Responsabilidad de proteger

The responsibility to protect: from an ethical principle to an effective policy
(Chapter for La realidad de la ayuda, Intermón Oxfam)1

Juan Garrigues Researcher, Peace and Security Programme, FRIDE
I. Introduction...................................................................................2 II. From humanitarian intervention to the responsibility to protect................4 III. The2005 UN World Summit..............................................................7 IV. The elements of the ICISS report........................................................9 V. Implementation............................................................................12 VI. Rhetoric and capacities: the European Union and the position of Spain.....15 VII. The responsibility to protect in practice:the case of Darfur...................17 VIII. The future: conclusions and recommendations...................................21

At first sight it may seem misguided to include a chapter on the responsibility to protect (R2P) in a publication from a non-governmental organisation (NGO) entitled The Reality of Aid. In the end, the responsibility to protect is a question of high state politics atthe service of a humanitarian cause; diplomats and officials in Western capitals taking measured and consensual decisions in which they strive to find a balance between State interests and international solidarity. In humanitarian aid and development, NGOs strive daily to ensure that impartiality remains one of the core principles of their work on the ground. Why therefore this curious inclusion? Tobegin with, very few really comprehend the responsibility to protect. Is it an idealistic principle designed to aid all the unprotected communities of the world? Is it a justification for military intervention as a political objective? Or is it simply another theory remote from all practical application created by well-intended academics?
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This chapter was written with the collaboration ofFRIDE’s Peace, Security and Human Rights programme (Mariano Aguirre, Ivan Briscoe, Amélie Gauthier, Susanne Gratius, Sarah-Lea John de Sousa and Vidal Martín Hernando).

Comment, November 2007

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In fact, the responsibility to protect represents a significant leap from previous debates, especially since the beginning of the 1990s, around the protection of groups threatened by genocide orviolations of their human rights. The responsibility to protect works for the protection of civilians not to be completely subjected to political interests or to fall into oblivion due to divisions or lack of political commitments within the international community through the elaboration of a series of guidelines. As an acknowledged and approved principle by the member states of the United Nations(UN), the success or failure, or moreover, the mere existence of the responsibility to protect, will substantially define the scale and nature of the future work of humanitarian aid.

Introduction
The 2005 United Nations (UN) World Summit will be remembered by many as the event where the plan of reform of the organisation of the outgoing Secretary-General Kofi Annan failed. Nevertheless, even thoughthe divisions around the restructuring of the Security Council could not be overcome, some positive results were achieved, such as the establishment of the Human Rights Council and the Peacekeeping Commission. One of the less discussed was the approval of the principle of the responsibility to protect. At first glance, the approval of this principle seemed unimportant. However, the text of theInternational Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) that officially established the principle of the responsibility to protect in 2001 reveals a developed, inherently controversial and highly necessary concept.2 The responsibility to protect stems from a fundamental concept: when a government does not fulfil the basic principle of the modern state of providing protection to its...