ICISS report - International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect

The Responsibility to Protect 70
military intervention is undertaken. We have argued that the responsibility to protect
embraces not only the responsibility to react, but the responsibility to prevent, and the
responsibility to rebuild.
8.6 As to delivery, we found the most widespread concern of all. There were too many
occasions during the last decade when the Security Council, faced with conscience-shocking
situations, failed to respond as it should have with timely authorization and support. And
events during the 1990s demonstrated on too many occasions that even a decision by the
Security Council to authorize international action to address situations of grave humanitarian
concern was no guarantee that any action would be taken, or taken effectively. The Commission
has been conscious of the need to get operational responses right, and part of our report has
been devoted to identifying the principles and rules that should govern military interventions
for human protection purposes.
8.7 But it is even more important to get the necessary political commitment right, and
this is the issue on which we focus in this chapter. It remains the case that unless the
political will can be mustered to act when action is called for, the debate about intervention
for human protection purposes will largely be academic. The most compelling task now is
to work to ensure that when the call goes out to the community of states for action, that call
will be answered. There must never again be mass killing or ethnic cleansing. There must be
no more Rwandas.
MOBILIZING DOMESTIC POLITICAL WILL
8.8 The key to mobilizing international support is to mobilize domestic support, or at
least neutralize domestic opposition. How an issue will play at home – what support or
opposition there will be for a particular intervention decision, given the significant human
costs and financial costs that may be involved, and the domestic resources that may need to
be reallocated – is always a factor in international decision making, although the extent to
which the domestic factor comes into play does, however, vary considerably, country by
country and case by case.
8.9 Contextual factors like size and power, geography, and the nature of the political
institutions and culture of the country concerned are all important in this respect. Some
countries are just more instinctively internationalist, and more reflexively inclined to
respond to pleas for multilateral cooperation, than others: really major powers tend never to
be as interested in multilateralism as middle powers and small powers, because they don’t
think they have to be. Geographic proximity comes into play, simply because what happens
nearby is more likely to endanger nationals, to raise significant security concerns, and to
result in refugees, economic disruptions and unwanted political spillovers – and to capture
media attention and generate demands for action accordingly. By contrast, cultural affinity
can mean particular concern for the plight of co-religionists, or fellow language speakers,
even in small countries far away. Again, an extremely inward-looking political culture,
by contrast, can find it hard to accommodate any external supporting role; many political
systems disproportionately reward political actors whose focus and commitments are wholly
domestic in character, leaving quite isolated those willing to stand up for international
engagement.
8.10 Particular caution is also routinely to be expected from those countries in possession
of the military, police, economic and other assets that are most in demand in implementing
intervention mandates. Given the magnitude of continuing operations in the Balkans
(more than 50,000 troops), as well as the shrinking military budgets of most countries in