The 1990s was a decade of conscience-shocking atrocity crimes in Rwanda, the Balkans and East Timor. Unilateral actions by India and Vietnam to end atrocities in the 1970s had drawn international opprobrium and condemnation.
The crises of the 1990s provoked agonised soul-searching on how to reconcile a newly energised international conscience with clashing principles of world order that privileged sovereignty over intervention. The result was the new norm of the responsibility to protect, commonly abbreviated as R2P, endorsed unanimously by world leaders in 2005.
Yet many countries remain suspicious of R2P. They mask their wish to abuse sovereignty as a licence to kill with impunity in the language of opposition to neoimperialism. The opponents, not advocates, sought and organised the debate on the subject held by the UN General Assembly on July 23.
All too often, supporters are trapped into providing ammunition to the critics by their failure to pay attention to politics. The choice by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon of an American special adviser, no matter how good and Ed Luck is very good indeed was impolitic. Ban's own Asian identity is neutralised by the general perception that he was former US ambassador and UN-sceptic John Bolton's choice for Secretary-General.
The powerful sense of grievance and resentment is missed entirely by the Western academics who read and cite one another to the near total exclusion of colleagues from developing countries. Agreement among Western scholars can neither hide nor overcome the deep divisions between Western and developing country diplomats.
In his background note for the debate, General Assembly president Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann of Nicaragua openly described R2P as ''redecorated colonialism''. His advisers organised a pre-debate discussion on the topic between four experts, of whom three were Westerners.
This all too easily allows opponents to reinforce dormant fears of R2P being a debate for and by Westerners in which developing countries are the objects, not authors, of policy and of the exercise of Western power.
A more honest effort would have mainly developing country protagonists arguing the case for and against R2P. For the norm is principally about protecting their peoples by collective international means. As argued recently by Mohamed Sahnoun, the other co-chair of the original international commission, in many ways R2P is a distinctly African contribution to global human rights.
Asia too has its own rich traditions that vest sovereigns with responsibility for the lives and welfare of subjects. At the same time, developing countries, not Western ones, are the likely targets of international military interventions. That is, if they are the principal beneficiaries and victims of putting R2P into practice, they should be the lead debaters on its merits and dangers. Instead they were asked, by one of their own, to be in the audience. Was this a subconscious deference to racial superiority, a devious but deliberate plot to plant R2P as a Western preoccupation, or merely an innocent slip with no malice aforethought?
The debate is also wrongly framed on substance. In the real world, we know there will be more atrocities, victims and perpetrators and interventions. They were common before R2P and are not guaranteed with R2P. During the debate on the 23rd, D'Escoto cited the case of Iraq as an example of R2P being abused seemingly unaware of the irony that it took place more than two years before R2P was adopted. Ed Luck emphasised that R2P seeks to ''discourage unilateralism, military adventurism and an over-dependence on military responses to humanitarian need''.
Navi Pillay, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, urged that ''We should all undertake an honest assessment of our ability to save lives in extraordinary situations'' like Rwanda in 1994. It was good to have the likes of Nigeria, South Africa and Japan speak in support of R2P.
The real choice is when, why, how, and by whom. Three choices will have to be made.
First, are interventions to be unilateral or multilateral? Clearly, the comfort level for all developing countries and most Westerners is much greater with UN-authorised interventions rather than those led by self-appointed sheriffs and their deputies. The rancour and recriminations of NATO's unauthorised intervention in Kosovo were in marked contrast to the impressive unity of the UN community in East Timor in 1999.
Second, will they be rules-based or ad hoc? Safety and protection for the poor, weak and vulnerable countries is better provided when principles and guidelines on when and how interventions are to be conducted have been agreed to in advance and are commonly understood. Alternatively, the absence of rules gives much greater freedom of action to the global and regional hegemons to act or not as, when, where and how they please.
Third, will the interventions promote bitter divisions or cement international consensus on the normative underpinnings of world order and stability? Unilateral and ad hoc interventions will sow and nourish the seeds of international discord. Multilateral and rules-based interventions will speak powerfully to the world's determination never again to return to institutionalised indifference to mass atrocities.
That is the true promise and potential of R2P, to convert a shocked human conscience into timely and decisive action to halt and prevent genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and ethnic cleansing.
Ramesh Thakur, director of the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Ontario, and a former UN Assistant Secretary-General, was one of the Commissioners of the original 2001 report entitled ''The Responsibility to Protect''.
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