Stumbling and Fumbling over the Implementation of the Responsibility to Protect: The Darfur Debacle

The humanitarian emergency in Darfur continues to challenge the United Nation’s responsibility to protect (R2P) vulnerable populations.

Published on 09 April 2009 in ISS Today

The humanitarian emergency in Darfur continues to challenge the United Nation’s responsibility to protect (R2P) vulnerable populations. Darfur’s challenge to the collective will of the world body far exceeds other challenges posed by the rise in international crime, and perceptions about the threat posed to international security by ‘non-conforming’ states like Iran and North Korea.

It is more than three years since the 2005 World Summit adopted the agenda on ‘operationalising’ R2P. Since then, the emerging international criminal justice architecture around the role of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in both Africa and elsewhere has provided some momentum in this direction. The deployment of the third European Force in Chad and the Central African Republic ((EUFOR Chad-CAR), as well as of the UN Mission in the CAR and Chad (MINURCRAT), have also helped to stabilise the situation.

However, practical progress in the protection of the vulnerable populations on the ground in Darfur, as in other violent armed conflict areas within the continent, has been painfully slow. The humanitarian situation in Darfur has recently been further compounded by the response of the government of Sudan to the ICC’s indictment of its president. Sudan’s expulsion of key humanitarian agencies is no doubt an eloquent contempt of the efforts of the UN to address issues of regional and global human insecurity. The subsequent emergence of diplomatic support by the African Union (AU) and the League of Arab Nations further detracts from an effective and speedy resolution of the humanitarian plight of the millions of displaced Darfurians in and out of the country.

These developments cripple the R2P agenda, which formed one of the key outcomes of the 2005 Summit and heralded in an era of hope in building upon the Canadian initiative around the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) in 2000. For the moment, it does appear that the state sovereignty has won the tactical round in the operational campaign to propel the normative R2P discourse to the centre stage of international politics.

Darfur should therefore be the theatre in which the world body wrestles the initiative from the government of Sudan by regaining the R2P traction with the core ICISS principles, as well as with the notion of ‘sovereignty as responsibility’ propounded by Francis Deng and others.

The challenge to world leaders is to redeem their resolve which underscores the shift in international normative practice that the international community was prepared to take collective action in a ‘timely and decisive manner’ through the UN Security Council.

That challenge, however, helps to focus minds on the UN’s proposed 3-pillar strategy based on:

Regarding Pillar I, that Sudan has primary responsibility for the protection of its populations of all complexions and persuasions is just another way of saying the obvious about a State, which has long insisted on its sovereign prerogatives. The escalation of the violent armed conflict in Darfur in 2003/2004, however, compromised that sovereign integrity and calls for other legitimate regional and international interventions.

It can be argued that the inability of Sudan or its unwillingness to meet the popular aspirations of its disaffected populations in Darfur, is testimony that the State failed in its obligations to prevent the incitement and incidence of a war that further exposed its populations to the four denominators of the failure of State responsibility - genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

Second, the overwhelming lack of local support for the 2006 Darfur Peace Accord (DPA) further speaks to the fact that sovereignty aside, the government of Sudan also failed to create political conditions to bring the devastating war to a constructive and speedy end.

The government’s expulsion of neutral international humanitarian actors out of a devastated region is to further renege on that responsibility, including the declaration of the world Leaders that ‘we accept that responsibility and will act in accordance with it’. The government of Sudan would have given more credence to its commitment towards the protection of its beleaguered populations if it had rather accepted and encouraged humanitarian access in Darfur by these neutral actors. That would have contributed to ensuring the populations’ freedom from want, which forms a key aspect of the notion of R2P.

Owing to the fact that the sovereign capacities of states is compromised by conflicts, Pillar II is predicated on the idea that countries emerging from violent armed conflicts require some forms of multi-sectoral international assistance and capacity-building in restoring and maintaining the status quo ante. Obviously in the case of Sudan’s Darfur, such efforts would invariably involve the acceptance of relevant decisions of the UN Security Council, as well as other diplomatic and political interventions. These in the long run would promote national sovereignty by contributing to an early resolution of the dispute around socio-political, economic and other inequalities in the society.

In addition, however, these efforts would also invariably have to involve national criminal justice arrangements and national institution building, including economic agendas in an equitable distribution of the national wealth. Efforts in these areas should therefore have to focus on addressing the grave violations in the four denominative areas of Pillar I. However, in the precarious political, security and humanitarian situation in Darfur, it is doubtful whether any meaningful international assistance can be possible in the absence of congenial conditions resulting from Sudan’s cooperation with the international community.

In retrospect, Sudan impeded the third UN R2P implementation strategy devolving on ‘timely and decisive response’ by sabre-rattling its opposition to international forces in Darfur, even though such international forces were at the same time present in the south of the country. Indeed, Sudan succeeded in having its way when all that the international community could do was to accept an AU Mission in Sudan-Darfur (AMIS) whose mandate and means were a far cry from the humanitarian exigencies of the conflict, and to provide AMIS with funding and other logistical support.

Among other factors, the UN failed Darfurians with a speedy and decisive intervention because of divisions within the Council itself.

Perhaps, the lack of broad and sufficient consensus within the UN Security Council, and perceptions of its double standards in dealing with similar situations in the world, is banal to its own success and effectiveness. It is these weaknesses that the government of Sudan has successfully exploited in thwarting collective international action in implementing the UN R2P strategy in Darfur. Any hope of an effective implementation of the UN R2P strategy in Darfur must therefore start with regaining sufficient global consensus to push this notion beyond the threshold of international normative practice to become a binding international law with universal application.

In the case of Darfur, such an international consensus-building forum must involve the AU, the Arab League and state actors in the region. This new initiative must also go in tandem with progress by the unified mediation to yield the dividend of a more constructive and comprehensive peace accord that addresses political and other disputes pre-dating Sudan’s independence in 1956.

Festus Aboagye, Senior Research Fellow, Training for Peace Programme, ISS Tshwane (Pretoria)