ICISS report - International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect

The Responsibility to Protect 37
find such compromises, monitored or brokered by the international community, founder
on the intransigence of one or both parties, and full-scale violence is in prospect or in
occurrence, can a military option by outside powers be considered.
Proportional Means
4.39 The scale, duration and intensity of the planned military intervention should be the
minimum necessary to secure the humanitarian objective in question. The means have to
be commensurate with the ends, and in line with the magnitude of the original provocation.
The effect on the political system of the country targeted should be limited, again, to what
is strictly necessary to accomplish the purpose of the intervention. While it may be a matter
for argument in each case what are the precise practical implications of these strictures, the
principles involved are clear enough.
4.40 It should go without saying that all the rules of international humanitarian law should
be strictly observed in these situations. Indeed, since military intervention involves a form of
military action significantly more narrowly focused and targeted than all out warfighting, an
argument can be made that even higher standards should apply in these cases.
Reasonable Prospects
4.41 Military action can only be justified if it stands a reasonable chance of success, that is,
halting or averting the atrocities or suffering that triggered the intervention in the first place.
Military intervention is not justified if actual protection cannot be achieved, or if the consequences
of embarking upon the intervention are likely to be worse than if there is no
action at all. In particular, a military action for limited human protection purposes cannot
be justified if in the process it triggers a larger conflict. It will be the case that some human
beings simply cannot be rescued except at unacceptable cost – perhaps of a larger regional
conflagration, involving major military powers. In such cases, however painful the reality,
coercive military action is no longer justified.
4.42 Application of this precautionary principle would on purely utilitarian grounds be
likely to preclude military action against any one of the five permanent members of the
Security Council even if all the other conditions for intervention described here were met.
It is difficult to imagine a major conflict being avoided, or success in the original objective
being achieved, if such action were mounted against any of them. The same is true of other
major powers who are not permanent members of Security Council. This raises again the
question of double standards – but the Commission’s position here, as elsewhere, is simply
this: the reality that interventions may not be able to be mounted in every case where there
is justification for doing so, is no reason for them not to be mounted in any case.
4.43 In relation to the major powers, there are still other types of pressure that can be
applied, as happened, for example, in the case of Indonesia and East Timor. And other types
of collective action – including sanctions – could and should still be considered in such
cases as part of the responsibility to protect.