Background ResearchTHE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT: RESEARCH, BIBLIOGRAPHY, BACKGROUNDSupplementary Volume to the Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State SovereigntyDecember 2001 TABLE OF CONTENTSPART I: RESEARCH ESSAYS Section A. ELEMENTS OF THE DEBATE 1. State Sovereignty 2. Intervention 3. Prevention Section B. PAST HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTIONS 4. Interventions Before 1990 5. Interventions After the Cold War Section C. MORALITY, LAW, OPERATIONS, AND POLITICS 6. Rights and Responsibilities 7. Legitimacy and Authority 8. Conduct and Capacity 9. Domestic and International Will 1. Humanitarian Intervention 2. Sovereignty and Intervention 3. Conflict Prevention 4. Ethical Aspects 5. Legal Aspects 6. Interest and Will 7. National and Regional Perspectives 8. Nonmilitary Interventions 9. Operational Aspects of Military Interventions 10. Military Interventions and Humanitarian Action 11. Post-Conflict Challenges 12. Country Cases 1. About the Commission 2. About the Commissioners 3. Regional Roundtables and National Consultations CO-CHAIRS' FOREWORDThe Report of the Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty could not have been produced in an intellectual vacuum. There is an enormous literature on the subject, in many languages and going back many years, which the Commission had a responsibility to take into account - and every reason to want to. In order to aid our own work, and as a contribution to future scholarship, we asked our research team to prepare an annotated list - necessarily selective, but as wide-ranging as possible - of the best writing on the subject. The Bibliography thus produced, set out in Part II, is an important component of the present volume. Notwithstanding the wealth of existing literature, the Commission felt the need to generate a good deal of additional research of its own, to fill gaps in that literature, to bring it up to date and to draw together in a more manageable way information and ideas scattered through many primary and secondary sources in many languages. Thus the Research Essays in Part I, which constitute the bulk of this volume. Between them, the nine essays cover, in depth, the full range of issues with which the Commission had to grapple. We were particularly concerned to ensure that we had before us, as an input into our deliberations, a thoroughly balanced analysis of all those issues, with all the major arguments and counter-arguments fully laid out. To the extent that views or conclusions are expressed from time to time in these essays - almost unavoidable in an exercise of this kind - they are, of course, those of the researchers and not the Commission. The primary authors of these essays in their final published form were Thomas G. Weiss and Don Hubert, of the Commission's research team, to whom the Commission owes an enormous debt of gratitude. Their writing was based, in turn, on substantial contributions from over fifty other scholars and specialists, whose names are listed in the acknowledgements which follow, who submitted either specially commissioned research papers, or who made specifically requested contributions to the regional and national roundtables further described below. The Commission's Report - and in particular its central theme of "The Responsibility to Protect" - goes in a number of ways beyond the discussion in the Research Essays collected here. But those essays were very much the quarry from which the Report was mined. They should also be seen as supplementing, and adding a great deal of detail (for example in its descriptions of past interventions, both before and after 1990) to a Report which was deliberately limited in length to increase its chances of being read. The Commission very much hopes that the Research Essays will in turn prove to be, for policy makers and commentators of the future, a mine of detailed and useful information and analysis. Access to high quality written research was a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for the Commission to produce its report. Dealing with subject matter of this kind, involving such sensitive and volatile policy issues, and with many different views evident in different parts of the world, it was absolutely crucial for the Commission to hear directly from those actually or potentially affected by interventions, or in a position to undertake them, or with strong and well-considered views on the issues in question. So, as an integral part of our work, we conducted a series of lengthy roundtable discussions in Beijing, Cairo, Geneva, London, Maputo, New Delhi, New York, Ottawa, Paris, St Petersburg, Santiago and Washington. The meetings involved representatives from governments and intergovernmental organizations, from nongovernmental organizations and civil society, and from universities, research institutes and think-tanks - in all, over 200 people. These roundtable meetings proved to be a wonderfully rich source of information, ideas and diverse political perspectives, and an excellent real world environment in which the Commission could test its own ideas as they evolved. Summary accounts of each of the roundtable meetings, together with lists of those who participated in them, are also included in Part III of this volume. As much as we might hope otherwise, nothing is more likely than that the international community will sooner or later again be confronted by events all too reminiscent of the agonies of the last decade in the Great Lakes, the Balkans, Haiti, Somalia, Sierra Leone, East Timor and elsewhere. Reacting to these situations in the ad hoc, and often ineffective or counter-productive, way we have in the past is not good enough for interdependent global neighbours in the twenty-first century. We have to do better. The material gathered and described in this volume has played an important part in the deliberations of the Commission, and we warmly thank all those involved in writing, collecting or contributing to it. If the Report that has grown out of this material can help bring about a more systematic, balanced and less ideological debate of the main issues by the international community - and even more if it comes to provide an accepted framework for dealing with these matters, as they arise in the future, in concrete and positive ways - then our work will have been ground-breaking indeed. GARETH EVANS MOHAMED SAHNOUN Co-Chairs 15 August 2001 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSICISS is indebted to the following scholars and specialists who have contributed to the research essays and bibliography in this supplementary volume. While the two primary authors, Thomas G. Weiss and Don Hubert, wrote and deserve full credit for the essays as they finally appear, they received substantial written input from all those other contributors listed, who between them brought an extraordinary store of knowledge and experience to ICISS's deliberations. PRIMARY AUTHORSThomas G. Weiss is Presidential Professor at The CUNY Graduate Center (The City University of New York) and Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, where he is also co-director of the United Nations Intellectual History Project, and editor of Global Governance. Among other positions, he was a Research Professor at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies, Executive Director of the International Peace Academy, a member of the United Nations (UN) Secretariat, and a consultant to several public and private agencies. He has written extensively on the UN and on intervention, and his latest books include Military-Civilian Interactions: Intervening in Humanitarian Crises (1999); Humanitarian Challenges and Intervention, (2000); The United Nations and Changing World Politics (2000); and Ahead of the Curve? UN Ideas and Gobal Challenges (2001). Don Hubert is a Senior Policy Advisor in the Peacebuilding and Human Security division of the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, currently on leave. He is also a Research Fellow at the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies at Dalhousie University. He has a PhD in social and political science from the University of Cambridge and was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies at Dalhousie University and with the Humanitarianism and War Project at Brown University. He has also worked for the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board. He is author of The Landmine Ban: A Case Study in Humanitarian Advocacy (2000) and coeditor of Human Security and the New Diplomacy: Protecting People, Promoting Peace (2001). OTHER CONTRIBUTORSHoward Adelman Adonia Ayebare Mohamed Ayoob Dipankar Banerjee Vladimir Baranovsky Mwesiga Baregu Ken Berry Chaloka Beyani Louis Bitencourt Chen Luzhi Simon Chesterman Jarat Chopra Chester A. Crocker Dennis Driscoll Richard Falk Fan Guoxiang Christopher Greenwood Steven Haines Morton Halperin Tudor Hera Peter Joshua Hoffman Nicholas Howen Ahmed Tawfic Khalil Zalmay Khalilzad Konstantin Khudoley Keith Krause Igor Leshukov Jeremy Levitt Edward Luck S. Neil MacFarlane Mark Malan William Maley Kenneth Menkhaus Jennifer Milliken Kevin Vedat Ozgercin David Petrasek Veselin Popovski Gwyn Prins Adam Roberts Severine Rugumamu Eric Schwartz Omran El Shafei Michael J. Smith Janice Gross Stein Matthias Stieffel John Stremlau Tran Ngoc Thach Carolin Thielking Chin Kin Wah Nicholas J. Wheeler Yuan Jian RESEARCHERS' PREFACEGiven the divisive views about the topic of intervention and state sovereignty, a first thought was to produce an edited volume containing essays with representative views from all points of the spectrum. This approach was abandoned after an initial meeting of researchers in London in October 2000. It would have been impossible in a volume of manageable length to reflect so many geographical, philosophical, political, and moral positions on so many different dimensions of the debate. Instead, some 15 specialists were asked to spell out the range of contemporary views, with the understanding that their raw material would be transformed by us. During this transformation, we also drew on the background papers and summary reports prepared for the various roundtables and consultations held by ICISS, which are summarized in Part III of this volume. The names of both types of colleagues figure in the acknowledgements to this volume as contributors, but few of them would recognize their building blocks in the present text. We have written and rewritten texts, moved parts of arguments, and inserted a substantial body of new material. The task given to us by ICISS was to lay out in straightforward and nonargumentative terms the main issues behind the debate about humanitarian intervention that has taken place over the last decade. Working within these parameters, the three main sections of the research part of this volume are designed to provide readers with a common framework to understand its various dimensions. Section A lays out the elements in the debate. Three essays discuss the range of meanings associated with the potentially politically charged and emotionally laden terms of state sovereignty and intervention, as well as the related notion of prevention. These essays provide a foundation for reviewing the subsequent historical overview and analysis. Section B consists of two essays that systematically review the evolution of state practice toward humanitarian intervention since the founding of the United Nations Charter regime. This story, and the legitimate and illegitimate uses of "humanitarian" to justify intervention, are as old as the Westphalian system of international relations. The first essay provides an overview of nonconsensual interventions that had humanitarian objectives or resulted in substantial humanitarian benefits between 1945 and 1990. The real emphasis is, however, on interventions after 1990, which are summarized in the second essay of this section. The post-Cold War era has not changed everything, but it certainly has altered the prospects for intrusions into what had formerly been considered the more protected domain of sovereign states - to manage their domestic human rights policy without outside interference. Section C builds on the essential elements and past history to explore the moral, legal, operational, and political dimensions of humanitarian intervention. Virtually all analyses of intervention and state sovereignty have examined the issues from the point of view of an intervener. When is intervention for humanitarian purposes justified? How is it authorized? What is the most effective way to conduct it? And how can sufficient political will be mobilized to mount and maintain an intervention? A further essential perspective running throughout the four essays is how intervention is viewed by, and what effect it has on, populations at risk. Part II of the volume is an extensive bibliography on the intervention debate. In a field that has burgeoned in the contemporary era, it is impossible to be comprehensive. However, more than 2,200 entries are listed under 12 basic headings, and they provide an impressive listing of key literature from a variety of perspectives. This part, and in particular the electronic version available on CD-ROM or on the web, provides an important resource for researchers. We are grateful for having had the challenging assignment of providing this input into the work of this commission. We are especially indebted to a number of individuals. Through-out the process, Co-Research Director and rapporteur Stanlake Samkange has proved to be an insightful reader and most supportive colleague; this volume bears his fingerprints, even if he would take issue with some of our interpretations. Carolin Thielking played a principal role in preparation of the bibliography, with supervision from Neil MacFarlane at Oxford University. Kevin Ozgercin and Peter Hoffman, doctoral candidates from the Political Science Program at The CUNY Graduate Center, tirelessly furnished us with essential back-up research and criticism of arguments and prose; the volume would not have been possible without them. Ken Berry, executive assistant to the two Co-Chairs, compiled the summaries of the roundtables and national consultations included in Part III on which we drew. Finally, we are extremely grateful for the essential support emanating from the Secretariat of the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade - especially Jill Sinclair, Heidi Hulan, and Susan Finch. The layout and presentation are our responsibility as primary authors. Such views as are expressed are not to be taken as those of ICISS; nor are they necessarily those of any of the contributors, or of the institutions that sponsored regional roundtables or national consultations. THOMAS G. WEISS LIST OF ACRONYMS
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