ICISS report - International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect

The Responsibility to Protect 43
5.20 Intervening authorities have a particular responsibility to manage as swiftly and
smoothly as possible the transfer of development responsibility and project implementation
to local leadership, and local actors working with the assistance of national and
international development agencies.
5.21 This is not only of importance for long-term development purposes, but also represents
a positive reinforcement for short run security measures of the kind discussed above:
a positive contribution is provided by a simultaneous effort at training the demobilized for
new income generating activities as well as the implementation of social and economic
reintegration projects. The sooner the demobilized combatants are aware of their future
options and opportunities, and the sooner the community has concrete and tangible
demonstrations that civilian life can in fact return to normality under secure conditions, the
more positive will be their response in relation to disarmament and related issues.
ADMINISTRATION UNDER UN AUTHORITY
5.22 Useful guidelines for the behaviour of intervening authorities during a military
intervention in failed states, and in the follow-up period, might be found in a constructive
adaptation of Chapter XII of the UN Charter. This would enable reconstruction and
rehabilitation to take place in an orderly way across the full spectrum, with the support and
assistance of the international community. The most relevant provision in this regard is Article
76 which notes that the aim of the system is to promote the political, economic, social and
educational advancement of the people of the territory in question; to encourage respect for
human rights; to ensure the equal treatment of all peoples in the UN in social, economic and
commercial matters; and also to ensure equal treatment in the administration of justice.
5.23 A further element of Chapter XII which would often be of relevance to the populations
of countries in which an intervention takes place relates to self-determination (Article 76.b).
Protective enforcement usually indicates sustaining or restoring forms of territorial selfgovernment
and autonomy, and this in turn will usually mean elections being facilitated and
possibly supervised, or at least monitored, by the intervening authorities. That said, the
responsibility to protect is fundamentally a principle designed to respond to threats to
human life, and not a tool for achieving political goals such as greater political autonomy,
self-determination, or independence for particular groups within the country (though these
underlying issues may well be related to the humanitarian concerns that prompted
the military intervention). The intervention itself should not become the basis for further
separatist claims.
5.24 There is always likely in the UN to be a generalized resistance to any resurrection of
the “trusteeship” concept, on the ground that it represents just another kind of intrusion
into internal affairs. But “failed states” are quite likely to generate situations which the
international community simply cannot ignore, as happened – although there the intervention
was less than successful – in Somalia. The strongest argument against the proposal
is probably practical: the cost of such an operation for the necessarily long time it would
take to recreate civil society and rehabilitate the infrastructure in such a state. There must be
real doubts about the willingness of governments to provide those kinds of resources, other
than on a very infrequent and ad hoc basis.