PRESS CONFERENCE BY CANADA ON INTERVENTION AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY

PRESS CONFERENCE BY CANADA ON INTERVENTION AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY

If a State does nothing to prevent its people from suffering grave loss of life or “ethnic cleansing”, the international community should step in to protect them, according to a report released at Headquarters today by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty.

“The Commission’s report is clear, with action-oriented recommendations that are relevant now, before the next crisis”, said Canadian Ambassador Paul Heinbecker, who introduced the report on behalf of John Manley, Canada’s Minister for Foreign Affairs.

“The issue of humanitarian intervention has been on the table for a number of years, placed there by the tragedies of Rwanda and Srbrenica, among others, and kept there by the multiplicity of conflicts of the 1990s.”

Mr. Heinbecker was joined by two co-chairmen of the Commission, Gareth Evans of Australia and Mohamed Sahnoun of Algeria.  The 12-member Commission is an independent body sponsored by the Canadian Government, which was set up by Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien at the United Nations Millennium Summit in September 2000.

Mr. Sahnoun noted that the Commission’s task was to reconcile two objectives.  One was to strengthen, not weaken, the sovereignty of States, while the other was to improve the capacity of the international community to react decisively when States were unable or unwilling to protect their own people.

The Commission concluded, after discussions with leaders in 13 developed and developing countries, that those dual objectives could be met.  “Almost everyone agreed that there is an emerging principle that intervention for human protection is necessary when major harm to civilians is occurring, and the State is unwilling to end the harm or is itself the perpetrator”, he said.

The responsibility of the international community to protect in those situations means preventing the causes of conflict and other crises putting populations at risk, the report states.  It also means reacting with appropriate measures, which may include sanctions, international prosecution or military intervention.

“In all our consultations, the message was clear”, Mr. Sahnoun said.  “In cases of violence which genuinely shocked the conscience of mankind, or presented a danger for international security, coercive military intervention is justified.”

That military intervention must be authorized by the United Nations Security Council, the report says.  The Council should act promptly if requested for authority to intervene in cases of grave suffering, and the Permanent Five members should agree not to apply their veto power to block resolutions authorizing military intervention.

If the Council rejected such a proposal, then it should be taken up by the General Assembly or by regional and subregional organizations, the report continued.  If the Council failed to protect in shocking situations crying out for action, concerned States may use other means, which could damage the stature and credibility of the United Nations.

The starting and finishing point of the report was that the international community must no longer turn the other way and do nothing in the face of large-scale human killing, misery and distress, said Mr. Evans.  “The immediate necessity was to get people out of their foxholes, out of the trenches in which they’ve been digging themselves in the General Assembly and many other debates since 1999.”

He added that the Security Council should act according to those principles, and be prepared to act a lot more decisively than in the past.  If it didn’t, it was running the risk that other States would.  They would perhaps do so outside principles and constraints the United Nations felt were critically important.

Those States may be entirely successful, he added, winning a huge measure of international popular support.  “That could utterly reduce the stature and credibility of the United Nations itself, meaning in future people might go to someone else to do the job.  Those are the risks the Security Council runs if it doesn’t seriously grapple with these problems”, Mr. Evans said.

Asked what the most important hurdles might be to extreme action in cases of severe harm, Mr. Evans responded that the risk to human life must justify the intervention.  Extreme military intervention could only be justified by serious and irreparable harm to human beings, or imminently likely to occur.

That kind of serious harm included large-scale loss of life brought about by State action, neglect, the inability to act or a failed State situation, Mr. Evans said.  Military intervention would also be warranted for “ethnic cleansing”, which may be carried out by killing, forced expulsion, acts of terror or rape.

Another correspondent asked him to comment on meetings he had had about the report’s ideas with officials in China, Russia and India.  Those countries had been in the forefront of nations wanting to protect their sovereignty in places like Chechnya, Tibet and Kashmir.

Mr. Evans responded that the basic reaction of all three countries was that no interaction should be allowed without the authority of the Security Council, although that could be seen as self-interest in countries possessing the veto.

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