The Responsibility To Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and for All
By Gareth Evans
...The core idea is very simple. Turn the notion of 'right to intervene' upside down. Talk not about the 'right' of big states to do anything, but the responsibility of all states to protect their own people from atrocity crimes, and to help others to do so. Talk about the primary responsibility being that of individual states themselves - respecting their sovereignty - but make it absolutely clear that if they cannot meet that responsibility, through either ill-will or incapacity, it then shifts to the wider international community to take the appropriate action.
Focus not on the notion of 'intervention' but of protection: look at the whole issue from the perspective of the victims, the men being killed, the women being raped, the children dying of starvation; and look at the responsibility in question as being above all a responsibility to prevent, with the question of reaction - through diplomatic pressure, through sanctions, through international criminal prosecutions, and ultimately through military action - arising only if prevention failed. And accept coercive military intervention only as an absolute last resort, after a number of clearly defined criteria have been met, and the approval of the Security Council has been obtained...
FULL ADDRESS AVAILABLE AT http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=5830&l=1
