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The Responsibility to Protect is a new volume edited by Jared Genser and Irwin Cotler published by Oxford University Press. The late Václav Havel and Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu provide the introduction. Contributors range from practitioners to well-known political figures.
The dense, 400 page volume is organized into four parts: The development of responsibility to protect (RtoP), Regional perspectives, case studies, and finally, the future of RtoP.
The first part consists of five chapters laying out the logical development of the doctrine, beginning with a chapter by former Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy on the relationship between RtoP and state sovereignty, and then working through the adoption of RtoP, the definition of crimes to invoke RtoP, challenges and controversies, and the actual implementation of RtoP measures in practice.
The second part contains five chapters on regional perspectives on RtoP from Africa, Asia, Europe and North America, Latin America, and the Middle East. These contributions are followed by six case studies: Darfur, Burma, Kenya, Sri Lanka, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and most salient for this blog, a chapter on North Korea co-authored by former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik and Kristen Abrams, a DLA Piper-affiliated lawyer.
Their contribution begins with a brief overview of North Korea, highlighting human rights abuses in two spheres: the government’s response to food insecurity and its operation of the kwanliso prison camp system. Bondevik and Abrams then move from the general to the particular linking practices in North Korea to specific crimes against humanity criteria according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, focusing on food insecurity and the prison camp system. (North Korea is not a Rome Statute signatory, and while the Clinton Administration signed the Rome Statute on behalf of the US, it did not submit it to the Senate for ratification, and the Bush Administration formally indicated that it would not pursue ratification in effect “un-signing” it.) With respect to the food insecurity issue, Bondevik and Abrams put forward five items: discrimination in the provision of food via the public distribution system and the songun policy; juche ideology and the government’s frustration of humanitarian relief efforts; the criminalization of private coping mechanisms; and the disruption of the food economy associated with the 2009 currency reform. On the prison camp issue, Bondevik and Abrams lay out seven issues in their bill of particulars: enforced disappearance; imprisonment and severe deprivation of physical liberty; persecution based on political and religious grounds; enslavement; extermination; murder, torture, and other inhumane acts such as forced abortion; and finally the argument that the aforementioned practices are systematic and widespread.
Having made the case that North Korean policies are crimes against humanity and actionable under RtoP, Bondevik and Abrams conclude with an analysis of what the international community is doing and might do. They conclude that North Korea’s lack of willingness to engage meaningfully with outside actors on any issue—from food to its nuclear program—means that there is no reason for restraint in raising human rights concerns, and list a series of initiatives that could be undertaken bilaterally or multilaterally to address the range of concerns addressed in their chapter.
The concluding section looking toward the future is authored by Gareth Evans, who was formerly Australian Foreign Minister and head of the International Crisis Group. He argues while the RtoP doctrine amounts to a significant change in the understanding of international relations, what matters are results. Evans postulates three lessons in the pursuit of translating ideas into practice. First, ideas matter. RtoP represents a remodeling of the notion of sovereignty and the relations between states and the international community yet at the same is not simply “humanitarian intervention” or the wolf of post-colonialism dressed up in sheep’s clothing. Second, politics matter. The acceptance of the RtoP doctrine has the effect of reframing the political calculus of both leaders with respect to their own populations as well as re-conditioning likely inter-state responses. Finally, patience matters. Instant uniform results should not be expected: implementation of RtoP is likely to be a long slog with numerous setbacks and disappointments. From this perspective, Evans identifies three challenges in increasing order of difficulty: securing consensus with regard to the conceptual norms and practices of RtoP; creating, strengthening, and sustaining the institutional infrastructure to deliver results; and lastly, creating the political conditions within individual countries to induce national governments to take seriously RtoP commitments.
In sum, the volume provides a comprehensive overview of the RtoP doctrine today. And anyone looking for a bill of particulars with respect to the North Korean regime could do a lot worse than the Bondevik and Abrams chapter. Well worth the read.
