

harm the foundation and credibility of the UN. Based on this conclusion, a set of criteria can

be derived.

2.3

Deriving Criteria for the Case Study

For the case study on Syria, the criteria, derived from R2P in its legal implementation

recently discussed, are divided into two main categories: the first deals with the

Responsibility to Prevent measures undertaken, while the second includes the Responsibility

to React criteria. The latter is subdivided into peaceful instruments, and the potential use of

force. As a result, the following research design emerges and will be applied to Syria:

Responsibility to Prevent: Measures undertaken to prevent a humanitarian

emergency from escalating

Responsibility to React:

Peaceful instruments: The use of "appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and

other peaceful means [...] to help protect [...]" (WSOD, 2005: § 139) the Syrian

population

Potential military Intervention: Is Syria a case for the permissible and legal

authorisation of force by the UN? The following criteria must be fulfilled:

Just Cause: One of the following is applicable in the case

Genocide

War crimes

Crimes against humanity

Ethnic cleansing

ii.

Last Resort: All peaceful means have been exhausted and have no or

little prospect of being successful

iii.

Occurrence of a Threat to International Peace and security

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of force.

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e extent to

the Libyan

uman right

, anti-gove

on, 2011). W

rce against

hundreds

were arrest

ess to the s

afi forces (

12). This r

the first te

were themse

till ongoing,

nality and R

ch is applic

on, and the

a discussi

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Charter, the

First Militar

o which R2P

n civil war

ts of a po

ernment pr

When the

the protest

of Libya

ed, and p

exual assau

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esulted in

en days in

elves dealin

, the Respo

Right Autho

cable when

measures t

on on who

ons, that it i

e UNSC will

ry Intervent

P has been

in 2011. T

opulation o

rotests beg

protest spr

tors: accord

ns alleged

rotestors w

ult of men a

nt Commis

at least 1

order to e

ng with the

onsibility to

ority are also

the decisio

o be undert

o can auth

is beyond t

l be unders

tion under R

practiced,

This was th

over the r

gan in Liby

read across

ding to Hum

dly involve

were execu

and women

sion of Inq

70,000 Lib

escape the

e turmoil o

Rebuild wi

o excluded,

on has alre

taken are b

horise the

he scope o

stood as th

R2P

this section

he first case

ights of th

ya followin

s Libya, Gad

man Rights

ed in the

uted. Furth

n, the use o

quiry on Li

yans fleein

e violence

of regime ch

ill not be d

the first be

eady been m

being discus

use of for

f this study

e sole auth

n will short

e in which

he governm

g the Arab

ddafi's gove

Watch (20

e anti-gove

hermore, p

of torture, a

bya, 2011;

ng to neigh

(UNHCR, 2

hanges (Ku

iscussed

ecause it

made to

sed. The

ce is so

y. Hence,

hority to

ly give a

the UN

ment to

b spring

ernment

012), live

ernment

ublished

and child

Human

hbouring

2011: 3),

perman,

Details

Pages
Type of Edition: Erstausgabe
Publication Year: 2015
ISBN (PDF): 9783954898572
ISBN (Softcover): 9783954893577
File size: 5.7 MB
Language: English
Publication date: 2016 (September)
Keywords: United Nations Responsibility to Protect R2P Syria Human Rights
Product Safety: Anchor Academic Publishing

Author

Sabrina Hoeling (Author)

Can R2P practice what it promises? A Case Study on the Syrian Civil War

Summary

Excerpt

Table Of Contents

Details

Author

Sabrina Hoeling (Author)