Canada and the responsiblity to protect

By Lloyd Axworthy

First puiblished in Global Currents, Fall 2008. Download a .pdf version of the newsletter here.

Canadians are living in a world full of challenges that transcend the ability of individual states, no matter how powerful, to manage. Two of the most dangerous global risks shared by the international community are the increasing threat of nuclear proliferation which puts our very existence in jeopardy, and climate change which threatens no less than a meltdown of the global ecology with its attendant consequences of massive migration, disease and food insecurity.

The enormity of these and other global crises are forcing us and the rest of the international community into uncharted territory, raising serious questions about how we should respond to protect people when their lives are at stake.

Unfortunately, present Canadian foreign policy is preoccupied with an agenda set by the Bush administration and its anti-terrorist, military adventurism, and border protection mentality. We have not been an active player in forging collaborative international initiatives based on human security that must be developed if we are to find ways of protecting humankind from calamity. This was most recently illustrated by the situation in Burma where cyclone Nargis battered the people of that beleaguered country, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands and threatening many more lives with the arrival of waterborne disease and food shortage.

The humanitarian catastrophe was intensified when Burma's ruling military junta thwarted the timely arrival of international aid and support.

In response to this appalling behaviour, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner rightfully suggested that in denying their people access to life-saving assistance, the junta were committing a crime against humanity and he called upon the UN Security Council to pass a resolution that would invoke the principle of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in order to provide humanitarian assistance to the Burmese people.

The concept of R2P was given life in 2001 by the Canadian-sponsored International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, our response to humanity's failure to deal with the numerous mass murders, genocides, and ethnic cleansings that marked the end of the last century. Unanimously endorsed by world leaders at the 2005 UN World Summit, R2P declares that when a country is unwilling or unable to fulfill its primary responsibility to protect its citizens from mass atrocity or catastrophe - or if it is in fact the perpetrator - then the international community, with Security Council authorization, must assume this role.

Minister Kouchner's comments ignited a worldwide debate about whether R2P should apply to situations generated by natural disasters. The argument that this new Canadian-inspired doctrine should apply only to cases where innocent people were threatened by genocide or violent crimes against humanity is not accurate. When Mr. Chrétien's government launched the R2P commission it was based on the broad human security principle and not restricted to just one area of risk. There should be no confusion: there is no moral distinction between the death of an innocent person by AK-47 or machete, and dying in a cholera epidemic or from hunger brought about by the refusal to permit comprehensive international aid.

Nor should there be any misconceptions about the variety of means by which the international community can intervene to uphold R2P. R2P is much more than military intervention, which it considers to be an absolute last resort. R2P comprises a versatile toolbox of political, economic and diplomatic measures to pressure governments, while building their capacity to exercise their responsibility to protect their citizens.

Canadians will increasingly be forced to respond to „problems without passports‟, as Kofi Annan has called them. We are already seeing a mass influx of „climate migrants‟ from rural Bangladesh to overcrowded urban centres, the shrinking of global food stocks and soaring prices which are causing riots in the streets of Egypt, Indonesia and Haiti, and the tragedy of Darfur, clearly fuelled by drought and loss of arable land brought on by climate change.

Canada has an opportunity to play a leading role in mapping a way forward. Just as we advocated for solutions in the face of the failure of the international community to deal with humanitarian atrocities in the 1990s, we must again take the initiative by establishing a new international commission that will update and revise the purpose of R2P and the means of its implementation. We must restore Canada's role as an innovator and convenor in the global community and help chart a fresh course to prepare us for these new threats and challenges.

Liberals have an opportunity to build on their historic leadership and vision for Canada's foreign affairs agenda while reinvigorating Canada's international presence in the process.

The Hon. Lloyd Axworthy is a former Foreign Affairs minister and current president of the University of Winnipeg