ICISS report - International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect

The Responsibility to Protect 36
4.34 One way of helping ensure that the “right intention” criterion is satisfied is to have
military intervention always take place on a collective or multilateral rather than singlecountry
basis. Another is to look to whether, and to what extent, the intervention is actually
supported by the people for whose benefit the intervention is intended. Another is to look
to whether, and to what extent, the opinion of other countries in the region has been taken
into account and is supportive. In some discussions these considerations are identified
as separate criteria in their own right, but the Commission’s view is that they should be
regarded as sub-components of the larger element of right intention.
4.35 It may not always be the case that the humanitarian motive is the only one moving
the intervening state or states, even within the framework of Security Council-authorized
intervention. Complete disinterestedness – the absence of any narrow self-interest at all –
may be an ideal, but it is not likely always to be a reality: mixed motives, in international
relations as everywhere else, are a fact of life. Moreover, the budgetary cost and risk to
personnel involved in any military action may in fact make it politically imperative for
the intervening state to be able to claim some degree of self-interest in the intervention,
however altruistic its primary motive might actually be. Apart from economic or strategic
interests, that self-interest could, for example, take the understandable form of a concern
to avoid refugee outflows, or a haven for drug producers or terrorists, developing in one’s
neighbourhood.
4.36 To those domestic constituencies who may actually demand of their governments,
when it comes to intervention for human protection purposes, that they not be altruistic, or
moved by what we have called “right intention,” and that they should have regard only to
their own country’s national interests, the best short answer may be that, these days, good
international citizenship is a matter of national self-interest. With the world as close and
interdependent as it now is, and with crises in “faraway countries of which we know little”
as capable as they now are of generating major problems elsewhere (with refugee outflows,
health pandemics, terrorism, narcotics trafficking, organized crime and the like), it is
strongly arguable that it is in every country’s interest to contribute cooperatively to the
resolution of such problems, quite apart from the humanitarian imperative to do so. This is
a theme to which we will return in our concluding chapter.
Last Resort
4.37 Every diplomatic and non-military avenue for the prevention or peaceful resolution
of the humanitarian crisis must have been explored. The responsibility to react – with
military coercion – can only be justified when the responsibility to prevent has been fully
discharged. This does not necessarily mean that every such option must literally have been
tried and failed: often there will simply not be the time for that process to work itself out.
But it does mean that there must be reasonable grounds for believing that, in all the
circumstances, if the measure had been attempted it would not have succeeded.
4.38 If the crisis in question involves a conflict between a state party and an insurgent
minority, the parties must be induced to negotiate. Ceasefires, followed, if necessary, by the
deployment of international peacekeepers and observers are always a better option, if
possible, than coercive military responses. The long-term solution for ethnic minority
conflict or secessionist pressures within a state will often be some kind of devolutionist
compromise that guarantees the minority its linguistic, political and cultural autonomy,
while preserving the integrity of the state in question. Only when good faith attempts to