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Permalink Reply by Stephen Lamony on March 23, 2008 at 9:54am

I think the question you are asking is tied to the much debate issue of state sovereignity, If am right then this is what the UN had to say on that matter
On March 20 2000, the United Nations overruled this argument and declared, “That sovereignty can be forfeited on humanitarian grounds see: William M. Reilly, UN report: Sovereignty can be forfeited on humanitarian grounds, United Press International - March 20, 2000

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Permalink Reply by czelizer on March 23, 2008 at 5:11pm

One of the areas that practitioners and scholars are trying to develop here in the middle is the Responsibility to Protect. This term has developed and increasingly cited in the field, but there is still a long way to go in operationalizing it in practice. When is it appropriate to intervene in countries where severe human rights violations are taking place? How is this balanced with state sovereignty?
A good website to learn more is, http://www.responsibilitytoprotect.org/

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Permalink Reply by Gil Hardwick on March 24, 2008 at 6:52am

One of the big issues I have with this notion of 'protection' being bandied about now across a broad front is concerned with who takes ownership of the business?

A predominant case-in-point over the past decade and more has been the global paedophile hysteria providing extremely doubtful child protection, with colonies of isolated and alienated men forming on the one hand, and large numbers of frightened children being ferried back and forth by paranoid parents from school and everywhere else children gather.

I disagree with Stephen Lamony here that it is a matter of state sovereignty, which appears to me the usual straw man bandied about by the world's dictators to distract attention away from the core issues, and cause their critics to waste time and effort arguing with them about it.

The issue to me is the broad disbursal of sovereign powers within states preventing the situation arising in which the centralisation of power allows whoever the incumbents may happen to be from time to time to do as they will.

In that respect the issues are not concerned directly with any sort of 'protection' but with the proper and adequate structuring of state-sponsored instrumentalities to enable good governance to take place.

At a broader level the notion of 'responsibility to protect' can reasonably be subsumed under the parallel notion of 'duty of care', although again who is to oversee this process? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

I shudder to think of countries as vassal states of an overarching global hierarchy. In a very real and practical sense I have no opportunity to elect delegates to the United Nations, for example. My guess is that most people on the planet cannot even begin to visualise how they would fit into such an arrangement, when what people need most is a sense of empowerment and involvement there locally where they are living day by day.

Rather, I would be looking far more closely at the breakdown of nations; at the breakdown of monolithic power-structures and the broad disbursal of their self-asserted prerogatives. The Internet forms an excellent example of this broadly distributed peer review of issues almost immediately as they arise, and accessible to anybody at all with an interest in the matter at hand.

The key to all this is people being readily able to speak and air their views, such that any small thing that happens can be as readily corrected rather than suffering the historic neglect in which small issues accumulate and snowball into big issues taking a great effort to resolve.

But then of course this is a Taoist perspective. I would like also to hear from the Sufis and others on these matters as well.

Gil

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Permalink Reply by Natalya Pak on March 24, 2008 at 12:09pm

I believe that atrocities perpetrated by a state over its nationals cannot be shielded behind a concept of sovereignty. It is certainly true that abuses of human rights by a state exercised over its nationals should not be tolerated or that the concept of sovereignty cannot cover the hideous acts of the so-called ‘rogue states’.
But is humanitarian intervention justifiable on either of these grounds?

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Permalink Reply by Gil Hardwick on March 24, 2008 at 8:42pm

I doubt that you will find many who disagree with you, Natalya, at least in principle. It is difficult to proceed, however, because you are unclear about who should not tolerate abuse.

The difficulty I frequently encounter in the raising of these questions is that those who raise them are behaving in the same way as those they seek to criticise; that is, deny me my right to think for myself, and to respond to whatever may be happening in the world from time to time according to my own perspective.

For the life of me; call be dumb, stupid, retarded, eccentric, whatever, but in all my years I have never been able to grasp what virtue there may be in replacing one tyranny with another. Even in places like Australia, and in particular the US over the past generation and more, scholars and intellectuals have their lives and careers ruined by speaking their own mind against the crush of popular mass reaction to tragedy.

To proceed effectively we must rise above that, even though it leads to a lifetime of poverty and occasionally exile. Compensation, perhaps, is the good company found there.

Back to the point being raised. The question to my mind is rather concerned with the raising of the claim of sovereignty as an excuse, or more reliably perhaps a distraction away from the reality, in circumstances where others are constrained as discussed above to reply only within the limitations of the claim itself.

For my part I am fully prepared to accept the sovereignty of states, quite to the same extent as my acceptance of individual integrity. These are given conditions.

Having accepted the given condition, then, it is no longer an issue. I would add further that it can no longer become an issue since there is no longer any contest. By rejecting the agonistic approach and thinking laterally away from the false, distracting claim we dispense with it, and by doing so proceed with addressing the matter actually at hand.

Moving on, then, the matter itself becomes one of how that sovereignty is to be exercised. That brings a whole range of related disciplines to bear, which because leading away from simple conflict toward analysis and review is inherently part of the process of reconciliation in any event.

Kindest regards,

Gil

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Permalink Reply by Natalya Pak on March 25, 2008 at 5:46pm

I think it is clear who should not tolerate abuse, that is international community...
It should do what is lawful to alleviate the unfortunate fate of those people who are killed, raped and humiliated by their own governments, i.e use the existent system of protection and preservation of international peace under Chapter VII of the UN Charter and what remains to be done is to ensure that the system is workable, and not employed in citations where it is most convenient to those who decide upon intervention... I believe it is better that trying to invent other new concepts that are neither legal nor workable.

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Permalink Reply by Gil Hardwick on March 25, 2008 at 9:03pm

I beg to differ, Natalya. It is you seeking to invent other new concepts involving UN intervention and such abstractions as "international community" which date from the 19-20Cs, and further as you state repeatedly based on your beliefs not on objective analysis.

The process of breaking down monolithic power structures on the other hand is ancient. The process of building up and breaking down has been going on since Adam had fleas. It is not rocket science, and accessible to just about everyone assuming they are allowed to get on with it.

For my part, if you want me, Gil Hardwick, to be involved with something you refer to as "international community" you might well move to include me in it, along with other people you are seeking to motivate with your "should this" and "should that" line of argument. While your "community" only ever includes you and people who agree with you, moreover, you face thank God a severely uphill battle.

While ever we are being presented with amorphous abstraction, lacking ordinary checks and balances and involving people it is difficult to know even exist, and far worse no statement whatsoever on HOW overarching intervention in the internal affairs of sovereign states is to be achieved, the risks far outweigh the benefits.

Natalya, we have been there, over and over again. When are the political activists and manipulators and wannabe power-brokers ever going to learn that the world will simply not sit back watching the same old mistakes being made over and over again? We have had more than enough of it already.

Such thinking as you represent has only ever caused more war and bloodshed as conflict is escalated rather than everyone going back home and attend to their own affairs.

Life is simply not perfect. Maybe you want it to be, but to me that is a fool's errand. Better, again, were we able to simply get on with our lives here locally where we are, each one of us.

Gil

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Permalink Reply by Stephen Lamony on March 24, 2008 at 7:51am

Gil, I compeletely agree with your analysis on state sovereignity, dictators will always find an excuse when they have breached a law.

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Permalink Reply by Natalya Pak on March 24, 2008 at 11:43am

when i posed this question i perfectly knew, that humanitarian intervention was contrary to international law. However, given what we know about human rights abuses, genocide, aggression which have taken place in some countries in the past is it appropriate to believe that other states have the 'responsibility' to exercise control by military force over the acts of another in regard to its internal sovereignty on the grounds of humanity? to put it in other words, do the state have right to humanitarian intervention (without the authorization of UN Security Council) for the protection of human rights of other state's nationals?

That humanitarian intervention is not legal under international law is demonstrated not only by the Charter but also by state practice, or more correctly to say – the absence of state practice in exercising humanitarian intervention without the authorization of the Security Council. There is only one case in the history of international law when the use of force was claimed to be undertaken for humanitarian purposes and when the Security Council explicitly did not authorize such intervention - that case was the intervention of NATO in Kosovo in 1999.

So i think it is dangerous to refer to morality or responsibility to protect to circumvent the matter that is strictly legal and lies in the fact that morality is subject to as many personal interpretations as there are people. This same danger pertains to humanitarian intervention when it comes to the question of morality. Perhaps it was a moral obligation for NATO members to protect human rights of Kosovo’s Albanians, but even though it was, why the same NATO members failed to mitigate the situation in Darfur, or Rwanda? The situation in Darfur has had even more appalling consequences, with 10,000 people perishing each month, than in the case of Kosovo. So, if this inherently weak concept remains at the discretion of states who according to their subjective often political motives decide when to intervene under the disguise of humanism or when to abstain, who would come to respect and obey the law if it is so easily accommodated to new interpretations of the powerful states?

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Permalink Reply by jelena grujic on March 24, 2008 at 12:31pm

How convenient is to have this discussion precisely on the anniversary of the NATO intervention - ore as local citizens prefer to say, NATO bombing. Nine years ago, on 24. March, at 8pm started bombing of SR Yugoslavia (ore, if ones prefer, Serbia, Kosovo and Montenegro).
Humanitarian intervention lasted 78 days. It is estimated that was killed more then 2000 civilians, but precise numbers were never provided; those were "collateral damages", as officials of six big countries who's leaded operation defined.
Intervention started after 17. days long negotiations between Albanian (from Kosovo) and Serbian officials in Rambue failed, and was ended on 9. June with signing of Kumanovo agreement and passing of a Resolution 1244 of Security Council of UN.
Intervention caused heavy damaging of bridges, hospitals, airports, roads, houses, open markets, monuments of cultural heritage...even Chinese embassy... Particularly Serbia did not recover from it completely up to nowadays.
My strongest memory on those days is struck with bombing of national TV Station (RTS)technical department in which occasion were killed 16 colleagues. The most personal is memory on the morning when open market in my born town Nis was bombed, when was killed more then 30 civilians.
I felt nothing but absolute overwhelming admiration during a visit of Arlington cemetery and I do strongly believe our world need institution of humanitarian intervention. However, I do know we desperately need a some kind of mechanisms of precised control of such an operation, ore supervision of the action plan and conduction of it.
Regards from Belgrade, Jelena

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