Minerva, Spring 2008 (Volume 32) - Citizens for Global Solutions

JUNE 2008
Minerva32
Citizens for Global Solutions
WORLD FEDERALIST INSTITUTE
My sense of humor will always stand in the way
of my seeing myself, my family, my race, or my nation
as the whole intent of the universe.
Zora Neale Hurston
“Hopping robot Minerva” (corner, right), sent with Japan’s Hayabusa mission to explore near-Earth asteroid Itokawa
1 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

In this issue:
3 • EDITORIAL COMMENT: Pioneering Spirit Thesil Morlan
4 • Security: The New Paradigm of Interconnectedness Nafis Sadik
7 • NOTES: Human Security — Connectivity & Responsibility
9 • Overcoming War and Empire Lucy Law Webster
by Incentivizing Justice & Democracy
13 • The Responsibility to Protect: Ingrid Harder
Catchphrase or Cornerstone of International Relations?
25 • The Responsibility to Protect and the ICC: Kelly Whitley
America’s New Priorities
33 • United Nations Emergency Peace Service NGO Letter to Congress
34 • International Justice and the Fatou Bensouda
Challenge of Enforcement
37 • The Economics of Insecurity Caroline Thomas
43 • A UN Covenant on the Right to Water Maude Barlow
45 • BOOK REVIEW: Global Environmental Governance, Marquita K. Hill
Perspectives on the Current Debate
by Lydia Swart and Estelle Perry, Center for UN Reform Education
46 • BOOK REVIEW: Political Globalization Ronald J. Glossop
by James Yunker
48 • BOOK DISCUSSION of Global Democracy, The Struggle
for Political & Civil Rights in the 21st Century
by Didier Jacobs
OVERVIEW
Claude Buettner
INSIDE VIEW
Didier Jacobs
CRITIQUE
Joseph Schwartzberg
RESPONSE
Didier Jacobs
53 • BOOK REVIEW: The Great Experiment Ronald J. Glossop
by Strobe Talbott
54 • NOTES & RESOURCES
“The beauty of Minerva is that it
provides a lot of opportunity for people
in the social sciences and humanities to
solve national-security-related questions,”
says Penn State University President
Graham Spanier, of the Pentagon’s new
project, the Minerva Consortia, which
he helped plan with Defense Secretary
Robert Gates and others (“Pentagon to
Consult Academics on Security”, Patricia
Cohen, New York Times, 18 June 2008)
Responsibility to Protect ~ R2P
Roger Cohen in his 21 February 2008
New York Times column, “A Change to
Believe In”, wrote:
I believe the tide will eventually
turn. R2P will be a reference. It is part
of what Lawrence Weschler has called
“the decades-long, at times maddeningly
halting, vexed, and compromised effort
to expand the territory of law itself”.
The “territory of law” is now
also the universal territory on which
human life is protected. Westphalian
principles meet R2P. An R2P generation
is coming.
CALL FOR R2P ESSAYS
If you are part of an “R2P Generation”,
how does that principle characterize
your views, intentions, and expectations?
What might a world governed
by such a generation look like? How
should the Responsibility to Protect be
expressed in global citizenship?
Send your thoughts on these and any related
questions to the address below by 1
September 2008. Several essays will be
selected for publication in future editions.
Front cover art (lower image) credit:
Ikeshita/MEF/JAXA (see page 58)
Information cut-off date:
20 June 2008
Citizens for Global Solutions promotes
discussion of global issues; the views presented
in Minerva are each author’s own.
Minerva
This occasional collation, supported by
the World Federalist Institute of Citizens
for Global Solutions, is named in honor of
one of the four women signers of the UN
Charter, Minerva Bernardino (1907–1998),
who helped found the UN Commission on
the Status of Women.
2 • Minerva #32 • June 2008
Editor:
Thesil Morlan
PO Box 397
Waldoboro, ME 04572
Tel & Fax 207-832-6863
E-mail: thesil@midcoast.com

Pioneering Spirit
Last time, in a riff on besottment with
calamitous or comitologically triumphant
“end times”, Minerva considered purported
elements of agency in evolution, focusing
on snares of wishfulness that both inspire
and hinder the development of truly useful
survival instincts in a global citizenry.
The musing included references to an August
2007 essay in the Philadelphia Inquirer
by WFI Fellow Tad Daley, who reminds us:
“Bertrand Russell taught that the greatest
moral imperative [is] this: ‘One must care
about a world one will never see’.”
Do the traditional mantras of adaptation
and mitigation, now echoing louder in
discussions of environmental change and
other threats, involve earthbound scenarios
exclusively, or should they include looking
beyond our biosphere? Shall we look even
beyond the “high frontier” that the US
Space Command intends to control, with
its Vision for 2020 plans for “counterspace
operations” supporting a policy of “full
spectrum dominance”? It is hardy reassuring
that, as James Carroll writes (Boston
Globe, 12 May 2008), “The world-historic
decision about carrying warfare across the
last threshold into outer space” — “into the
‘fourth battlefield’ of the very cosmos” —
already is “being left to defense contractors,
military commanders, and their wholly
owned subsidiary” in Washington DC: a
government “refusing to discuss a treaty
aimed at preventing an arms race in outer
space” at the United Nations Conference
on Disarmament in Geneva for the last
six years.
So how do we avoid traipsing among the
scorched corpses of Cormac McCarthy’s
The Road, their dreams “ensepulchred
within their crozzled hearts”, or relaxing
in the grim comfort of Alan Weisman’s
The World Without Us, or befuddlement by
the current proliferation of similar thought
experiments? What if nature, trapped by its
human leg, chews us off? Or if humanity
merely functions as a modulating retrovirus
in the body of earth? Or we’re avatarobsessed
figments in a universal brain’s
game, played in almighty singularity or in
contest with brains of other universes?
In that context, it is not so far-fetched to
consider that, aside from natural temptation
to escape, it may be invigorating to re-assert
a sovereign sense of human purpose by
contemplating, with Tad Daley, that “all
of us now alive, on behalf of all those not
yet alive, have only just barely embarked”
on an “endless expedition” to colonize
other planets.
Others speculate that there may be an asyet
unidentified advancement-inhibiting
factor (called “the Great Filter” by some)
that civilization(s) can’t penetrate in each
other’s direction (and so it could be ominous
rather than promising to find signs of former
life on Mars, suggests Nick Bostrom,
director of the Future of Humanity Institute
at Oxford University).
Maybe the filter is that the wrong synchronizing
organization is always put in charge!
For example, the deputy director of the
recently established US Northern Command
describes Northcom as the United
States’ “global synchronizer — the global
coordinator — for pandemic influenza
across the combatant commands”.
“Of all the frontiers of expansion, perhaps
none is more striking than the Pentagon’s
sorties into the future,” comments Frida
Berrigan, Senior Program Associate at
the New America Foundation’s Arms &
Security Initiative. While most government
agencies “project budgets just around the
corner of the next decade,” she observes,
“only the Pentagon projects power and
possibility decades into the future, colonizing
the imagination with scads of different
scenarios under which, each year, it will
continue to control hundreds of billions
of taxpayer dollars” (TomDispatch, 27
May 2008).
Daley notes that Carl Sagan “claimed
that spaceflight was actually subversive
[because, a]lthough governments have
ventured into space largely for nationalistic
reasons, ‘it was a small irony that almost
everyone who entered space received a
startling glimpse of a transnational perspective,
of the Earth as one world’. Seeing our
planet as a whole, apparently, enables one
to see our planet as a whole. … Space may
someday deliver to us arguably the greatest
progressive value of all. The ethic of human
3 • Minerva #32 • June 2008
unity that space seems inevitably to engender
may, down the road, ultimately engender
permanent human peace as well.”
But if that perspective from beyond — in
the earliest exploratory stages — helps us
develop a salutary sense of unity on earth,
as Daley observes, perhaps it also presages
that we will cling elsewhere to the revolutionary
new “planetary patriotism” we’re
endeavoring to advance at home, as stubbornly
as we do now to ethnicities and and
nationalisms. And therefore (especially if
we encounter — or even engender — other
life forms beyond earth) are we doomed to
accomplish nothing as travellers?
“Science fiction” literature is full of struggling
federations of planets, burgeoning and
imploding galactic empires, and — alas —
epic wars. But we who projectively read or
write that literature simply do not know a
world without war, so far. Historically, we
have not imagined it well, without trapping
ourselves in various utopian delusions that
turn violent, claims John Gray, professor
of European thought at the London School
of Economics, in his recent study of the
dangers of apocalyptic religion — “reemerg[ing],
naked and unadorned, as a force
in world politics” (Black Mass - Apocalyptic
Religion and the Death of Utopia).
Decrying the untold suffering caused by
“the myth of the End” that prompted “the
secular religions of the last two centuries”
to imagine a break in “the cycle of anarchy
and tyranny”, Professor Gray recommends
construing politics as “the art of responding
to the flux of circumstances”, requiring
“no grand vision of human advance,
only the courage to cope with recurring
evils” such as “the opaque state of war
into which we have stumbled”. Having no
patience with political “projects of worldtransformation”,
left-wing or right, or with
“the clash of fundamentalisms” among
transcendental religions that have lost
“the civilizing perception” that their task
is to “attempt to deal with mystery” rather
than insist that mystery has been or will be
“unveiled”, he bleakly expects only that,
“[i]nteracting with the struggle for natural
resources, the violence of faith looks set to
shape the coming century”.
Meditating on the Middle East & beyond
in a different spirit, South African

Archbishop Desmond Tutu seductively
describes the war-free unknown world
that humankind hasn’t really imagined
yet as “God’s Dream” about “a day when
all people enjoy fundamental security and
live free of fear; … about a day when all
people have a hospitable land in which to
establish a future. More than anything else,
God’s dream is about a day when all people
are accorded equal dignity because they
are human beings. … God’s dream begins
with … mutual recognition - we are not
strangers, we are kin. It culminates in the
defeat of oppression perpetrated in the name
of security, and of violence inflicted in the
name of liberation. God’s dream routs the
cynicism and despair that once cleared the
path for hate to have its corrosive way with
us, and for ravenous violence to devour
everything in sight. God’s dream comes
to flower when everyone who claims to be
wholly innocent relinquishes that illusion,
when everyone who places absolute blame
on another renounces that lie, and when differing
stories are told at last as one shared
story of human aspiration. God’s dream
ends in healing and reconciliation. Its finest
fruit is human wholeness flourishing in a
moral universe.
“In the meanwhile, between the
root of human solidarity and the fruit of
human wholeness, there is the hard work
of telling the truth.”
And there is the hard work of learning to
govern ourselves well enough to discern
and live with that truth, whether or not
one conceives of an archbishop’s “moral
universe” or a philosopher’s “moral imperative”.
If we wholeheartedly undertake this
task, bringing all human talents to bear,
we might be fortunate enough that the
enterprise will take forever; but if we do
not proceed diligently, our luck will run
out sooner than we realize and the human
experiment will end.
“No one takes up this work on a do-gooder’s
whim,” says Tutu. “It is not a choice. One
feels compelled into it. Neither is it work
for a little while, but rather for a lifetime —
and for more than a lifetime. It is a project
bigger than any one life. This long view is a
source of encouragement and perseverance.
The knowledge that the work preceded us
and will go on after us is a fountain of deep
gladness that no circumstance can alter.”
Minerva wishes to share at least that much
faith in an essential collective endeavor.
UN Photo / Mark Garten / 21 May 2007
Nafis Sadik, MD, is Special Adviser to
the United Nations Secretary-General
and UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS
in Asia-Pacific. She served on the
Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on
Threats, Challenges and Change.
Reprinted with her permission, this was
Nafis Sadik’s keynote address at the conference
on “Mobilising Political Will” in
Helsinki, Finland, September 2005.
Since then, midway through the UN Millennium
Development Goals schedule,
most of the cited statistics have worsened.
Introduction
Security: The New Paradigm
of Interconnectedness
Nafis Sadik
Traditionally, security has been concerned primarily with threats to the state, and the
defence of its borders against other states. In today’s world, protecting national security
has developed new dimensions. … [Most] armed conflicts … [are] within, rather than
between states. Today’s weapon of choice in many conflicts is violence against civilian
populations. The underlying security concerns are more often social than purely
military.
Internal migration, for example, has produced a huge new urban generation of young
people in developing countries. They should be a tremendous resource for development;
instead, poverty, inequality, unemployment and a failure of opportunity have brought a
tide of violence and discontent to many cities.
Migration across national borders is also a security concern for many states. More than
175 million people currently live outside their own countries, a nation of migrants the
size of France, Germany and the UK put together. The scale and social consequences
of international migration demand international discussion and decision – but the issues
are so sensitive that countries cannot agree on an agenda.
Migration highlights the different nature of today’s discussion about security. Individuals
do not always perceive security in the same light as their governments. Migrants,
minorities or other groups excluded from the political process may see the state itself
as a source of insecurity.
4 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

For the poor, however, the major source
of insecurity is their own poverty, and the
social conditions that accompany poverty:
ill-health, illiteracy, exclusion and
inequality, including gender inequality. For
example, World Bank research shows that
poor women’s greatest fear is ill-health;
and a health crisis is the cause most often
cited by families who have fallen into
destitution.
As experience constantly reminds us –
from the global HIV/AIDS epidemic to the
hunger crisis … – individual insecurity on
a large enough scale becomes a threat to
national, regional and even global security.
And extreme poverty is on a vast scale:
over a billion people live on less than a
euro a day. Three billion people, half the
world’s population, live on less than two
euros a day.
All these issues, and many more, are
well documented. They are the subject of
endless discussion at all levels. There are
solid international agreements on how to
approach them. Yet somehow the political
will to respond is lacking. Governments
look first – and often only – at their narrow
self-interest. The international response is
accordingly weak and hesitant.
To give only two examples of this failure
of political will: first, world military
expenditure in 2004 was over $1,000 billion,
or 2.6 per cent of global GNP. One
country was responsible for nearly half of
that total. Second, in the same year, global
expenditure on international development
assistance from all countries was under
$80 billion. These grossly disproportionate
figures reflect the distorted realities we
live with. The major underlying threats to
security are social, while the overwhelming
bulk of expenditure on security is
military.
Security as a Social Issue
I would like to make three brief points.
• First, human security is essential for security
in the broader sense. Better health,
education and moves to reduce gender inequality
help to defeat poverty, exclusion,
powerlessness and deprivation. This in turn
reduces the sense of oppression and injustice,
and denies extremism and conflict the
conditions in which they flourish.
• Second, guaranteeing human security
does not require any new or unusual actions,
nor any especially expensive inputs.
There is a road map, in the form of the
Millennium Development Goals and other
international instruments.
• Finally, all nations must consider their
response to the question of national
security versus human security. The response
includes new thinking on forms of
governance, economic relationships and
international co-operation: it also supports
the multilateral approach to consensusbuilding
through the United Nations.
Protecting national borders no longer guarantees
security. Each nation has to arrive at
a vision of community that includes all its
people, the poor as well as the better-off;
and all its neighbours, in whatever part of
the world they may be. Security demands a
new commitment to multilateralism, and to
the value of the individual human being.
To take these points in order:
Deep and pervasive poverty is an ancient
problem, and to a great extent all societies
have accepted it as inevitable. The
traditions of all cultures, including the
prevailing liberal economic theory, call for
assistance to the poor; but liberal economics
assumes, in common with all other traditions,
that poverty and inequality are part
of the normal social and economic order.
The realities of the 21st century demand a
closer look at this assumption.
In the last third of the last century, the
most successful developing economies in
Asia and Latin America invested heavily
in social programmes, including universal,
free education for both sexes, and in health
care, including reproductive health.
A study by the Royal Institute for International
Affairs in London confirms that there
is a two-way relationship between economic
growth and health: “Life expectancy
and adult survival rates exercise a positive
impact on human capital formation and
hence on economic growth. In turn, sustained
growth rates allow for better health
5 • Minerva #32 • June 2008
conditions.” In plain language, that means
that healthy people make better workers,
better workers make stronger economies,
and stronger economies allow people to
live better and make good choices.
More specifically, the research of Nancy
Birdsall and Steven Sinding has shown
how better reproductive health, smaller
families and slower population growth,
together with universal education, were
part of the reason for the explosive growth
of the East Asian “tiger economies” in the
1980s and 90s.
Amartya Sen has shown how democratic
institutions – and particularly the inclusion
of women in the political process
– contribute to more equitable development.
Among other things, women tend
to focus on the essentials of education
and health care. Sri Lanka, Kerala and
some other states in India, have provided
examples of how to achieve high literacy,
low maternal and child mortality, smaller
families and broader life choices, even in
a low-income setting. The most important
factor was not ample resources so much
as a perception that human security was
of primary importance.
That leads me to my second point: there
is a clear and detailed road map to human
security. The road leads through social investment,
through ending extreme poverty,
to equitable development.
I was a member of the Secretary-General’s
High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges
and Change. After considerable research
and discussion, we concluded that development
is the indispensable foundation
for a collective security system, first, to
combat poverty, infectious disease and
environmental degradation which threaten
human security; second, to maintain states’
capacity to meet threats to security; and
finally, to address the environment in
which terrorism and organised crime can
flourish.
The Panel recognised that there were
many obstacles to the efficient delivery of
resources for development, including fair
treatment for poor countries in matters
such as trade and debt relief. There is also
an urgent need for better co-ordination

across sectors, both at the international
level and within governments.
But, reviewing the panel’s deliberations
and recommendations on the social and
economic threats to security, I am struck
by the number of times we referred to work
ongoing, instruments already in place, or
agreements already reached. This raises
the question of how much more secure we
should be, if only member states had kept
all the promises they made over the last
three decades; or if they had taken action
themselves to integrate their policies, along
the lines they prescribed for international
institutions.
Member states have already come to
consensus on how to guarantee human
security: the question now is whether they
are prepared to do it.
For example, providing the relatively small
sums required to head off a full-scale HIV/
AIDS outbreak in Asia-Pacific will do
more for human security and long-term
stability than almost any other intervention.
This is the considered opinion of the
Asian Development Bank. But support
from the international community for the
Global Fund against HIV/AIDS, Malaria
and Tuberculosis is a fraction of its requirements.
More broadly, the Millennium Development
Goals are certainly ambitious, but
they are quite practical – or they were …
when the world’s leaders adopted them.
The eight goals are designed to cut extreme
poverty in half by 2015. They are far from
radical — in fact they are largely based on
the consensus agreements of the series of
international conferences that took place
in the 1990s; and these in turn were firmly
based on countries’ experience with development.
Some of them reflect longstanding
agreements, for example, on the need for
maternal health care and universal education,
and plans for funding them.
…[T]he United Nations Millennium Project
has worked on targets and indicators to
enable each country to measure its progress
towards the Goals. These are the necessary
technical underpinnings, and they are also
firmly based on national experience and international
consensus. In particular, at the
Monterrey Conference in 2002, the donor
community agreed on levels of funding
necessary to reach the goals. The consensus
document urges developed countries
that have not done so to make concrete
efforts towards the target that 0.7 percent
of GNP should go to overseas development
assistance, and that 0.15 to 0.20 should go
to the least-developed countries.
…[O]ne country has thrown this long
and complex process into question, first
by claiming that member states have
not agreed on the targets and indicators
necessary to reach the Goals, and second
by repudiating the 0.7 percent target for
development assistance.
This leads me to my third and final point.
Today, the major threat to ending poverty
is apathy, the apparent lack of political
will on many sides. But there is another
force at work, which seems to challenge
the very concept of a multilateral approach
to global problems. This position seems
to me to be quite insupportable: the major
states, members of the UN, were at all the
conferences in the 1990s and helped to
forge the various consensus agreements. To
demand major changes overnight to what
amounts to a decade and a half of work is
a challenge to the foundation of the United
Nations’ existence—the long, slow process
of consensus-building among nations.
Perhaps, in some paradoxical way, the
unilateral challenge will energise other
leaders of the international community
to strengthen the multilateral approach. I
hope that the EU and its member states,
for example, will address themselves with
renewed vigour to the Goals; and that they
will renew their commitment to the United
Nations process.
Many observers are currently very critical
of the United Nations. The organization
is certainly in need of reform, just as all
political institutions need periodic review.
But legitimate criticism and the process
of review should not obscure the many
achievements of the United Nations system,
among them the painstaking process
of building global consensus on the great
social questions of our age.
We may not after all reach the Millennium
Development Goals in 2015, but all agree
that they can be reached. Ending poverty
is for the first time in history agreed to be a
legitimate goal. That perception overturns
the ancient consensus that “the poor are
always with us”. That itself is progress.
We have a new vision of what security
entails: the United Nations process and
the Millennium Development Goals are
the first halting steps towards making that
vision a reality.
Sabina Alkire’s definition of human security:
to protect the vital core of people’s lives from critical and pervasive threats
in a way that is consistent with individual and communal flourishing.
(Sabina Alkire, formerly with the Commission
on Human Security Secretariat, is director of the
Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative,
Department of International Development,
University of Oxford.)
6 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

NOTES: Human Security ~
Connectivity and Responsibility
From the Center on International Cooperation
at New York University, Richard
Gowan writes (in the Stanley Foundation’s
): “One of the most worrying
trends in current American political
debate is a creeping isolationism. This is
not the isolationism of the 1930s — the
principled, if misguided, belief that the
US should cut itself off from European
power politics — but a weary sense that
international engagement just isn’t working.
… Yet this trend is balanced by a residual
sense that the US has global commitments
it cannot desert yet — and these
demand a better mix of American soft and
hard power. … [I]n the wake of the Iraqi
debacle, the country’s leading politicians
and policy intellectuals are turning toward
a concept that wouldn’t have got a hearing
in Washington in 2003. This is ‘human
security’—the idea that a country’s
foreign policy should not just be about
defending its national interests but also
protecting vulnerable people worldwide
from the risks of poverty, disease, natural
disasters, and mass slaughter. It’s a very
broad idea and one that’s too often dismissed
as naïve.” He attributes that to the
notion’s increasing popularity in Canada
and Europe — where in 2004 a high-level
panel proposed an EU “Human Security
Force” of 15,000 troops, police, and humanitarian
workers and where French
Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner is a
strong proponent of the “Responsibility
to Protect”.
But “the reality is that there is a hardheaded
case for the idea”, asserts Gowan,
“and it is one that may prove increasingly
urgent in the years ahead. International
risk analysts agree that some of the most
dangerous crises of the near future will
… involve … a mixture of unpredictable
threats … [that] demand a vast variety of
responses.” Even trickier, warns P.H. Liotta,
Executive Director of the Pell Center
for International Relations and Public
Policy, “not all security issues involve
‘threats’; rather, the notion of vulnerabilities
is as serious to some peoples, and
some regions, as the more familiar concept
of threat” (Pell conference, “The Future
of ‘Human Security’”, June 2005).
While arguing that these difficulties must
be faced without further delay, Gowan’s
opinion is that “it would be electoral suicide
to lay out frankly the litany of current
global challenges, the costs involved
in confronting them, and the difficulties
in predicting which risks will turn into
real crises”. Not to mention the traditional
toughness of making the case for developing
“a sense of mutual trust based on
effective diplomacy through the UN and
other international organizations” — crucial
“not least because the UN’s own assets
include essential agencies involved
in resolving human security issues, from
the World Food Programme to the World
Health Organization”.
Much discussion turns on questions of
ascendancy among polarities. For example,
Parag Khanna, author of The Second
World: Empires and Influence in the New
Global Order (March 2008), in his controversial
turn-of-the-year New York Times
essay “Waving Goodbye to Hegemony”,
commented on the American electoral
campaign’s retro weirdness of both parties
“bickering about where and how to intervene,
whether to do it alone or with allies
and what kind of world America should
lead. … But the distribution of power in
the world has fundamentally altered. …
The EU may uphold the principles of the
United Nations that America once dominated,
but how much longer will it do so
as its own social standards rise far above
this lowest common denominator? And
why should China or other Asian countries
become ‘responsible stakeholders’,
in former Deputy Secretary of State Robert
Zoellick’s words, in an American-led
international order when they had no seat
at the table when the rules were drafted?
Even as America stumbles back toward
multilateralism, others are walking away
from the American game and playing by
their own rules.” In this view, “America’s
standing in the world remains in steady
decline. Why? Weren’t we supposed to
reconnect with the United Nations and reaffirm
to the world that America can, and
should, lead it to collective security and
prosperity?”
Another example: “Is the balance of global
power slipping away from the United
States and its European allies?” asked a
7 • Minerva #32 • June 2008
forum held by the New America Foundation
in Washington DC on 17 April to
discuss ‘the future of American Leadership
in a ‘World Without the West’”, involving
Flyntt Leverett (Senior Fellow of
the foundation), Fred Kempe (President
& CEO, Atlantic Council), Steven Weber
(Director, Institute of International Studies,
University of California, Berkeley),
and others. Sameer Lalwani (Policy Analyst,
American Strategy Program) subsequently
blogged in The Washington Note
that they “discussed the ‘World Without
West’ thesis described in these lines:
The landscape of globalization
now looks like this: While connectivity
for the globe as a whole has increased in
the last twenty years, it is increasing at
a much faster rate among countries outside
the Western bloc. The World Without
the West is becoming preferentially and
densely interconnected. This creates the
foundation for the development of a new,
parallel international system, with its
own distinctive set of rules, institutions,
ways of doing things — and currencies of
power.
The World Without the West,
like any political order, is made up of two
ingredients: A set of ideas about governance
and a set of power resources that
enable, embed and occasionally enforce
those ideas. This alternative order rests
on wealth drawn from natural resources
and industrial production (along with the
management expertise applied to those
capabilities). And it proposes to manage
international politics through a neo-Westphalian
synthesis comprised of hard-shell
states that bargain with each other about
the terms of their external relationships,
but staunchly respect the rights of each to
order its own society, politics and culture
without external interference. Neither
of these elements by itself would make
for a concrete alternative to the Western
system, but together they synergistically
stabilize into a robust political-economic
order.”
“The implications are grave,” comments
Sameer Lalwani. “Weber suggested at minimum,
the degree of interaction amongst
the non-west orbit affords increased bargaining
power on geoeconomic and geopolitical
fronts when dealing with the US
and the West, but at maximum, it means

the creation of a new center of gravity.”
Considering the available “non-military
ways to constrain us, Leverett argued that
we could no longer afford the illusion of
ourselves as the indispensable nation, one
that does not have to make clear strategic
priorities and choices, or accord other rising
states more of a decision making role
in the international order. Relative to the
other speakers, Kempe was more bullish
about what the transatlantic partnership
could do to regain some lost ground in
these ‘non-west’ or ‘southern democracy’
theaters but all three were bearish on the
political leadership, particularly in the
US, coming to terms with these new realities,
let alone formulating strategies to
address and accommodate for them.”
Sameer Lalwani believes that there may
be some western leaders, among them
UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband,
who have “ the potential to come to terms
with these new systems of interaction and
alignment and devise a more strategic approach”,
re-casting the conventional democracy-promotion
agenda about which
many people have become skeptical into
“a real democracy-promotion agenda —
one that takes the long-term development
of political and economic institutions very
seriously”. Although Miliband “may not
be there yet, it is evident his conceptualizations
of ‘responsible sovereignty’ and
developmental democracy are probably
amongst the better tools for formulating
a strategy for the future of ‘the west’,”
claims Lalwani.
When Miliband spoke about “the shift
from balance of power politics to the politics
of shared risk” (as summarized in his
own blog) to the Young Atlanticists meeting
held in conjunction with the recent
Bucharest NATO meeting and Sameer
Lalwani asked him about China, “[h]e essentially
suggested we take China’s value
on non-intervention and national sovereignty
and turn it into a concept of responsible
sovereignty — both downwards
towards one’s own citizens and upwards
towards the international system. Though
a clever rhetorical move, the notion that
China would accept Western concepts of
‘responsibility’ after years of reckless,
irresponsible foreign policy agenda was
improbable.”
Nevertheless, David Miliband believes
the concept of responsibility is more attuned
to the Chinese context than is talk
of “stakeholders” in a system. He says (in
his Foreign Office blog, 3 March 2008)
that is why he used his speech at Beijing
University to advocate for “responsible
sovereignty” as an approach — “recognising
the continuing central role of the
nation state in having a hold on people’s
affections and for making decisions in the
world, but recognising that in its treatment
of its own citizens and in its engagement
around the world sovereign states
have responsibilities that are fettered by
a set of universal values (the UN’s 2005
Responsibility to Protect gave this legal
form).”
Miliband continues: “The debate about
Burma or Kenya or Darfur, not to mention
Iraq or Afghanistan, is often couched
in terms of interference in the affairs of
another country. And the Chinese doctrine
of non-interference has been used
to draw a distinction with more activist
approaches to foreign policy. But in an
interdependent world what is non-interference?
We ‘interfere’ with each [other]
economically, politically and environmentally
all the time” (Miliband blog, 3
March 2008). “… The determination to
go beyond the old foundation of foreign
policy, that what goes on within a nation
state is only the responsibility and concern
of that state, does not decide how the
responsibility to protect, or to intervene,
is fulfilled. But it does move policy onto
the right question — how to make a difference
not whether to do so” (Miliband
blog, 20 January 2008).
Parag Khanna posits: “. . . The more we
appreciate the differences among the
American, European and Chinese worldviews,
the more we will see the planetary
stakes of the new global game. Previous
eras of balance of power have been
among European powers sharing a common
culture. The cold war, too, was not
truly an “East-West” struggle; it remained
essentially a contest over Europe. What
we have today, for the first time in history,
is a global, multicivilizational, multipolar
battle.”
– An opening to a world federalist era?
8 • Minerva #32 • June 2008
What brings us together and what
divides us? The strength of the rule of
law and the strength of humanitarianism
are values that help to bind people
together in taking responsibility for the
behavior of their communities.
– Geoff Loane,
International Committee of the Red Cross

Overcoming Wars and Empire
by Incentivizing Justice and Democracy
Lucy Law Webster
Lucy Law Webster is Vice Chair of the
Council of the World Federalist
Movement and Secretary & UN Representative
of Economists for Peace and
Security. She is also Executive Director
of the Center for War/Peace Studies.
Previously, she worked in the United
Nations Secretariat as a Political Affairs
Officer in the Department for Disarmament
Affairs, and, before that, as Special
Assistant to the Secretary General of the
Second World Conference to Combat
Racism, and on other human rights
issues. She also worked for UNICEF,
UNDP, UNEP, and on the staff of
Economists for Peace and Security on
issues relating to the costs of war
and excessive militarization.
Her work, as outlined at , is based on the conviction that “the
people of the twenty-first century will
require longer, wider vistas to flourish
or even just survive. Each person will
need to see and to respect the hopes and
fears of all within their communities in
villages and cities and in networks across
the whole wide earth. They will need to
work for each other and for the common
norms of world law and human rights.”
This essay, reprinted with permission of
the author, first appeared in Arms, War,
and Terrorism in the Global Economy Today,
Economic Analyses and Civilian Alternatives,
Wolfram Elsner (Ed.) Bremer
Schriften zur Konversion, p265–272 (Lit
Verlag D. W. Hopf Hamburg 2007).
The international interventions of the past decade in Kosovo, East Timor, Afghanistan
and Iraq have posed peace and law and human rights in strange forms of tension against
each other. In fact international humanitarian law and peace are congruent, but the only
forms of international intervention that would be legitimate have not as yet been tried.
This relates to the lack of creative evolutionary approaches to social science and policy.
The essay shows the limited legitimacy of recent interventions, explains why such nonhumanitarian
actions are no longer appropriate and how international law and civic
action can be used to build peace and to transform the power that tends to encourage
empire and imperialism into power for democracy.
A Critique of Collective Security as Envisioned in the United Nations System
Collective security as envisioned when the UN Charter was written was intended to
allow strong states to protect weak states whenever there would be aggression by one
against the other. But there have been relatively few acts of invasion across neighboring
borders; the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait that was reversed by the Persian Gulf War was an
exception. Most wars occur within states as civil wars between factions or insurgents
against incumbents. This fact is based on economic power relationships that deserve
more attention from economists and more action to create incentives for peace to replace
the historic incentives for war. Almost any international intervention whether fully
endorsed or just barely tolerated by the UN Security Council leads to power gains and
losses within the country in conflict and internationally and results in some measure of
outside control and imperialism even when the motive is humanitarian. It is sometimes
said that collective security is what the P5 permanent members of the Security Council
do to poor nations. And now we have seen the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq led by
the world’s only superpower. The fact that the first of these wars is deemed legal (the
United States was attacked by people based in Afghanistan) and the second is much less
widely viewed as legal obscures the main issues. Both wars can be seen as callous acts
of empire by the people attacked, and consequently there is no effective demonstration
of the value of avoiding the types of behavior that led to these wars. Instead of reducing
terrorism, more people have seen reasons to become terrorists to resist what they
perceive as the hand of empire.
Collective security involves collective punishment; whole nations suffer for the actions
of their leaders. Often, as in the Gulf War of 1990/1991, the leaders do not suffer at all;
in which case there is no disincentive to start other wars, whether wars against weaker
segments within a state, or wars to liberate or protect the weak. The use of military force,
even when endorsed by Security Council mandate, requires the violent imposition of
order as defined by and administered by global powers whether they are sensitive to the
local and regional culture or not.
The Need to Replace Military Globalism with the Democratic Rule of Law
Such military globalism feels like imperialism to the people whose lives and homes
and cultures are attacked and it looks like imperialism to millions of people worldwide
who value human rights and cultural autonomy. The historical evidence indicates that
norms of humanitarian law and democracy can be built up within a region, and even
create a magnet for imitation as has happened in the European Union. However there
is no evidence that such norms can be imposed from the outside unless there are strong
indigenous roots that an outside force can then endorse. Whoever would impose de-
9 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

mocracy probably does not understand it.
Democracy requires voluntary participation
and a history of common learning and
interactive mutual respect. This is unlikely
to be forthcoming when soldiers of major
military powers impose order according to
norms that are at best globally recognized
primarily by international elites and are
at worst the norms of industrialized states
acting against less industrialized, less
“modern” or less Westernized nations and
peoples.
The Responsibility to Protect
the People
Nevertheless, when militias supporting
states such as Serbia or Indonesia attack the
people of Kosovo or East Timor, I would
assert that the international community
has a responsibility to protect the people
attacked and that the UN Security Council
has a duty to act. Such action is needed to
demonstrate the disutility of war crimes
and genocide. To sustain this principle it
would be important to respond whenever
the government of any state abrogates
its sovereign responsibility to protect the
people within its borders either because it
is unable or unwilling to do so. However
it matters greatly HOW the international
community responds. The widespread
outcry against the human rights abuses in
Darfur shows that the norms are widely
respected by citizens throughout the world,
but the lack of effective action to stop the
genocide shows that there is currently no
effective way to protect the international
norms that are identified by the statute
of the International Criminal Court. The
purpose of this essay is to indicate how
protection could be provided without
war—without action that contradicts the
essential objectives of the action taken.
This is a multi-stage process. In any given
time period it is important to respond
to gross violations of human rights in
whatever ways best serve the needs of the
people persecuted, and to do so in a way
that creates the least possible violence
and the least possible motivation for additional
future violence. Concomitantly,
pre-violence time periods should be identified
to introduce programs that mitigate the
causes and the incentives for abuse and that
demonstrate its counterproductive effects,
to show that crime does not pay, even for
heads of state who have often experienced
immunity from censure. Preventive action
can avert both human rights violence and
any military response. A systematic program
to remove the incentives for violent
conflict can bring practice into line with
stated norms. Current practice recognizes
standards that are important, but often not
honored in practice.
The “best-practices” criteria for international
humanitarian action can be specified
as follows:
• There must be a just cause relating to a
supreme humanitarian need;
• Force should be used very carefully for
specific testable objectives, but it should
be available early to be used proactively to
stop violence as soon as it appears;
• The action taken should be consistent
with the ends sought and meet the test of
proportionality;
• The decision to intervene and the type of
force used should have a high probability
of achieving a positive humanitarian outcome
both for the case at hand and in its
impact on future norms.
The Case Histories
of Kosovo and East Timor
In Kosovo, and also in East Timor there
was a clear humanitarian need for international
action. In both instances earlier
humanitarian intervention could have prevented
extensive crimes against people
and property. The impending violence
that attracted international attention in
Kosovo in 1998 had been anticipated for
several years as the Belgrade government
removed ethnic Albanian Kosovars from
public employment, and much of the
displaced leadership established a peaceful
informal parallel civil administration,
while others became new recruits into the
Kosovo Liberation Army. When action was
taken by the international community it
was not only too late to have any preventive
value, but it was also disproportionate
and disjunctive in relation to the problems
faced by the people persecuted by Serb
militia and Yugoslav army personnel. The
bombing by NATO was inconsistent with
the stated humanitarian goals. It made it
10 • Minerva #32 • June 2008
easier for Milosevic to dislodge people
from their homes, not harder. The probability
of achieving a positive outcome in
Kosovo when the intervention took place
must be assessed in relation to the goals set,
whether explicit or hidden. The humanitarian
goals claimed were not effectively
met because of the extensive displacement
and destruction of lives and property, and
the ambiguous stability for Kosovo of the
resulting peace. If the goal was regime
change and bringing Milosevic to court,
those objectives were achieved.
In East Timor the efforts at intimidation of
pro-independence citizens provided clear
signals that, if people were not intimidated
before and during the ballot, there would
be retribution after it. This was clearly
presented as a serious possibility to the UN
Security Council prior to the August 1999
ballot asking people to choose between
autonomous incorporation into Indonesia
or independence. Nonetheless between
the announcement of the ballot results on
September 4 in New York (September 5
in Dili), and the time the Security Council
voted to set up a multinational force under
Chapter VII of the Charter (Resolution
1264, September 15, 1999), almost twothirds
of the population had fled their
homes and villages to escape the murder
and pillage of militia units opposed to
independence.
The intervention force approved by the
Security Council in September 1999 succeeded
in mitigating a humanitarian disaster.
The fact that it arrived too late to save
the lives and homes of many is a result of
the fact that the Security Council did not
find a way to act except by a coalition of
the willing led by Australia, which would
not act without the agreement of Indonesia.
Australia was the only major state to
have recognized Indonesian sovereignty
in East Timor following the Indonesian
invasion and occupation of East Timor in
1975. But there was no way to act except
to wait for Australia to wait for Indonesia.
This demonstrates the lack of international
peacekeeping capacity. The United Nations
should have its own standing force ready
to move in to protect the people without
waiting for major states to do so. The best
model would be a directly recruited force
responsible to the UN Secretary General

without the encumbrance of real or perceived
imperial attitudes or ambitions.
The Potential Importance
of Civil Society Engagement
The most essential basis for a legitimate
system of global responsibility to protect
would engage the active participation of
local and regional communities. The past
half century of professionalization and
international institutionalization of development
planning has created a culture in
which outsiders arrive in problem areas
to suggest and guide and sometimes to
impose solutions. Should the historic experience
and knowledge of the local people
and the cultural region not be given similar
respect? The past 200 years of economic
growth has served some nations well, but
it now seems clear that many nations might
have developed in a manner that would
have better served their people had the
paths chosen been more firmly grounded
in their own history. Now there are disturbing
disjunctions. Should the salary
of an engineer recruited as a driver for a
“development expert” be higher than the
salary of a construction engineer? How can
community development become development
of the people, for the people and by
the people? How can democracy grow
from existing historic roots? These are
urgent questions to address if participatory
development is to engender local power for
democracy. More local and regional leadership
is needed to nurture power from the
cultural roots of nations and peoples.
The sources of terrorism lie in the alienation
that arises in the people who are
most disenfranchised at the bottom of an
undemocratic world system where military
imperial power is imposed on nations
that are themselves deeply undemocratic,
excluding their citizens from effective
participation. Terrorists are recruited in
countries that lack modern education and
constructive opportunities where there is
a backdrop of extreme poverty and a sense
of anger at insults to the nation, the religion
and the culture. Terrorists arise when it
feels more empowering to participate in
commitments to destroy than to participate
in building.
A major commitment is needed throughout
the system of United Nations agencies, by
individual governments, and by networks
of NGOs to redeploy “development assistance”
away from the experts and to give it
to the people. All children deserve access
to and engagement in modern education
and experience of their own historic culture
and of world community values as well
as access to food, clean water, shelter and
basic health services. If this is not available,
the security of the entire world is
put at risk. Locally generated community
development can provide the key to bringing
basic cultural and economic services
to villages and cities throughout the world.
People must be engaged in their own development
and in their own security.
There is an unused tool available for
locally-based community development in
the largely hortatory commitments made
by almost all governments throughout the
world to various norms of international
law and programs of action generated by a
range of UN bodies and conferences. In the
hands of the people this body of commitments
can become a powerful tool—either
for direct action or for putting pressure on
one’s own government to fulfill its stated
obligations. If local civil society groups
were proactively involved doing what
is needed to enhance implementation,
they would not only achieve some of the
objectives identified such as better access
to clean water and sanitation, but they
would build their own power to achieve
and to protect themselves from any future
economic exploitation or violation of their
human rights. Such self-generated action
can be coordinated with the work of international
networks of Non-Governmental
Organizations that could provide resources
when invited and help connect with broad
networks of governments and with the
UN Security Council. The goal is to put
the Security Council on call to serve the
people, especially people in communities
at risk of violence and exploitation.
Empowering the People
for Self-Rule and Democracy
The goal is to forge local and worldwide
networks in support of UN norms as a
counterweight to the power of the sorts
of militias that played truly devastating
roles in Kosovo and in East Timor. In
most countries at risk of violence and human
rights abuses, as well as those at risk
of extreme poverty, there are many civic
groups that can better mobilize themselves
to act if they see an overarching strategy for
self-enhancement. The goal is to empower
local communities that are embedded in
their own cultures to use the global norms
that fit their needs.
In parallel with local action, international
NGOs that respect cultural autonomy can,
when asked, assist in monitoring human
rights interests by keeping records of
violations and making these available to
the UN High Commissioner for Human
Rights or to officials of the International
Criminal Court. The role and the responsibility
of individuals before international
law is expanding. A major step forward
is represented by the International Criminal
Court, making individuals as well
as states responsible under international
law. This is the best way to end the collective
punishment inherent in war and in
traditional forms of interstate action for
collective security. It is the responsibility
of the world community to protect people
when the state in which they live will
not or cannot prevent war crimes, crimes
against humanity or genocide. But it is not
the duty of anyone to do this in a way that
leads to violence or undermines justice.
Concepts of justice vary, but the ideas in
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
are widely recognized. Almost none of
the norms of the Universal Declaration
have been denounced, but many remain
unobserved. The citizens of every nation
can insist that they be protected according
to these norms by effective international
law. If it is known that people are watching,
potential wrong doers will be deterred.
Local and global networks of civil society
groups and of governments can monitor
the implementation of agreed norms of
humanitarian law.
Asserting the Sovereignty
of the People
Civil society within countries at risk of
conflict and international civil society
groups can use preventive diplomacy to
11 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

avert violence. It is easier to visualize
how this could have worked in Kosovo or
East Timor than in Afghanistan under the
Taliban or Iraq under Hussein, but that is
largely a matter of timing and sequencing.
By engaging in the implementation of the
less controversial parts of the many plans
of action and other agreements that states
have endorsed, thousands of aware citizens
can be ready to prevent the importation
of illicit arms, the exploitation of labor or
the violation of human rights. In Afghanistan
there were some opportunities for
this before the Taliban achieved effective
control, although such opportunities were
almost certainly inadequate once state
violence against descent was decisive in
most parts of the country. This was also
true in Hussein’s Iraq, as was the case in
Hitler’s Germany.
The price of freedom is early vigilance.
That is the point of the strategy of proactive,
locally-based engagement suggested
here. The big news is that now, unlike
the 1930s, there is a network of civil
society groups committed to protect the
human rights of people everywhere, and
to respond to cries for help. There is also
a network of middle-power states that is
equally committed to protect the citizens
of every nation from genocide, war crimes
and crimes against humanity even when
such crimes are committed by a citizen’s
own government. These are the groups and
the nations that understand that collective
security by means of war is essentially
dysfunctional and counterproductive, but
that there are now institutions and norms
that make it possible to replace the rule
of war with the force of law. As more and
more states sign onto a law-based mode of
international action, the role of imperial,
war-based power will shrink. If the nations
using the soft power of law are supported
by civil society, that mode of action will
prevail. Above all, if civil society within
the countries and communities at risk of
exploitation and violence uses its own
ability to communicate and grow, it will
be able to act in concert with the states and
citizen networks that actively seek direction
from the people who most need their
support. Such direction from below will
undermine the power of empire. Empires
depend upon authoritarian decisions imposed
from above with military force. The
value of such force can be replaced with
effective law-based action implemented by
the people and by the United Nations.
Taking Action to Establish New Norms
for Future Expectations
It is important to assess how different
forms of international action can contribute
to the expectations of individuals, and the
norms that affect state practice. What is
done successfully in one case will become
a model for the future. Rightly or wrongly,
states will feel constrained to act within the
precedents set. Thus each case becomes a
precedent and a model for future action.
The most benign form of intervention in
defense of human rights would be to send
in UN Marshals to apprehend individuals
who commit crimes against humanity,
war crimes or genocide. This could be
done with almost no violence if there
were strong convictions within the nation
concerned that these crimes should
be stopped and prevented in the future.
Civil society support of UN action would
be of critical value to underpin successful
interventions by UN Marshals, so that a
pattern of such interventions would deter
future violations.
We have seen that individuals and networks
of non-state actors can be very powerful.
A combination of high technology, lethal
weapons and borderless communications
means that a wide range of people and
groups can act decisively to do harm. It
will not always be practical to bomb the
country that harbors terrorists, and such
action generates new terrorists. Modes of
international action must be developed that
engender relatively peaceful responses by
states and by individuals. The efficacy and
legitimacy of any given action should be
assessed in terms of its long-term impact,
not just in terms of what it achieves initially.
A democratic response to any challenge
to peace and human rights is required by
the people from within nations and cultural
regions to uphold their own civic values,
their own cultural norms and the peaceful
global norms that have been endorsed by
the United Nations and by governments
worldwide.
12 • Minerva #32 • June 2008
Lucy Law Webster

Indgrid Harder was a Policy Advisor
on the Responsibility to Protect for the
Government of Canada’s Department of
Foreign Affairs and International Trade,
where she worked on the Canadian-led
campaign to build consensus on the Responsibility
to Protect at the 2005 World
Summit. Ms Harder has participated in
numerous consultations and workshops
on the Responsibility to Protect across
North America, Europe and Africa. She
previously worked in the Department’s
African and Middle East Branch and as
a consultant to the Treasury Board of
Canada. Ms Harder holds an MA from
the Norman Paterson School of International
Affairs in Ottawa, Canada. She
currently works as a Program Officer
at the US Institute of Peace.
This paper, initially commissioned for
the International Women Leaders Global
Security Summit 2007 (a project of the
Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands
in partnership with The White
House Project, the Council of Women
World Leaders and the Women Leaders
Intercultural Forum), has been updated
by the author for Minerva. The views
expressed in it are those of the author
alone, not of the Summit or its partners,
of the Government of Canada, or of the
United States Institute of Peace, which
does not advocate specific policy positions.
The Responsibility to Protect:
Catchphrase or Cornerstone
of International Relations?
Ingrid Harder
October 2007 (updated May 2008)
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ~ In September 2005, world leaders unanimously agreed
that states have an individual and collective responsibility to protect civilians from
genocide and other crimes against humanity. This agreement, embodied in the final
document of the 2005 World Summit, advanced the notion that there are indeed situations
where sovereignty is not absolute – particularly when civilians are being attacked
and slaughtered. Essentially, the “responsibility to protect” is the basis on which the
international community can take collective measures – including the use of military
force – in response to genocide and other crimes against humanity. Implementation of
this principle, however, lags behind the rhetoric as crises such as Darfur challenge the
commitment and capability of either governments or the international community to
protect targeted populations.
Closing this gap and giving real meaning to the responsibility to protect will require
concerted effort to deepen the international commitment endorsed by the World Summit
and to establish it firmly as a norm of international law. The international commitment
to the principle remains fragile. There are still deep divisions – among member
states and civil society groups – over exactly what was agreed upon, as well as how and
when it should be applied. Solidifying this commitment and ensuring its implementation
will require sustained advocacy at a high political level. Secondly, capacity needs
to be developed at multiple levels to prevent or respond effectively to genocide and
crimes against humanity. This means supporting institutional mechanisms such as the
office of the United Nations’ Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide as well
as improving operational preparedness to conduct military operations in the event that
civilians require immediate protection.
Women leaders and organizations focused on women and gender equality have succeeded
in raising awareness of both the disproportionate impact of conflict on women
and girls and the unique contribution women can make in the realm of peace and
security. The responsibility to protect strongly complements existing commitments to
protect women’s human rights and security and should be incorporated into existing
work programmes and advocacy efforts.
There is a pressing need for more champions worldwide, and in particular for women
leaders, to add their voices and efforts to those who believe in and advocate for the
protection of civilians from genocide and crimes against humanity.
• Women heads of state can work to galvanize broader political support for the responsibility
to protect through regional and other multilateral organizations, and focus attention
on the responsibility of individual states to protect their own populations;
• Senior officials can work to ensure that commitments to the responsibility to protect
are institutionalized appropriately and incorporated into existing work programmes
focused on women, peace and security; and
• Women leaders in civil society need to help keep the spotlight where it belongs – on
the development of effective strategies to prevent and respond to mass atrocities.
Ultimately, it may be up to women leaders to move the responsibility to protect from
a catchphrase that sounds right to its rightful position as a cornerstone of international
relations in the 21st century.
13 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

“It has taken the world an insanely long time to come
to terms conceptually with the idea that state sovereignty
is not a license to kill – that there is something fundamentally
and intolerably wrong about states murdering or
forcibly displacing large numbers of their own citizens, or
standing by when others do so.” 1
BACKGROUND
Although the 2005 Human Security report 2 documents a significant decline in major
violent conflicts beginning in the early 1990s, the fact remains that civil wars have
continued and civilians have borne the brunt of fighting – even after the United Nations
(UN) has intervened, as in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or after military
operations such as the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Certain
means and methods employed in contemporary warfare are of particular concern.
For example, the unlawful use of child soldiers continues and the targeting and mass
displacement of civilian communities are often explicit in the strategy of combatants
involved in today’s “low intensity conflicts”.
Not only are combatants targeting civilians, but they also have a propensity to prey on
the weakest and most vulnerable, namely women and children. Although overall more
men than women continue to die as a result of conflict, women and girls suffer myriad
debilitating consequences of war. 3 For example, public rape aimed at instigating flight,
forced impregnation, mutilation of genitals and intentional HIV transmission have all
been used as tactics in ethnic cleansing.
Proponents of the concept of human security 4 have argued that a traditional state-centred
approach to security fails to adequately address the safety of civilians caught in
warfare, particularly in internal conflicts often waged by undisciplined militias or factions
in civil wars:
By broadening the focus to include the security of people, human security
encompasses a spectrum of approaches to the problem of violent conflict,
from preventive initiatives and people-centred conflict resolution and peacebuilding
activities to — in extreme cases, where other efforts have failed —
intervention to protect populations at great risk. 5
Since the mid-1990s, a range of initiatives have been advanced under the rubric of human
security. International norms related to the protection of civilians in armed conflict
have been strengthened and mechanisms put in place to implement related policies. The
International Criminal Court was established to end impunity for war crimes, crimes
against humanity and genocide. Guidelines for the treatment of internally displaced
peoples have been developed. Groundbreaking work within the Security Council addressed
the humanitarian impact of sanctions and led to explicit protection mandates
for UN peace operations. 6
While these developments were – and are – not without controversy, one of the most
contentious issues regarding the protection of civilians has been the legitimacy of military
intervention when people are being targeted and killed within their own borders.
At what point should the humanitarian imperative to save lives override the longentrenched
notion of sovereignty as non-interference? In practice, the international
community’s record of “humanitarian intervention” has been highly questionable.
Within UN debates, member states have remained deeply divided on the issue, even
as strengthened international human rights and humanitarian standards have raised the
pressure to “do something” in the face of humanitarian crises.
Footnotes 1–6:
1 Presentation by Gareth Evans, President
of the International Crisis Group, to
Panel Discussion on The Responsibility
to Protect: Ensuring Effective Protection
of Populations Under Threat of Genocide
and Crimes Against Humanity, Program
to Commemorate 1994 Rwandan
Genocide, United Nations, New York, 13
April 2007.
2 Human Security Centre, Human
Security Report 2005: War and Peace
in the 21st Century (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2005).
3 A 2002 report of the UN Secretary-
General concluded that women and
children are disproportionately targets
and constitute the majority of all victims
of contemporary armed conflicts. See
Jeanne Ward and Mendy Marsh, “Sexual
Violence Against Women and Girls
in War and its Aftermath: Realities,
Responses, and Required Resources,”
A Briefing Paper prepared for Symposium
on Sexual Violence in Conflict and
Beyond (Brussels, 2006).
4 The term “human security” was first
given prominence in the United Nations’
1994 Human Development Report.
5 Freedom from Fear: Canada’s Foreign
Policy for Human Security, (Ottawa:
Department of Foreign Affairs and
International Trade, 2000), 2-3.
6 The Government of Canada made
advancing the Protection of Civilians a
key priority during its 1999-2000 Security
Council tenure, during which time
resolutions 1265 (1999) and 1296 (2000)
on civilian protection were adopted.
14 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

The failure of the international community to stop the mass slaughter of civilians in
Rwanda and Srebrenica fuelled debate between advocates of a “right to intervene” and
those who argued that state sovereignty, as recognized in the UN Charter, prevented
any intervention in internal matters. NATO’s intervention in Kosovo in 1999, without
Security Council authorization, brought the issue to a head and raised serious concerns
about whether the United Nations was capable of addressing critical security challenges
of the day.
In 1999, and again in 2000, then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged the General
Assembly to resolve the question of when, under what authority, and how to intervene
in the face of mass atrocities. 7 In Annan’s words:
. . . if humanitarian intervention is, indeed, an unacceptable assault on sovereignty,
how should we respond to a Rwanda, to a Srebrenica – to gross and
systematic violations of human rights that affect every precept of our common
humanity? 8
In this context, the government of Canada, along with a select group of foundations, established
the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) 9
with a one-year mandate to foster global consensus on this set of issues. 10
The Commission’s most notable contribution was to redefine the basic point of departure
– from the right of states to intervene to the responsibility to protect people.
According to the Commission’s Co-Chair, Gareth Evans, the Commission hoped that
reframing the debate would cast new light on the issue and enable “entrenched opponents
to find new ground on which to more constructively engage”. 11 While stressing
the primary responsibility of states to protect their own populations, the report asserts
that when states fail to ensure such protection (or are themselves perpetrators of
abuses) this responsibility falls to the international community. In extreme cases, this
may require external military intervention. 12
The timing of the Commission’s report, presented to the UN in September 2001, could
not have been worse in terms of the acceptance and implementation of its findings. The
global refocusing on terrorism following 9/11, exacerbated by military activity in Iraq,
diverted attention away from constructive discussions on intervention and heightened
concerns that the responsibility to protect would be misused as a justification to advance
“imperialist motives.”
Despite ongoing controversy, the responsibility to protect became a central theme in
debates and key reports leading up to the 60th anniversary of the UN and the 2005
World Summit. The ongoing conflict in Darfur was making it painfully obvious that
the issue – of preventing or stopping mass killing or genocides while respecting the
sovereignty of a member state – remained a burning one. The Canadian government
was among those that argued that addressing the UN’s ability to protect people from
genocide and crimes against humanity struck at the very core of UN reform, claiming
that nothing undermines the credibility and legitimacy of the United Nations like the
failure to prevent and stop atrocities.
Footnotes 7–12:
7 See International Commission on
Intervention and State Sovereignty, The
Responsibility to Protect, (Ottawa: International
Development Research Centre,
2001).
8 Kofi Annan, “We the Peoples”: The
Role of the United Nations in the 21st
Century, A/54/2000 (United Nations,
2000).
9 ICISS was co-chaired by former
Australian Foreign Minister Gareth
Evans and Algerian diplomat Mohammed
Sahnoun. ICISS presented its report,
titled The Responsibility to Protect, to
the Secretary-General in 2001.
10 See www.iciss.ca.
11 Address by Gareth Evans, President,
International Crisis Group, to
Human Rights Law Resource Centre,
Melbourne, 13 August 2007 and Community
Legal Centres and Lawyers for
Human Rights, Sydney, 28 August 2007
[http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.
cfm?id=4521&l=1#gareth]
12 For an outline of principles proposed
by the ICISS, see its report .
Current Status: A Global Consensus
The 2005 World Summit was a significant turning point; 150 heads of state and government
endorsed the concept of the responsibility to protect, unambiguously placing
genocide and related crimes against humanity on par with other threats to international
peace and security. Paragraphs 138 and 139 of the Summit’s Outcome Document read
in relevant part as follows:
Each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from
genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This responsibility
entails the prevention of such crimes, including their incitement,
15 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

through appropriate and necessary means. We accept that responsibility and
will act in accordance with it. …
The international community, through the United Nations, also has the responsibility
to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful
means, in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, to help to protect
populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against
humanity. In this context, we are prepared to take collective action, in a timely
and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the
Charter, including Chapter VII, on a case-by-case basis and in cooperation
with relevant regional organizations as appropriate, should peaceful means
be inadequate and national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their
populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against
humanity. … 13
The 2005 Summit Outcome Document is indeed of historic significance for relations
among nations. It captures and reinforces the concept of qualified sovereignty vis-à-vis
genocide and crimes against humanity; and it records the express willingness of all UN
member states to take collective action, including the use of force as a last resort, when
an individual state is manifestly failing to protect its population from such acts.
Moreover, the Security Council subsequently endorsed the Summit consensus on the
responsibility to protect, in Resolution 1674 (28 April 2006) on the Protection of Civilians
in Armed Conflict and again in Resolution 1706 (31 August 2006) on Darfur.
A Fragile Concept at Risk
The global consensus on the responsibility to protect has been loudly hailed as a major
achievement of the 2005 UN Summit. However, the responsibility to protect, while
appealing to the sense of humanity in most people, is proving extraordinarily difficult
to promote and to implement. Little progress had been made by April 2007, when UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon reminded that:
All the world’s Governments have agreed in principle to the responsibility to
protect. Our challenge now is to give real meaning to the concept, by taking
steps to make it operational. 14
The fact is that among member states and civil society groups there are still deep divisions
over the concept of the responsibility to protect and misconceptions about how
and when it should be applied. And some governmental resistance to the concept is
emerging from the perceived ambiguities – as illustrated by this statement in the Security
Council by the Chinese representative, Li Junhua:
At present, there are still various understandings and interpretations about this
concept by many member states. Therefore the Security Council should refrain from
invoking the concept of “the responsibility to protect”. 15
Footnotes 13–16:
13 “Summit Outcome Document”,
General Assembly Resolution U.N.Doc
A/RES/60/1 (New York: United Nations,
24 October 2005), par. 138-139.
14 UN Secretary-General Ban Ki
Moon’s speech on commemoration of
Rwandan genocide, April 2007.
15 Statement by Mr. Li Junhua (China)
during the Open Debate on the Protection
of Civilians in Armed Conflict, 22
June 2007, Security Council Chamber.
[Available at ].
16 Statement by Mr. Robert Tachie-
Menson (Ghana) during the Open Debate
on the Protection of Civilians in Armed
Conflict, 22 June 2007, Security Council
Chamber. [Available at ].
However, many countries have reaffirmed the concept and called for its implementation.
In the case of Ghana, a non-permanent council member at the time, rather robustly
stated:
It is … undeniable that the international community has the legal and institutional
tools to deal with this issue. The challenge for us now is how to translate
the mechanisms at our disposal into effective practical systems for the
protection of civilians …When States and combatants prove unwilling or unable
to act, the international community has a moral and legal duty to intervene
to avert a humanitarian catastrophe. 16
On the other hand, many civil society groups – even those who advocated for states
to adopt the summit pledge – are struggling with issues of application and implemen-
16 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

tation. Some are concerned that the responsibility to protect will be defined too narrowly,
as a doctrine for military intervention. Conversely, others feel that the concept
is too vague to be particularly useful as an advocacy tool and are unclear about how
to promote its implementation. Valid questions have been raised about which conflicts
it should be applied to and, if applied, the range of measures to invoke – from early
preventive action to military intervention. Advocacy groups have expressed confusion
over whether to use the responsibility to protect as an advocacy tool in relation to specific
conflicts, or whether they should promote the concept in and of itself. Amid the
confusion, Darfur provides a constant reminder of the substantial gap between agreed
concepts of civilian protection and the capacity and will to implement them.
ACTORS AND PROCESSES: From Articulation to Implementation
The United Nations
The United Nations has a lead role to play in implementing the responsibility to protect.
In 1999, Kofi Annan warned that “if the collective conscience of humanity . . .
cannot find in the United Nations its greatest tribune, there is grave danger that it will
look elsewhere for peace and for justice”. 17 It seems this warning is slowly but surely
being heeded. For example, in May 2007, Ban Ki-moon strengthened and expanded
the mandate of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide. 18 In early 2008, a
second Special Advisor was appointed to focus primarily on developing consensus
around the Responsibility to Protect.
Implementing the responsibility to protect, however, cannot be limited to one office – it
will require efforts across the system, particularly the Office of the High Commissioner
for Human Rights, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) and the Office
for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). There have been positive
signals that the responsibility to protect is taking hold in these and other parts of the
system. The High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, has been a vocal
advocate for the responsibility to protect. OCHA appears to be slowly but surely incorporating
elements of the responsibility to protect into its broader work programme
on the protection of civilians in armed conflict. DPKO lessons-learned exercises and
the development of doctrine for peace operations are positive developments. In early
2007, a Human Rights Council high-level mission on Darfur used the responsibility
to protect as an organizing framework for its analysis of the human rights situation
in the region. 19 The establishment of a new Peacebuilding Commission and efforts to
strengthen the UN’s conflict prevention mechanisms 20 also contribute to the ability to
move the preventive and reconstructive dimension of the responsibility to protect from
concept to reality.
Regional/Multilateral Organizations
Footnotes 17–20:
17 Kofi Annan, Address to the UN General
Assembly (New York: 20 September
1999)
18 Juan Mendez held the part-time
position of Special Adviser on the Prevention
of Genocide from 2004-2007.
Throughout 2006, a Special Advisory
Committee developed recommendations
for strengthening the office. It was subsequently
upgraded to a full-time position.
Francis Deng was appointed to this post
in May 2006.
19 Report of the High-Level Mission on
the situation of human rights in Darfur
pursuant to Human Rights Council
decision S-4/101, A/HRC/4/80 (Geneva:
Human Rights Council, 7 March 2007)
20 See “Security Council Calls for
Boosting UN’s Role in Preventing,
Resolving Conflicts” (New York: United
Nations News, 28 August 2007)
Leadership for implementing the responsibility to protect begins with the United Nations,
but it does not end there. The role of multilateral organizations other than the UN
should not be underestimated, both in strengthening international commitment to the
concept as well as in implementation.
The European Union, for example, expressed explicit support for embracing and upholding
the responsibility to protect at a crucial point in the debates leading up to the
2005 World Summit. The EU continues to support the implementation of the concept at
a rhetorical level, yet there is little indication that either the Human Rights Council or
the Peacebuilding Commission is working to incorporate the responsibility to protect
into its programme of activities. A proposal for establishing an international centre
for the prevention of genocide, championed by Javier Solana, Europe’s top official in
international affairs, may be a positive development in this regard.
17 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

From a military capacity perspective, the EU and NATO undoubtedly have the capability
to organize and lead military interventions to prevent attacks on civilians. While
NATO’s intervention in Kosovo is the most obvious case in point, in 2003 the EU conducted
its first mission outside of Europe – Operation Artemis – as a direct response to
escalating violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. However, the effort
to address systematically the operational elements of the responsibility to protect –
such as the development of doctrine, training and simulation exercises – remains very
much in its infancy. Research suggests that much remains to be done to prepare these
organizations and individual troop contributing countries for the planning and conduct
of operations aimed at halting genocide or mass killing. 21
Although they lack the resources and capacity of the European Union, African regional Footnotes 21–24:
and sub-regional mechanisms have demonstrated a desire to take a lead role in conflict
prevention and assessing conflict situations, as well as in formulating and implementing
timely and appropriate responses. The principles inherent in the responsibility to
protect are not new to Africa, and are arguably well incorporated into the normative
legal framework of the African Union (AU). Developed in the wake of the Rwandan
genocide, the Constitutive Act of the AU established for the organization a right to intervene
in cases of genocide and crimes against humanity. 22 This provision, frequently
referred to as the “principle of non-indifference”, attempts to balance out the longstanding
principle of non-interference in sovereign affairs with the human security
imperative. In the lead-up to the 2005 Summit, the AU reaffirmed its commitment to
the responsibility to protect, bringing attention to the role of regional organizations
in matters of peace and security. Operationally, the African Union is in the process of
developing the African Standby Force (ASF). The planning documents for the ASF
state that the Union would have a capacity to deploy a robust military force in 14 days
in cases of genocide or related atrocities. 23 However, the performance of AU forces in
Darfur and a review of the ASF development process to date provide little evidence
that this capacity will be available at any time in the near future.
In short, the incorporation of the responsibility to protect – at either the normative or
operational level – remains patchy within regional and multilateral institutions. The
responsibility to protect should therefore be placed firmly on the agenda of future summits
and key meetings, with the aim of achieving further endorsement of the concept
and opening dialogue on its application and implementation.
Civil Society
Civil society groups and networks of NGOs that have integrated the responsibility to
protect into their activities can be grouped into three broad categories; those that:
1) Use the responsibility to protect concept as an advocacy tool to advance
specific policy recommendations;
2) Develop networks, coalitions or broad-based consultations aimed at increasing
awareness and building support for responsibility to protect principles;
and
3) Conduct policy research and research aimed at developing operational
tools for implementation.
Currently, the most prominent “application” of the responsibility to protect has come
from advocacy groups in reaction to the conflict in Darfur. A number of vocal organizations
– including Oxfam, Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group –
have teamed up to produce joint press releases using responsibility to protect language
in their advocacy efforts. A new organization, “ENOUGH”, goes a step further, using
the responsibility to protect as a framework to determine which conflicts to address and
to suggest how they should be addressed. 24
18 • Minerva #32 • June 2008
21 See Victoria Holt and Tobias C.
Berkman, The Impossible Mandate?
Military Preparedness, the Responsibility
to Protect and Modern Peace Operations
(Washington: The Henry L. Stimson
Center, 2006)
22 Article 4(h) of the Constitutive Act
of the African Union grants the Union
“the right to intervene in a member state
pursuant to a decision of the Assembly in
respect of grave circumstances, namely:
war crimes, genocide and crimes against
humanity, as well as a serious threat to
legitimate order to restore peace and
stability to the member state.”
23 Roadmap for the Operationalization
of the Africa Standby Force, EXP/AU-
RECs/ASF/4(I) (Addis Ababa: African
Union, March 2005), B-1.
24 See www.enoughproject.org.

Various civil society efforts have aimed to raise general awareness of the responsibility
to protect. The World Federalist Movement’s New York Institute for Global Policy
has sponsored one of the more prominent civil society networks aimed at “advancing
responsibility to protect and to promote concrete policies to better enable governments,
regional organizations and the UN to protect vulnerable populations”. A number of
consultations have also taken place across Africa, engaging a wide range of civil society
organizations, governments and officials from the African Union and other regional
organizations. In May 2007, a forum of NGOs formally called upon the African Commission
on Human and Peoples’ Rights to endorse the responsibility to protect. Other
consultations in Asia and the Middle East have grappled with the issue of how to translate
the principles into regional contexts and how to overcome cultural or structural
barriers to implementing these principles. A recent upsurge of interest in the US has
led to a series of conferences and efforts to build a coalition geared toward shaping US
policy on prevention of genocide and crimes against humanity.
Research organizations in Europe, Africa and North America have contributed to developing
a better understanding of the operational implications of the responsibility
to protect. A groundbreaking study by the Henry L. Stimson Center on military preparedness
for conducting protection operations identified clear gaps that need to be
addressed “if aspirations to protect civilians are to transcend rhetoric and translate
into effective action in the field”. 25 This research led to a three-day workshop with
senior military commanders that identified lessons learned and developed operational
concepts for preventing or stopping mass atrocities. Other research has looked at how
regional organizations such as the African Union could better integrate responsibility
to protect principles into their work programmes.
While the above activities have resulted in increased awareness about the responsibility
to protect and contributed significantly to policy development, a number of organizations
have identified the need for a clearer focal point for this work in order to
develop strategies for moving this agenda forward. To this end, the International Crisis
Group teamed up with a number of NGOs and supportive governments to establish the
Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. The Centre aims to be a resource base
and catalyst for ongoing activity worldwide by NGOs, governments and key international
organizations. It was officially launched in February 2008 with an ambitious
agenda: 1) advance and consolidate the World Summit consensus on R2P; 2) protect
the integrity of the R2P concept; 3) clarify when non-consensual military force can and
cannot be used consistently with R2P principles; 4) build capacity on R2P within international
institutions, governments, and regional organizations; and 5) have in place
the mechanisms and strategies necessary to generate an effective political response as
new R2P situations arise. 26 The success of the Centre and its network of associates will
undeniably hinge on its ability to attract sustained support in order to deliver on what
is arguably a very long-term agenda.
Footnotes 25–27:
25 See Holt and Berkman, The Impossible
Mandate.
26 See www.globalcentrer2p.org
27 Address by Gareth Evans, President,
International Crisis Group, to Human
Rights Law Resource Centre (Melbourne:
13 August 2007), and Community
Legal Centres and Lawyers for
Human Rights (Sydney: 28 August 2007)
[available at www.crisisgroup.org].
THE IMPORTANCE OF WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP
First and foremost, giving “real meaning” to the responsibility to protect will require
concerted effort to deepen the international commitment endorsed by the 2005 Summit
and to establish it firmly as a norm of international law. The potential for backsliding
on the summit consensus presents an ongoing danger:
For whatever reason – embarrassment about their own behaviour, embrace of
the concept but concern about its misuse, or ideological association of any
intervention with neo-imperialism or neo-colonialism – there is a recurring
willingness by a number of states to deflate or undermine the concept. 27
If the responsibility to protect is to have any meaning at all, it will need to be promoted
in such a way that it does not get unnecessarily diluted. Since the 2005 Summit, there
has been a tendency to apply the “responsibility to protect” as a catchphrase to a wide
19 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

ange of activities, from nuclear non-proliferation, to HIV/AIDS, to global warming.
While this might achieve quick hits from an advocacy perspective, in the long run this
type of expanded application has more potential to weaken the potency of the concept
rather than strengthen it. The principle was conceived of and promoted to fill a specific
and glaring gap in international relations vis-à-vis effective responses to genocide and
crimes against humanity. Rather than broadening the concept, further clarity is needed
on the fundamental principles inherent in the concept itself as well as when and how it
should be applied, i.e. when genocide or other crimes against humanity are occurring
or imminent.
Specifically, what is needed are:
1) More explicit articulation of sovereignty as responsibility,
2) Clearer articulation of the international community’s responsibility (rather
than just willingness) to act when states are manifestly failing to protect their
own populations,
3) Clearer articulation of the threshold for action, including military intervention
in extreme cases and
4) New strategies that encourage the Security Council to adopt guidelines
for the use of military intervention as proposed by the ICISS and endorsed by
the Secretary-General’s Report on UN Reform.
Secondly, real capacity needs to be developed at multiple levels for preventing and
responding to genocide and related crimes against humanity. This includes:
1) Better and more systematic monitoring, analysis and reporting where there
are actual or imminent attacks against civilian populations, especially those
which lead to mass displacement or amount to ethnic cleansing;
2) Serious attention to developing mechanisms for preventing genocide and
crimes against humanity within multilateral organizations;
3) Supporting the capacity and increasing the efficiency of relevant decisionmaking
bodies, such as the Security Council and the African Union Peace and
Security Council, by ensuring they are adequately informed and prepared to
incorporate responsibility to protect principles into their decisions; and
4) Improving operational preparedness to conduct military operations in the
event that civilians require immediate protection. This will require research
on and development of lessons learned from past operations and the development
of doctrine and concepts, rules of engagement and appropriate training
and simulation exercises.
There is general agreement among advocates of the above agenda that it does not entail
an overhaul of the entire system for maintaining peace and security; rather “the goal
is to build up capacity so that when there is a political opportunity to act it can be applied”.
28
The Role of Women
Footnote 28:
Lee Feinstein, Darfur and Beyond:
What is Needed to Prevent Mass Atrocities,
CSR No. 22 (New York: Council on
Foreign Relations, January 2007), 13.
Women leaders and organizations focused on women and gender equality have succeeded
in raising awareness of both the disproportionate impact of conflict on women
and girls, as well as the unique contribution women can make in the realm of peace
and security. Decades of dedicated work in this area led to significant achievements,
notably the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in 1995, which acknowledges
“Women and Armed Conflict” as a critical area of concern, and Security Council Resolution
1325 on Women, Peace and Security in 2000. Resolution 1325 binds member
states to take action along four main areas of concern:
20 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

1) Participation of women in peace and security initiatives including peace
processes,
2) Inclusion of gender training for peace operations,
3) Protection of women and girls and promotion of their rights in armed conflict
and in post-conflict situations and
4) Gender mainstreaming throughout relevant programmes related to conflict,
peace and security. 29
Progress in actually implementing Resolution 1325 has been uneven and can probably
only be meaningfully evaluated within a long-term framework. However, it is patently
clear that precious little has been done about the meaningful “protection of women and
girls and promotion of their rights in armed conflict”. Within the context of the responsibility
to protect, this should be a top priority of all women leaders.
At a broader policy level, there are two strategies that women leaders and advocates
can adopt in order to advance the responsibility to protect. First, they can work to incorporate
the concept into existing work programmes focused on women, peace and
security.
The responsibility to protect provides an important complement to existing commitments
to protect women’s rights and security. Early consultations on the responsibility
to protect highlighted the need for women’s groups and women leaders to become
more engaged. For example, following a series of consultations across Africa, Project
Ploughshares found that:
The disproportionate burdens borne by women in armed conflict, the fundamental
role of women in traditional African mechanisms of conflict resolution,
and the urgent need for women to be much better represented in positions
of authority are widely recognized as foundational truths that must be
acknowledged in Africa’s new peace and security architecture. Yet women are
consistently underrepresented in fora where grand decisions around peace and
security are made. 30
The focus on the protection of populations at risk as well as the inclusion of crimes
against humanity in the threshold criteria of the responsibility to protect have been
welcomed by advocates of this agenda. The government of Canada, speaking to the
Security Council on behalf of the Human Security Network in 2005, illustrated the
linkages between the responsibility to protect and all programmes aimed at preventing
and combating gender-based violence:
. . . [T]he Network welcomes the recent adoption of the principle of the Responsibility
to Protect by world leaders in the World Summit Outcome. We
were particularly pleased that the threshold for action that was endorsed is
an inclusive one, in that it holds not only genocide and war crimes but also
crimes against humanity as a key trigger for action. The definition of crimes
against humanity includes all of the most egregious examples of gender-based
violence — the horrific results of which we have seen in too many conflict
areas. … In particular, a rigorous monitoring and reporting mechanism for
gender-based violence will be essential to ensure that states shoulder their
responsibility to not only prevent such violence but also to protect their own
citizens from such crimes. 31
In a similar vein, the World Federalist Movement through its Civil Society Network
calls on organizations focused on women, peace and security to view the responsibility
to protect and Resolution 1325 together, as mutually reinforcing commitments by
governments toward preventing and stopping mass atrocities including international
crimes against women and children.*
21 • Minerva #32 • June 2008
Footnotes 29–31:
29 See Jennifer Bond and Laurel Sharret,
A Sight For Sore Eyes: Bringing
Gender Vision to the Responsibility to
Protect Framework (INSTRAW, October
2005).
30 Greg Puley, The Responsibility to
Protect: East, West and Southern African
Perspectives on Preventing and Responding
to Humanitarian Crises, Working
Paper (Waterloo: Project Ploughshares,
2005), 25.
31 Security Council Open Debate on
Women, Peace and Security, 27 October
2005.
* [See next page]

Secondly, there is a pressing need for more champions worldwide, and in particular for
women leaders, to add their voices and efforts to those who believe in and advocate
for the protection of civilians from genocide and crimes against humanity. They can do
so, in particular, by:
1) Promoting the significance of the 2005 World Summit’s consensus on the
responsibility to protect,
2) Protecting the integrity of the principles of the responsibility to protect,
3) Encouraging relevant political institutions to endorse and promote the norm
and
4) Ensuring that the responsibility to protect is on the agenda within relevant
discussions (such as this global women leaders summit) – and work to integrate
it into the work programmes of multilateral institutions.
CONCLUSION: What Needs to Be Done
Solidifying the still-fragile commitment to the responsibility to protect and ensuring
its implementation will require sustained advocacy at a high political level. Yet there
are currently only a small number of dedicated advocates with the diplomatic or moral
weight to build political support toward this end. And the most prominent are men:
Gareth Evans is arguably one of the most prolific speakers and writers on the responsibility
to protect and has been an enormous force in keeping the concept front and centre
in a skeptical diplomatic climate; General Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian officer let
down by the Security Council when he called for more troops in Rwanda and warned
a genocide was being planned, is another steadfast champion, speaking worldwide on
the topic.
The High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, has been one of the few
vocal female advocates. She is limited, however, by her own official mandate and responsibilities
in how far she can compel further advancement of the issue. She is also
stepping down from her post in June. In short, political leaders, civil society spokeswomen
and high-level officials have a responsibility to send a clear signal that there
needs to be a concerted drive toward implementation. In addition to individual champions,
the newly created Group of Elders may hold promise in this regard.
While Gareth Evans rightly observed that it has taken the world an insanely long time
to come to terms conceptually with the idea that state sovereignty is not a license to
kill, we need champions who build on this enlightenment. Champions with the conviction
needed to move beyond a realization of the obvious; women who are not prepared
to accept the fact that it is taking an insanely long time to actually do something to stop
state-sponsored or condoned violence against civilians, including women and children.
Women heads of state can work to galvanize broader political support for the responsibility
to protect through regional and other multilateral organizations and to focus
attention on the responsibility of individual states to protect their own populations.
Senior women officials can work to ensure that commitments on the responsibility
to protect are institutionalized appropriately and incorporated into existing work programs
focused on women, peace and security. And women leaders in civil society need
to help keep the spotlight where it belongs – on the development of effective strategies
to prevent and respond to mass atrocities. Ultimately, it may be up to women leaders
to move the responsibility to protect from a catchphrase that sounds right to its rightful
position as a cornerstone of international relations in the 21st century.
22 • Minerva #32 • June 2008
Long seen as the collateral damage
of conflict, systematic rape has
become a means of achieving
military ends. Rape under orders
is not merely an aggressive manifestation
of sexuality, but a sexual
manifestation of aggression.
- Inés Alberdi, Executive Director,
UNIFEM (United Nations Development
Fund for Women), 17 June 2008
* [Editor’s footnote] - R2P and Resolution
1325 in the DRC - “To recognize
[systematic rape] as a security issue is to
justify a security response,” Inés Alberdi
wrote to the New York Times on the eve of
the 19 June UN Security Council debate
on “whether sexual violence is linked to
international peace and security”.
“[S]exual violence is a tactic of choice in
Darfur and Congo,” she noted, not a side
effect, as many assume. “The effect is to
force populations to flee, punish civilians
seen as partisan, reward irregularly paid
arms bearers, secure resources and shatter
community cohesion. It is cheaper and
more destructive than other methods of
fighting, and easier to get away with until
now. … During the Security Council’s
mission to Africa this month, UNIFEM
arranged for women’s civil society groups
to speak directly with Council members.
As one activist said, sexual violence did
not abate after the January peace talks in
Goma, Congo. Why not? It was simply
never discussed. Such silence advertises
that rape can be perpetrated with impunity.”
By late last year, rape by gangs of armed
militia already had damaged or killed
more than a quarter-million women &
girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo
— believed to be the highest number
of war rapes in the world (Radio Netherlands
Worldwide, 1 December 2007).
Arguing with passion that “what’s happening
in the Congo is an act of criminal
international misogyny, sustained by
the indifference of nation-states and by
the delinquency of the United Nations”,
former UN Special Envoy Stephen Lewis
asserts that “the Secretary-General should
pull out all the stops in getting the United

Nations to agree that the Congo is the best
test case for the principle of the ‘Responsibility
to Protect’. This principle was
universally endorsed by heads of state at
the UN in September of 2005. It’s the first
major contemporary international challenge
to the sanctity of sovereignty. It
simply asserts that where a government is
unable or unwilling to protect its own people
from gross violations of human rights,
then the international community has the
responsibility to intervene. That … can be
diplomatic negotiation, or economic sanctions,
or political pressure or military intervention
— whatever it takes to restore
justice to the oppressed. Responsibility to
Protect was originally drafted with Darfur
in mind — it’s equally applicable to
the Congo. We have to start somewhere”
(“Protecting the Women of Congo”, The
Nation, 28 April 2008).
Mr Lewis deplores that the UN-facilitated
“‘Act of Engagement’ — a so-called peace
commitment signed amongst the warring
parties” last January, though a lengthy
document, never mentions the horrific
level of rape and what’s commonly known
in Congolese medical practice as “vaginal
destruction”, and grants amnesty far too
broadly, encouraging a sense of impunity
for outrageous behavior. “The war may
stutter; the raping is unabated.”
This happened despite passage in late
December, after growing clamor about
this issue, of “the strongest language condemning
rape and sexual violence ever to
appear in a Security Council resolution”,
in the renewed mandate for MONUC, the
UN peacekeeping force in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo.
“And perhaps most unconscionable of
all”, laments Mr Lewis, “despite the existence
for seven years of another Security
Council resolution 1325, calling for women
to be active participants in all peace deliberations,
there was no one at that peace
table directly representing the women, the
more than 200,000 women, whose lives
and anatomies were torn to shreds by the
very war that the peace talks were meant
to resolve. Thus does the United Nations
violate its own principles.”
Believing that unconscionable neglect
of “more than 50 percent of the world’s
population, amongst whom are the most
uprooted, disinherited and impoverished
of the earth” extends to the office of the
Secretary-General, Stephen Lewis is one
of the principal proponents of the recommendation
by the High-Level Panel on
Reform of the United Nations of a new
international agency for women:
“If the new agency comes into
being, headed by an Under-Secretary
General, with funding that starts at $1 billion
a year (less than half of UNICEF’s
resources), and real capacity to run programs
on the ground, issues like violence
against women would suddenly be confronted
with indomitable determination.
“The women activists on the
ground, the women survivors on the
ground, the women activist-survivors on
the ground would finally have resources
and support for the work that must be
done.
“But the creation of the new
agency is bogged down in the UN General
Assembly, caught up in the crossfire
between the developed and developing
countries. The Secretary-General could
break that impasse if he pulled out all the
stops. He and the Deputy-Secretary General
make speeches that give the impression
they support the women’s agency,
but in truth the language is so carefully
and artfully couched as to gut the agency
of impact on the ground, in-country, were
it ever to come into being.”
Stephen Lewis has been Canadian Ambassador
to the UN, the Deputy at UNICEF,
an advisor on Africa to a former Secretary-General,
and most recently a “Special
Envoy” for AIDS in Africa. He says
that, in nearly 25 years of international
work, he has been “a ready apologist for
the United Nations” and continues “to be
persuaded that the United Nations can yet
offer the best hope for humankind”, but
it is necessary to be critical “when the
United Nations goes off the rails, as is the
case in the Congo — as is invariably the
case when women are involved. … What
makes this all the more galling is that in
many respects, the UN is the answer.”
Summit Statement on R2P and UNGA
Resolution of 15 November 2007:
International women leaders who came
together at the historic Global Security
Summit in NYC, November 15–17, 2007,
commend the passing of a resolution yesterday
by the UN General Assembly calling
for the elimination of rape and other
forms of sexual violence in all its manifestations,
including in conflict and related
situations. Although this is a step in the
right direction, we deeply regret the resolution’s
inadequate recognition of state
responsibility to protect citizens from
organized mass rape or the use of rape
as a political tool. Rape is a horrendous
crime in any circumstance but when per-
From the International Women Leaders Global Security Summit (November 2007)
Call to Action:
… We call on both government and individuals to effectively use the local,
regional and international tools already in our hands, such as the United Nations Security
Council Resolution 1325, internationally agreed human rights standards including
the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women,
and evolving norms such as the Responsibility to Protect, which are endorsed by heads
of government and the international community. Similarly, policies that address the
common ground shared by development and security are widely recognized as good
practice, and should increasingly provide the framework for defense and economic
strategies.
There is an urgent need to strengthen the application of these tools. We call on
leaders to use them as designed: consistently, jointly and in global unison. Policymaking
on security will then be squarely rooted in human rights principles and international
law. We can also further strengthen their implementation by supporting reform
at the United Nations that calls for a stronger, consolidated body for women’s rights
and empowerment that operates robustly at the global policy and field levels.
23 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

petrated by those in positions of authority,
be they members of a state, military,
or peacekeeping force, it is particularly
abhorrent. Nonetheless, we hope that this
decision by the General Assembly will
lead swiftly to effective action to prevent
these crimes and punish perpetrators. It
must also serve to remind states of their
principal responsibility to protect all of
their citizens.
From the February 2008 report,
prepared by Antonia Potter & Jaime Peters,
of the November 2007 International
Women Leaders Global Security Summit
at Jumeirah Essex House, New York City.
The Summit premise was that “human
and state security must be integrated in
order to create a more secure world.
Four themes, emphasizing the interconnectedness
of human and state security,
shaped Summit activity: climate change,
the responsibility to protect, the
economics of insecurity [see page 37]
and preventing terrorism.”
… To fulfill the responsibility to protect, we must:
• Actively reinforce the global consensus that all nations bear collective responsibility
to protect civilian populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes
against humanity.
• Clearly and consistently articulate the international community’s responsibility to
first take action through diplomatic and other non-violent means when states fail to
prevent or respond effectively to the above-mentioned crimes, even when committed
by non-state actors.
• Press government representatives at the United Nations to articulate a clear threshold
for taking military action to prevent these crimes, and to press the UN Security
Council to authorize decisive and timely action when this threshold is crossed.
• Insist that women’s views are sought and women leaders are included in all peace and
security initiatives, including Track I and II negotiations.
• End impunity for violence against women and promote gender awareness in all stages
of peace processes by mandating training for civilian and military personnel on the
various ways insecurity manifests for women, including rape, murder, sexual harassment,
unfair treatment and unequal power relations between men and women.
• Call on world leaders to protect the impartial and independent space of humanitarian
actors working alongside military forces in areas of crisis.
UN Rule of Law Assistance Unit?
In addition to R2P, the 2005 UN World
Summit Outcome Document has a section
described by International Court
of Justice President Rosalyn Higgins as
recognizing “the need for universal adherence
to and implementation of the rule of
law at both the national and international
levels by, inter alia, supporting the establishment
of a Rule of Law Assistance
Unit within the UN Secretariat. This Unit
would strengthen UN activities to promote
the rule of law, including through technical
assistance and capacity-building. It
was expected to adopt concrete measures
such as establishing independent national
human rights commissions, reintegrating
displaced civilians and former fighters,
and increasing the presence of law
enforcement officials” — an example of
“how conceptually dispersed is the idea
of ‘the rule of law’”, in her view.
ICJ & ICC
Judge Higgins often expresses concern
about unrealistic references to “international
rule of law” when there is “manifestly
no world government system into
which the [national rule of law] model
could most easily fit”. In the current international
framework, where there can be no
consistency of application & review and
no full enforcement, the increasing popularity
of the term “rule of law” requires
“a certain scepticism”, she cautioned in
the 2007 Grotius Lecture at the British Institute
of International and Comparative
Law. She suggests that the term is being
made too elastic at the UN by States seeking
to qualify a wide range of recycled
projects for funding. And of course a major
issue is that there are “publicly diverse
perspectives on the implications of the
rule of law for the principle of the equal
sovereignty of states” (2006 speech at the
London School of Economics).
Nevertheless, she believes that progress
can be made by simultaneously improving
domestic legal systems and strengthening
international institutions. Toward
that end, she hopes: for better public
understanding of the work of the ICJ
(widely misconceived as non-binding and
ignored) and of the ICC; that the absence
of compulsory recourse to the ICJ is dealt
with; and that the risk of fragmentation is
“manageable and can largely be avoided
24 • Minerva #32 • June 2008
by forming cordial relationships with the
various international courts and tribunals
involving the regular exchange of information
and open lines of communication.
To date, the general picture has been one
of these courts seeing the necessity of locating
themselves within the embrace of
international law, and desiring to follow
the Judgments and Advisory Opinions of
the International Court of Justice.”
Rosalyn Higgins, President of the
International Court of Justice,
and Deputy Secretary-General Asha-
Rose Migiro at UN Headquarters in
New York, November 2007
(UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras)

Kelly Whitley, Deputy Convenor
of the co-sponsoring Responsibility
to Protect Coalition, prepared
this summary of the R2P conference
presented recently by the Center for
International Human Rights of Northwestern
University School of Law, which
has granted permission to reprint these
excerpts. Statements of fact and expressions
of opinion in this report may not
necessarily reflect the observations or
views of particular conference participants,
their respective organizations, or
the project funders. Individual participants
in the dialogue may not agree with
the report in its entirety.
The Center for International Human
Rights (CIHR) at Northwestern University
School of Law’s Bluhm Legal Clinic
concentrates on “emerging human rights
norms and related issues” and provides
“clinical experiences for students interested
in the protection of human rights on a
global scale”. It focuses much of its work
on the Responsibility to Protect doctrine,
corporate human rights responsibility, the
jurisprudence of the international criminal
tribunals, Alien Tort Statute litigation,
death penalty cases, truth and reconciliation
commissions, and issues related to the
forthcoming review conference of the International
Criminal Court. FMI: .
The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) Coalition
is a non-partisan, non-profit grassroots
organization. Its mission is “to convince
the American people and its leaders
to embrace the norm of the responsibility
to protect as a domestic and foreign policy
priority; to convince the United States
that it must demonstrate its commitment
to effectively upholding global human
rights by joining the International Criminal
Court; and to convince civil society
leaders that the United Nations and the
International Criminal Court must be empowered
with a legitimate and effective
deterrent and enforcement mechanism to
arrest indictees of atrocity crimes”. A core
group of prominent academic, legal, and
religious organizations provides guidance
and oversight on how best to achieve
“R2P-appropriate action”. FMI: .
The Responsibility to Protect & the ICC:
America’s New Priorities
Summary
25 • Minerva #32 • June 2008
Kelly Whitley
The December 2007 conference on “The Responsibility to Protect and the International
Criminal Court: America’s New Priorities” was the most in-depth discussion to
date on how the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine (R2P) can be advanced with greater
American participation in the International Criminal Court (ICC). Much attention has
been paid to advancing the diplomatic, economic and military aspects of R2P, but this
conference was the first of its kind to consider the judicial element of the Responsibility
to Protect doctrine. The conference also focused discussion on the development
of an international framework to empower the International Criminal Court with a
mechanism to enforce its judgments – an International Marshals Service. This is a
capacity that the Court currently lacks and that gap in enforcement has greatly strained
the ability of the Court to achieve custody of indicted fugitives, particularly where
States fail to cooperate with the Court’s requests.
As the international community is witnessing around the world, … atrocity crimes
of the most conscious-shocking nature are being committed with impunity, despite
the constant pledge resounding in many nations’ capitals of “never again” allowing
such situations to occur. R2P is a new and emerging framework grounded in the rule
of law that aims to protect populations from genocide, crimes against humanity and
war crimes. Conferees agreed that a discussion was needed on how to devise useful
and pragmatic strategies on what steps the United States could take domestically, and
with other international institutions, to implement R2P judicially. Conferees felt that a
nexus exists linking the R2P with the ICC through the moral commitment guiding both
to address and ultimately eradicate situations of atrocity crimes.
Conferees also felt that justice and peace [are] complementary, and that a comprehensive
peace process must strike the right balance of meeting the highest standards of international
legal norms and procedures while also maintaining respect for the cultural
and political sensitivities of the societies affected. Accordingly, the ICC falls within
this comprehensive legal approach, and conferees agreed it is time to broaden domestic
awareness in and support for greater American involvement in the Court. Specifically,
conferees strongly felt that common American misperceptions — particularly among
officials at the Department of Defense and members of Congress — about the Court
must be corrected.
… [K]ey findings and recommendations summarized in subsequent sections of this
report are listed below:
Political Issues on ICC and R2P
• There is clear need for serious research and thoughtful policy analysis for government
officials, academics, civil society, and others concerned with advancing the issues of
R2P and the ICC, as well as broad community dialogue and engagement.
• An information campaign is needed to build broad-based American support for the
greater participation in the international judicial intervention aspects of R2P, and specifically
in the ICC, that must address a wide variety of political, legal and attitudinal
issues. When crafting the campaign message, advocates must capitalize on the dynamic
of “change” taking place in the current US political environment by communi-

cating that R2P and the ICC are wholesale
changes in the standard policies and practices
of protecting innocent civilians and
preventing atrocities from occurring.
• The United States should seek to identify
measures it can responsibly take
to prevent the commission of atrocity
crimes against civilian populations. These
steps include, as part of such an effort, the
ratification of or accession to, implementation
of, and compliance with relevant
international legal instruments.
• The US should engage in the anticipated
2010 Review Conference of the Rome
Statute, and in particular it must participate
in the Special Working Group on the
Crime of Aggression.
Addressing Military Concerns
• A strategy must be undertaken to better
educate the military community to understand
that the Court can assist the United
States in addressing strategic national interests
and meeting US military goals.
• An education campaign must focus initially
on high-level commanders. Education
strategies must focus on providing a
better understanding of what are the real
vulnerabilities that the military might face
in being brought before the Court and
how compliance with US laws may address
their concerns about being subject
to international courts such as the ICC.
• The United States should evaluate the
secondary effects of US non-party status
and the continuing pursuit of Article 98(2)
agreements world-wide in order to identify
adverse ramifications in areas vital
to US national interests and in America’s
ability to conduct military operations.
Creating an ICC Enforcement
Mechanism
• In creating an international framework
akin to an International Marshals Service,
a number of key factors in the development
of such an enforcement mechanism
for the Court must be considered. These
include 1) state responsibility principles
to arrest and handover; 2) entities that can
effect an arrest; and 3) challenges ahead
(cost vs. benefits, political will, state consent,
intelligence sharing, non-permissive
environments and US engagement).
• Of the variety of compliance mechanisms
considered during the conference,
participants recommended a specialized
international task force focused on the
problem of enforcement for the ICC.
This task force would be a group of either
standing or ad hoc character, composed
of military and law enforcement personnel
from States, with perhaps either a UN
or ICC affiliation. The task force would
trade expertise on strategies for arrests
and explore which governments or alliances
or organizations might have an interest
in effectuating arrests without having
to commit in advance to arresting any
particular indicted fugitive.
With respect to atrocity crimes, America’s
future relationship with the world needs
to be guided by the principles of prevention,
cooperation, multilateralism, burden
sharing, fighting impunity, respect for the
rule of law, and the use of military force
only as a last resort. This report summarizes
the strategy discussed by the conferees
and lists recommendations for how
the United States can advance the judicial
aspects of the Responsibility to Protect
Doctrine, re-engage with the International
Criminal Court, and conceptualize an enforcement
mechanism for the Court.
Introduction
Over the course of the past five years,
the international community has adopted,
with varying degrees, two related
means for responding to and preventing
the atrocity crimes of genocide, crimes
against humanity, war crimes and ethnic
cleansing. The first is the “Responsibility
to Protect Doctrine” (R2P), which the UN
General Assembly adopted — with US
endorsement — in September 2005. R2P
mandates effective responses to widespread
assaults on civilian populations at
the national level first but, if necessary,
through collective international action.
Many focused on R2P implementation
have sought to apply the doctrine in country-specific
cases and have considered a
range of political, economic, diplomatic,
and military intervention options. What
26 • Minerva #32 • June 2008
has been absent from these debates, however,
is any serious discussion on the judicial
arm of R2P, i.e., when an international
judicial response can either support
or replace military options.
In order to move away from ad hoc, unilateral,
and politically-driven military and
diplomatic interventions to enduring and
legitimate judicial deterrence and enforcement,
policy makers and others considering
R2P-appropriate actions for atrocity
crimes should look to solutions within
the international criminal justice system.
More specifically, R2P supporters should
seek, when appropriate, to imbed the R2P
doctrine in the global judicial path being
forged by the International Criminal Court
(ICC), a fresh hallmark in international
relations for responding to and preventing
future deadly conflicts. R2P and the
ICC are both guided by the same moral
commitment to address and ultimately
end atrocity crimes, and that moral commitment
is the nexus that should underpin
advocating necessary changes in the national
discourse of US foreign policy.
The next American presidential administration
… provides an opportunity to reaffirm
key priorities for America: justice,
the rule of law, human rights, and the end
of the most heinous crimes known to humankind.
The groundwork has been laid
already. In September 2005, the United
States joined consensus on the UN General
Assembly’s adoption of the World
Summit Outcome Document, which articulated
R2P. Shortly thereafter, in Security
Council Resolution 1674 of April
26, 2006, which focused on the protection
of civilian populations, US officials
endorsed reference to the R2P provisions
of the World Summit Outcome Document
as critical to that objective. Until
2001, the United States had a relatively
positive history of involvement with the
ICC. Throughout the UN negotiations
on the Court that formally began in 1995
and culminated with the Rome Statute on
the ICC in July 1998, the United States
strongly supported the establishment of a
permanent international criminal tribunal
that would bring to justice those responsible
for the commission of atrocity crimes.
Though the United States opposed the final
draft of the Rome Statute [over] certain

issues [as] addressed in that draft, during
1999 and 2000 the United States actively
participated in further negotiations and
joined consensus on the Rules of Procedure
and Evidence and on the Elements of
Crimes adopted in June 2000. On December
31, 2000, the United States signed the
Rome Statute of the ICC. But … on May
6, 2002, President Bush took the unprecedented
step of denying … [it].
Nonetheless, there are alternative views
that American engagement with the Court
remains important for the long-term success
of the Court and for the achievement
of US foreign policy objectives. … [T]he
Center for International Human Rights at
Northwestern University School of Law
and the Responsibility to Protect Coalition
convened [this] conference … with
those aims in mind.
Fifty-five leading experts from the ICC,
the International Criminal Tribunal for
the Former Yugoslavia, academia, nongovernmental
organizations, the military,
religious communities, and the federal
court system attended the conference.
Keynote addresses were delivered by
Samantha Power, Harvard University’s
Anna Lindh Professor of Practice of
Global Leadership and Public Policy, Luis
Moreno-Ocampo, chief prosecutor for the
International Criminal Court, John Prendergast,
director of the ENOUGH Project,
Prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al-Hussein,
Jordan’s Ambassador to the United States
and the former President of the Assembly
of States Parties of the ICC, and US
Army General Wesley Clark (ret.), former
NATO Supreme Allied Commander.
The goal of the conference was to formulate
recommendations on how the United
States should take steps domestically and
with other governments and international
institutions to advance the R2P principle
through the work of the ICC. Within this
framework, the conference focused on
three issues:
1. The Political Strategy for American
Cooperation/Participation re ICC
2. The Military Strategy for American
Cooperation/Participation re ICC
3. The Political and Military Strategy for
Development of an International Marshals
Service
This report is the outcome of the conference.
It [sets] out specific recommendations
on how to raise awareness on the
international justice elements of R2P, develop
constructive support for US participation
in the ICC, and lay the foundations
for an institutional enforcement mechanism
for the Court.
I. Laying the Foundations for Ending
Atrocity Crimes [history]
II. Building Political Support for the
International Criminal Court
2.1 Understanding the Common
Threads of R2P and the ICC
The Responsibility to Protect Doctrine is
a moral and ethical imperative that seeks
to end atrocity crimes. While R2P offers
a full range of measures for dealing with
crimes against humanity, war crimes, and
genocide, there has been no significant
policy discussion on the punishment and
accountability aspects of R2P. The doctrine
significantly changed expectations
at all levels about what is and is not acceptable
conduct by States, and yet it is
important to recognize that justice and the
rule of law are significant components of
the R2P matrix.
27 • Minerva #32 • June 2008
The United States should strengthen its
relationship with international and hybrid
criminal justice institutions so that it can
cooperate quickly and effectively with
courts and tribunals in preventing mass
atrocities. In particular, the ICC merits
greater support from the United States if
R2P is to be constructively advanced by
the US Government. International consensus
for the ICC is still growing, and
the R2P concept can help build this consensus.
As R2P is a mechanism concerned
with prevention, protection, and rebuilding
in situations of wide-spread atrocities,
so too is the ICC focused on deterrence,
hostility, cessation, and reconciliation in
those same kinds of situations. Furthermore,
R2P’s requirement to defer first to
State sovereignty and then act if and when
that State fails to demonstrate good faith
in ending the violence, is also a critical
element of the Rome Statute. By signing
the ICC’s founding Rome Statute, a State
agrees to the principle of complementarity,
in which the ICC assumes jurisdiction
over a case only when the State is unwilling
or unable genuinely to carry out the
investigation or prosecution.
As a new and emerging framework in interstate
relations, R2P is grounded in the
rule of law that builds on the international
legal and judicial systems. It is not, however,
a legal construct that imposes legal
responsibility on States or international
organizations that fail to uphold R2P criteria.
Rather, it shares with the ICC a moral
commitment to ending atrocity crimes.
2.2 Changing US Foreign Policy
Perspectives
The American public is justifiably concerned
about America’s and the international
community’s continued failure to
deal effectively with atrocity situations.
Darfur’s nightmare and the violence in
the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
Uganda, and the Central African Republic
continue. Iraq and Afghanistan remain
hostile and complex and US conduct at
detention centers in Guantánamo, Iraq,
Afghanistan and elsewhere, as well as
the conduct of US contractors [such as]
Blackwater and DynCorp, all point to the
need to re-think US strategies for engaging
in and ending wide-scale conflict.
With the US presidential elections approaching,
America is in a moment of serious
political self-reflection. The United
States should seek to re-cast its image
both at home and abroad in order to distance
itself from the perception (however
ill-conceived) that America is the rudderless
(even lawless) superpower and begin
to conduct itself as the leading global
power advancing global interests for the
betterment of humankind. This transformation
would emphasize cooperation,
multilateralism, respect for rule of law,
and a concerted effort to join the fight
against impunity for atrocity crimes.
In the aftermath of September 11, 2001,
America’s leaders have seemed determined
to wage a war against terrorism
that leaves the impression, if not the reality,
that the US is prepared to circumvent
international law. A step in the right
direction would be to move away from

this posture of hostility to international
commitments and bring the United States
back inside a pragmatic and yet still principled
framework of international law.
The United States can be a ‘good neighbor’
to the Court even if it does not yet
become a State Party. At a time when respect
in the international community for
America is at an all-time low, positive
re-engagement with the Court is a winning
proposition for the United States.
Through its role on the Security Council,
it can refer, under UN Charter Chapter VII
authority, the cases that it agrees the ICC
should investigate and prosecute, [such]
as the situation in Darfur. The US also can
participate as an observer in the Court’s
oversight body — the Assembly of States
Parties — to influence the Court’s development.
For example, many conferees
strongly believe that America needs to be
at the table in some capacity during discussions
on the crime of aggression.
2.3 Advancing a New Foreign Policy
Agenda
A majority of the American public believes
that the United States should play
an active role in addressing international
issues through multilateral processes.
Moreover, public opinion polls consistently
show strong American support for
US membership in the ICC. This level
of emotional support is broad but passive,
and an awareness-raising campaign
is needed to turn public opinion into a
driving force in the political process. A
campaign to build broad-based American
support for greater participation in the international
judicial intervention aspects
of R2P, and specifically in the ICC, must
address a wide variety of political, legal
and attitudinal issues. In developing an
information campaign strategy, the following
factors should be considered:
• It is essential to get the public message
right, because the costs of poorly devised
and implemented foreign and domestic
policies choices will ultimately have to be
borne by the American public. The R2P
and ICC platform lies on the power of
good argument to convince the public that
a foreign policy [that is both] right and …
just is … in their personal interest.
• Digital communication services, such
as e-mail, blogs, and text messaging, are
critical tools for advocacy in the 21st century.
In order to respond to these trends,
specific measures should be simple even
in the face of complexities: for example,
“war criminals should be brought to justice”
or “justice leads to peace” or “R2P
ends atrocity crimes”.
• When crafting the campaign message,
advocates must capitalize on the dynamic
of “change” taking place in the current
US political environment by communicating
that R2P and the ICC are wholesale
changes in the standard policies and
practices of protecting innocent civilians
and preventing atrocities from occurring.
The message needs to illustrate that the
new way of thinking means a new way
of protecting. The high-level adoption of
R2P in the UN General Assembly’s World
Summit Outcome Document in 2005, for
instance, was greeted by experts as a
“turning point” that removed “some of
the classic excuses for doing nothing”.
• Public endorsements of R2P and the
ICC by key politicians, civil servants, and
government officials are a good way to
increase visibility and recognition with
the American public, especially where the
proponents are well-regarded public figures
with a clear personal commitment to
the norm.
• Getting the public to accept R2P as a
principle is one thing; garnering support
for a commitment to greater participation
in the ICC it is quite another. The message
therefore must recognize the strength and
the resonance of the key common denominator
— moral argument for ending
atrocity crimes. The message must also
clearly convey to the public that adherence
to international justice and the rule
of law are a critical component of R2P
and that the ICC can put those elements
of the doctrine into operation.
2.4 Carrying the New Agenda Forward
There is clear need for serious research
and thoughtful policy analysis for government
officials, academics, civil society
and others concerned with advancing
the issues of R2P and the ICC, as well as
28 • Minerva #32 • June 2008
broad community dialogue and engagement.
Key US foreign policy stakeholders
must be engaged to further an information
campaign and help develop strategies to
advance R2P and the ICC nationally and
internationally. The target audience for
such a campaign should be a broad selection
of the following audiences:
• Engaged Organizations: … [D]edicated
advocates from civil society, government
officials, and international organizations
are actively seeking ways to address
atrocity crimes, and that developing alliance
and intellectual capacity should be a
focus on which to build a national policy
program that advances R2P and the ICC.
A core group of international NGOs in
New York and Washington, DC — AM-
ICC, International Crisis Group, Human
Rights Watch, Human Rights First,
the World Federalist Movement, and the
Stimson Center — are working on ICC
and R2P-related issue areas. At the domestic
level, the R2P Coalition has been
working to convince the American people
and its leaders to embrace the norm of
R2P as a domestic and foreign policy priority.
The Global Centre for the Responsibility
to Protect recently was created by
key supporters from government, NGOs,
and academia to ensure that R2P doctrine
is understood and put into practice by
governments and at the United Nations.
• Special Task Forces: The Genocide Prevention
Task Force, comprised part[ly] of
former top US officials, seeks to develop
practical recommendations to enhance
the US government’s capacity to respond
to emerging threats of genocide and mass
atrocities.
• New Allies: New civil society allies
should be enlisted to promote R2P and
the ICC, including faith and religious organizations,
student groups, labor unions,
foreign affairs institutes, journalists, and
political party institutes.
• Congress: Advocates must develop outreach
strategies at the federal level that
raise awareness of the ICC and assist with
the process of accession to and domestic
implementation of the Rome Statute.
With support of key members of Congress,
several measures can be advanced,
including:

o Launching … hearings in Congress to
support measures for a greater understanding
of the work and jurisdiction of
the Court and participation in the ICC;
o Adopting a “sense of Congress” resolution
that puts the federal legislature behind
R2P and the ICC and identifies specific
implementation measures;
o Capitalizing on the progress being made
in Congress to modernize the federal
criminal code through the enactment of
the Genocide Accountability Act of 2007
and with the positive developments of
such key legislation as the Child Soldiers
Accountability Act and the Trafficking in
Persons Accountability Act. Further work
is required in this regard to amend Titles
10 and 18 of the U.S. Code so that the full
range of crimes against humanity and war
crimes can be prosecuted in federal and
military courts without any question as to
the ability of such courts to exercise complete
subject matter jurisdiction over such
international crimes.
• Executive Level: In order to influence
the executive branch, efforts should focus
on getting R2P and the ICC into the platforms
of presidential candidates in a very
general manner. A focused discussion on
the issues surrounding greater participation
in the ICC could very likely create
an opportunity for some candidates to
inject popular prejudices and false claims
in order to gain power. The better focus
would be to talk about accountability,
ending atrocity crimes and re-establishing
America’s moral leadership in the world
through multilateral initiatives, beginning
with international commitments such as
the Rome Statute of the ICC and the Kyoto
Protocol (and/or successor treaty).
III. The Military Strategy for Greater
US Engagement in the ICC
3.1 Justifying U.S. Participation in the
ICC with the Military
American re-engagement with the ICC
would have potential implications in
a number of areas for the US military.
These areas include but are not limited to
national security decision making, training,
support roles, and rules of engagement.
While many officials at the Department
of Defense have feared exposing
US military personnel and officials to the
jurisdiction of the ICC, multiple possible
avenues for moving beyond the current
thinking within military circles to a more
constructive engagement with the ICC
exist and should be explored further.
The current US political leadership has
been the driving force behind military
opposition to the ICC. Building a consensus
on ICC-supportive positions within
the military will facilitate the process of
advancing the merits of ICC-related policies
at the federal and executive levels of
government. To achieve this consensus,
the military community must recognize
that the ICC is now a reality and, rather
than acting to undermine the work of the
ICC, the United States can advance national
interests (and the interests of US
military personnel) by joining the Court
and helping it fulfill its stated purpose —
prosecuting individuals who commit the
most egregious international crimes. Critics
must also realize that under international
law, military officials can already
be prosecuted by any country, wherever
they are captured (unless a Status of Forces
Agreement requires or permits US enforcement);
thus, the jurisdictional reach
of the ICC should appear less foreboding
and uniquely omnipotent. Also, under one
reading of the Rome Statute there remains
the risk that it theoretically would be possible
for a US national to be prosecuted
before the ICC while the United States
is a non-party State to the Rome Statute
if he or she is an alleged perpetrator of a
crime falling within the jurisdiction of the
ICC and such crime occurs on the territory
of a State Party to the ICC.
3.2 Defining the Issues – Making
the ICC a National Interest Issue
29 • Minerva #32 • June 2008
Many within the military community believe
that the ICC cannot assist the United
States in addressing a strategic military
problem or meeting US military goals.
Therefore, the most effective way to enhance
military confidence in the ICC is by
educating troops, military experts, and individuals
within the military justice community
on what the ICC was established
to do and how it works on an operational
level. The ICC’s complementarity provisions
provide an opportunity for demanding
that US authorities — not the ICC —
have the opportunity to investigate and
prosecute alleged crimes committed by
American military personnel. Moreover,
by making the necessary changes to US
law, America demonstrates to its skeptics
that it can and will investigate and
prosecute such allegations. Securing international
support is increasingly important
for advancing US security interests.
America’s ability to maintain its place as
a credible and effective leader in the 21st
century hinges in no small measure on its
willingness to lead with and through other
nations. Consequently, US military power
is more effectively employed when its actions
are endorsed as consistent with international
norms and when US forces act
in coalition and in conjunction with other
nations and international institutions.
Therefore, it is in this broader context that
the current military objections toward the
ICC should be reconsidered.
The current Administration’s position to
require full exemption from the ICC’s jurisdiction
for officials, agents, and citizens
of the United States and of other governments
as long as they are not party to the
Rome Statute contravenes basic axioms
of fairness and reciprocity. The Rome
Statute imposes important checks and
restrictions on its own behavior. These
include the provision of complementarity,
which provides for repeated opportunities
for the State of primary jurisdiction to
preempt and challenge ICC proceedings,
and enhanced due process protections for
the accused. The most important restraint
on the power of the ICC is the principle
of reciprocity itself. Any State that joins
the ICC, and thereby shapes its direction
through the selection of judges and prosecutors,
understands that it makes its own
citizens and leaders subject to the Court’s
prosecution. Member States of the ICC
understand that unscrupulous procedures
which they may tolerate in the treatment
of other countries’ citizens become precedents
that may end up being used against
their own citizens.
3.3 Gradually Engaging the Military
As the work of the ICC moves forward
and as US armed forces operate in diffi-

cult places such as Afghanistan and Iraq
where insurgents do not necessarily heed
international humanitarian law or the laws
of war, the US military must better understand
how it can relate to the ICC. Many
from the senior leadership and from lower
ranks of the military have only a rudimentary
understanding of how the ICC is designed
to operate. Even within the legal
and educational communities, knowledge
about the ICC is scant and basic. A gradual
engagement program is needed to ensure
that concepts of the ICC are being taught
and that a general attitudinal comfort with
the Court emerges.
The US military is a well-defined, hierarchical
structure; decision-making is rigid
and leader-oriented. Because most of the
major decisions are taken at the highest
levels of command and then transmitted
down to the lower levels, leaders must be
convinced that participation with the ICC
is not anathema to US interests. The arguments
that previously have been offered
to US military personnel generally have
not addressed issues that directly concern
military leaders. A clear strategic argument
that reduces the fear and anxiety of
American military leadership and provides
an obvious service internationally
is needed. A better understanding must
be articulated about the real vulnerabilities
that the military might face before the
ICC and how compliance with US laws,
including the Uniform Code of Military
Justice, and conduct consistent with rules
of engagement in any particular conflict
would address their concerns about being
exposed to the jurisdiction of international
courts such as the ICC.
More information is also needed during
lower-level troop training. War college
curriculums must integrate more detail
about the ICC, and larger parts of lectures
on the laws of war and international
humanitarian law must be devoted to
the ICC. To further a military education
effort, an ‘educational tool kit’ should
be developed to shape the training that
troops receive. Such a tool kit would be
offered to Judge Advocate General (JAG)
schools, war colleges and officials responsible
for training programs in the Department
of Defense with the goal of building
a broader and uniform understanding of
the work of the ICC and its limitations.
Individuals within the JAG community,
professors, and former officers that have
expertise in the ICC should be resources
for developing educational materials.
An independent, high-level panel should
be established to more evaluate the military
concerns with the ICC and how the
United States should proceed in light of
these concerns. This panel should have a
mandate to recommend how the United
States should relate to the ICC and what
role it should play in advancing the work
of the Court.
IV. The Political and Military Strategy
for Development of an
International Marshals Service
4.1 The Problems of Enforcing ICC
Judgments
The current ICC investigations underway
have highlighted a number of difficulties
faced by the Prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo,
and his staff. The greatest problem
for the ICC currently is how to ensure the
arrest and surrender of individuals sought
by the Court. The difficulties faced by
the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) are
immense and real. OTP staff must arrest
criminals in the context of ongoing conflict
or seek fugitives who enjoy sanctuary
in vast wilderness terrain, enjoy the
protection of armies or militias, or are
shielded by members of governments
complicit in the conflict.
The credibility of international humanitarian
law demands that the ICC hold
accountable those responsible for committing
atrocity crimes. The ICC, as currently
conceived, lacks a standing mechanism
dedicated to ensuring compliance
with its judgments. Rather, it relies on the
governments in the countries in which it
is investigating to provide for the enforcement
assistance it needs, which includes
protecting its investigators and witnesses,
collecting evidence, and arresting suspects.
When State compliance fails, the
ICC requires support from the international
community and Security Council.
As we have witnessed during the ICC investigations
in Uganda, the DRC, and the
30 • Minerva #32 • June 2008
Darfur region of Sudan, states have failed
to meet their international obligations to
search for and arrest war criminals in the
context of crimes within the jurisdiction
of the ICC. Some kind of mechanism
should be available to facilitate government
cooperation to ensure that the ICC
can forge ahead in the pursuit of justice.
Conferees undertook a serious examination
of issues that would arise in developing
such a mechanism. In creating an
international framework akin to an International
Marshals Service, the following
factors were considered ~
State Responsibility Principles to Arrest
and Handover - Determining procedurally
what must be considered for the
arrest or surrender of a fugitive does not
have to be a complex exercise. Principles
of international cooperation in detecting,
arresting, extraditing, and punishing
of persons guilty of atrocity crimes exist
that can aid in understanding the rules and
modalities of the arrest and surrender of
fugitives. These include the principles defined
in the Nuremberg Charter, Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, UN Charter,
Geneva Conventions, Rome Statute,
and the various ad hoc tribunal statutes.
Entities that can effect an arrest - When
it comes to wide-spread atrocity crimes,
the ICC is virtually the last resource between
accountability and impunity. There
should be no safe haven for fugitives of
justice, especially when those criminals
are masterminds of the world’s worst
crimes. To ensure that the ICC meets its
moral duty within the international criminal
law system, the complex challenge of
enforcing the law can be surmounted. A
variety of institutional possibilities currently
exist that can serve for determining
an appropriate kind of ICC police force
or International Marshals Service. These
entities have some level of knowledge
and expertise in effecting arrests and apprehending
criminals.
On the military front, the international
community can look to domestic military
and law enforcement forces, regional
models like NATO and the African Union,
and international operations such as UN
peacekeeping missions. To gather the
necessary political support for a formal

means of enforcement, policymakers, advocates,
and government officials should
consult with members of the UN Security
Council, the Member States of the ICC,
INTERPOL, and regional organizations
that have a security mandate or an obvious
political interest in the conflict.
Challenges Ahead - To function effectively,
international courts such as
the ICC, the International Criminal Tribunals
for the Former Yugoslavia and
Rwanda, and the Special Court for Sierra
Leone rely primarily upon States’ and
other stakeholders’ readiness to cooperate.
Yet the international community has
witnessed States failing to meet their international
legal obligations to take the
necessary measures to cooperate in the
detection, arrest, and extradition of persons
suspected of crimes that fall within
the jurisdiction of these courts. It is highly
likely therefore that the negotiation and
approval of potential substantive and procedural
mechanisms that might influence
States to give effect to their international
obligations will also encounter a number
of challenges in many State capitals.
The international community increasingly
is endorsing the practice of cooperation
through incentive, particularly when the
benefits of entering or complying with
an international agreement have to be
weighed against higher perceived costs.
Depending upon the institutional arrangement
envisioned, States will have to perceive
that the benefits outweigh the costs
and that the option of simply neglecting to
enforce the rule of law is not available. To
accomplish this goal, the chosen mechanism
could create incentives for governments
to enforce the rule of law, create
political costs for their failure to do so, or
minimize the role of political externalities
in an enforcement process. Furthermore,
an enforcement mechanism must overcome
governmental inaction caused by a
lack of political will and resolve.
Another challenge for the creation of an
enforcement mechanism for the ICC concerns
the issue of consent. In the territory
of one State, the general rule is that a second
State or entity cannot take enforcement
measures, that is, it cannot search
for and arrest suspected war criminals,
without the consent of the territorial State.
The exercise of criminal jurisdiction by
one State within the sovereign territory
of another State is a highly controversial
issue in international law. The arrest and
trial of a person suspected of an atrocity
crime who is in a State that fails to either
prosecute or extradite, therefore, poses
especially difficult problems because that
State is likely not going to consent to enforcement
measures by an international
or regional legal body.
Any international police force or marshals
service will also have to determine a process
for intelligence-sharing with States
involved in the ICC’s investigations. In
many instances during the course of ICC
investigations in Uganda and the DRC,
OTP staff have relied on States’ cooperation
to provide intelligence vital to investigations
that ultimately was not forthcoming.
Therefore an intensified focus on
cooperation for an International Marshals
Service in the collection and exchange of
information will contribute to the detection,
arrest, extradition, trial and punishment
of persons guilty of war crimes and
crimes against humanity. An enforcement
mechanism also will be tasked with providing
assistance in non-permissive environments,
either because the territorial
State does not give consent or the Court’s
investigations will be underway during
complex humanitarian emergencies.
4.2 Schemes for ICC Enforcement
The International Criminal Court’s …
practice already testifies to the limitations
it faces because it lacks a mechanism that
will induce compliance. A variety of compliance
mechanisms were considered during
this conference. Conferees discussed
what the implications would be if the status
quo remained, if the capacity to arrest
w[ere] enforced under UN Security Council
Chapter VII authority; if a regional alliance
or organization like NATO or the
African Union would provide a feasible
solution, or if a purely international marshals
service, functioning in the same capacity
as the US Marshals Service, would
most effectively serve the ICC. Also under
consideration was a permanent or ad hoc
task force expert on a range of technical,
procedural and legal matters that would
31 • Minerva #32 • June 2008
provide assets necessary to intervene and
deal with situation, permissively or nonpermissively.
Finally, the group identified
and discussed other possible mechanisms
such as reward systems, sealed indictments,
and States that would commit in
advance to an enforcement regime. …
V. Next Steps and Conclusion
Several steps, outlined in this report, still
need to be taken to complete the strategy
for engaging the American public, its
leadership, and US military personnel on
R2P and the ICC. Specific tasks for refining
the strategy include ~
Political Issues on ICC and R2P
• Develop serious research and thoughtful
policy analysis for government officials,
academics, civil society, and others concerned
with advancing the issues of R2P
and the ICC, and engage in broad community
dialogue.
• Design an advocacy campaign to build
broad-based American support for greater
participation in the international judicial
intervention aspects of R2P, and specifically
in the ICC. The message needs to
illustrate that the new way of thinking
means a new way of protecting.
• Identify the measures needed within the
United States to prevent the commission
of atrocity crimes against civilian populations.
These measures include determining
ratification, implementation, and
compliance with relevant international
legal instruments, including the Rome
Statute.
• Advocate that the USA in some way
must participate in the anticipated 2010
Review Conference of the Rome Statute,
and in particular in the Special Working
Group on the Crime of Aggression.
Addressing Military Concerns
• Develop a gradual engagement program
with US military personnel to ensure that
ICC concepts are understood.
• Focus education strategies initially on
high-level commanders. These strategies

must provide a better understanding of
what are the real vulnerabilities that the
military might face in being brought before
the ICC and how compliance with
US laws may address their concerns about
being subject to international courts such
as the ICC.
• Evaluate the secondary effects of US
non-party status and any sustained push
for Article 98(2) agreements world-wide
and identify adverse ramifications in areas
vital to US national interests and in
America’s ability to conduct military operations.
Creating an ICC Enforcement
Mechanism
• Consider the following aspects in the
development of an international framework
akin to an International Marshals
Service:
1) State responsibility principles
to arrest and handover;
2) entities that can effect an arrest;
and
3) challenges ahead (cost vs. benefits,
political will, State consent,
intelligence sharing, nonpermissive
environments and
US engagement).
• The recommended approach for the
problem of enforcement for the ICC is a
specialized international task force either
standing or ad hoc, composed of military
and law enforcement personnel from
States, including those party to the Rome
Statute and perhaps non-party States. The
task force would trade expertise on arrest
means and explore which State(s) might
have the interest, capability, and political
will to assist in effectuating arrest of particular
indicted fugitives in accordance
with the procedures established by the
task force.
The December 2007 conference on “The
Responsibility to Protect and the International
Criminal Court: America’s New
Priorities” focused on how R2P can be
advanced with greater American participation
in the ICC. The conference also
examined the development of an international
framework to empower the ICC
with a mechanism to enforce its judgments,
namely an International Marshals
Service or a special task force serving the
similar objective of achieving arrest of indicted
fugitives of the ICC.
The conference achieved its objectives in
addressing these issues. Its most visible
contribution lies in this report: a strategy
for engaging the America public, its leadership,
and the military community on the
criticality of the ICC in the overall R2P
challenge, and how to begin to devise an
enforcement mechanism for the ICC. The
emerging strategy needs to be completed
and refined, building on past successful
outreach efforts, so that current efforts to
bring the ICC into American public, political,
and military discourse are further
strengthened. The conferees “activated”
the judicial arm of R2P with pragmatic
and effective proposals for US engagement
with the ICC, but much more work
is required to realize this initial achievement.
Conferees expressed the hope that
they could be reconvened for future meetings
to continue the effort. The Center for
International Human Rights at Northwestern
University School of Law and the
Responsibility to Protect Coalition intend
to follow through with further working
sessions.
When we talk of intervention, people
think of the military. But under R2P,
force is a last resort. Political and diplomatic
intervention is the first mechanism.
And I think we’ve seen a successful
example of its application [in Kenya].
- Kofi Annan,
March 2008
But there is still a big distance to go
before we can be comfortable that
emerging R2P situations will be understood
as such; that there will be a reflex
international response – both among
governments and publics – supportive
of the need to respond appropriately,
both preventively before the event and
reactively after it, even when no national
interests can be directly called in aid;
and that the necessary policy tools and
mechanisms will be in place, able and
ready to be quickly mobilised.
- Gareth Evans
32 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

This letter in support of establishing a
United Nations Emergency Peace Service
(UNEPS) was sent to Members of
the US Congress on 3 December 2007.
For more information:
The letter was signed by:
3D Security Initiative
American Public Health Association
Americans for Democratic Action, Inc (ADA)
Americans for Informed Democracy
Amnesty International USA
Better World Campaign
Center for American Progress
Center for International Policy
Center for War/Peace Studies
Centre for Development of International Law
Church Women United
Citizens for Global Solutions
Civitatis International
CivWorld
COLEAD
Community of Christ
Council for a Livable World
Democracy Coalition Project
Earth Action
ENOUGH
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Foreign Policy in Focus
Fund for Peace
Genocide Intervention Network
Global Action to Prevent War
Global Associates for Health Development
Global Exchange
Global Ministries of the Christian Church
& United Church of Christ
Global Security Institute
Human Rights First
Human Rights Watch
International Crisis Group
International Rescue Committee
Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy
Maryknoll Global Concerns
NAACP
National Association of Social Workers
National Peace Corps Association
National Priorities Project
NETWORK: A Catholic Social Justice Lobby
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
Peace Action
Physicians for Human Rights
Presbyterian Church, (USA) - Washington
Rainbow/PUSH Coalition
Refugees International
Save Darfur
Union of Concerned Scientists
Unitarian Universalist Association
of Congregations
United Church of Christ, Justice & Witness Ministries
United Methodist Church, General Board
of Church & Society
United Nations Association of the USA
Universal Human Rights Network
Women’s Action for New Directions
United Nations Emergency Peace Service
We, the undersigned organizations, write in support of H. Res. 213, the resolution
calling for the establishment of a United Nations Emergency Peace Service (UNEPS)
capable of intervening in the early stages of crimes against humanity or other humanitarian
crises. We urge you to co-sponsor and work for passage of the resolution with its
champions, Representatives Albert Wynn (D-MD) and James Walsh (R-NY).
In recent years, the international community has been increasingly called upon to respond
rapidly and effectively to emerging crises, yet lacks the tools to consistently
answer this call. We believe the time has come for a permanent emergency response
service, designed to complement the capacity of the United Nations to provide stability,
peace, and relief in deadly emergencies.
As envisioned, UNEPS would individually recruit, train and employ 12,000–18,000
personnel with a wide range of skills, including civilian police, military, judicial experts
and relief professionals. This ensures that missions would not fail due to a lack of
skills, equipment, cohesiveness, experience in resolving conflicts, or gender, national
or religious imbalance. The Service could have special expertise in peacekeeping, conflict
resolution, environmental crisis response and emergency medical relief. Upon Security
Council authorization, UNEPS would be immediately available to respond to a
crisis, with first in–first out capabilities.
By intervening in the early stages of urgent situations, UNEPS could help prevent their
escalation into national or regional disasters. It is a tool that the international community
desperately needs in order to fulfill its “responsibility to protect.” Last spring,
Chad’s government requested a U.N. deployment of peacekeepers to slow the spillover
of violence from Darfur. However, while the U.N. struggled to prepare the mission,
Chad’s government backed away from the request.
UNEPS would also help to create a climate of stability so that confidence building
measures can take place. For example, on July 31, 2007 the United Nations Security
Council unanimously authorized the deployment of an African Union–U.N. hybrid
peacekeeping force (UNAMID). Unfortunately, reports indicate the UNAMID will not
be fully operational until well after its December 31, 2007 deadline. If UNEPS were
currently in existence, peacekeepers could have been on their way in days rather than
months after the agreement, bringing greater stability to the region and perhaps forestalling
a change of heart in Khartoum.
The job of building support and raising funds for each new U.N. peacekeeping mission
has been compared to that of a volunteer fire chief who is forced to raise funds, find
volunteers and secure a fire truck for each new fire. The U.N.’s goals for “rapid deployment”
are 30 days for a “traditional” peacekeeping mission (where all parties agree to
allow in peacekeepers) and 90 days for “complex” missions (where spoilers attempt to
derail a peace agreement). Unfortunately the U.N. usually lacks the resources to meet
these modest goals and will to need set the bar much higher to make an appreciable
difference to the civilians caught in the crossfire of today’s conflicts.
A United Nations Emergency Peace Service could save millions of lives and billions
of dollars, prevent small conflicts from growing into full-scale wars, and keep fragile
states from becoming failed states. It will also reduce the need to expend U.S. lives and
resources while effectively allowing others to share the burden. More than two-thirds
of the American public supports the U.N. having this capacity. We urge your serious
consideration of this important proposal and hope you will join us in support of H.
Res. 213.
33 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

International Justice and the
Challenge of Enforcement
Fatou Bensouda
The Honorable Mrs Fatou Bensouda,
Deputy Prosecutor of the International
Criminal Court, made these remarks in a
workshop at the 26 April 2008 Annual
General Meeting of Amnesty International
USA. The unofficial transcript,
provided to Minerva by AIUSA, has
been edited lightly.
Sixty years ago, we all remember that, with the Nuremberg trials, those who committed
mass atrocities were held accountable before the international community. Nuremberg
was a landmark, but the world unfortunately was not yet ready to transform this
landmark into a lasting institution. In the end, the world would wait for almost a half
century, in which we would see genocide again being committed — genocide committed
in Yugoslavia and genocide committed in Rwanda — before the … UN Security
Council created the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), thus again connecting peace with
international justice. The contribution of the ad hoc tribunals, however, is yet to be
fully recognized and measured. They have developed the law; they have prosecuted the
worst perpetrators — some were generals, some were members of the government; and
they have in their own way, albeit maybe a limited way, contributed to restoring lasting
peace to these conflict-torn regions.
The ad hoc tribunals of Rwanda and former Yugoslavia have paved the way for establishment
of a permanent, international court, the International Criminal Court (ICC).
What we should, I think, recall here is that, for centuries, conflicts have been resolved
through negotiations. We used to negotiate without legal constraints. In Rome, in 1998,
a new and entirely different approach was taken by the international community. The
international community decided that lasting peace requires justice. This was the position
that was taken in Rome by 120 states. The states in Rome committed to ending
the impunity for the most serious crimes of concern for the international community
and they committed to contribute to the prevention of such crimes from happening
again. These states created the International Criminal Court and gave it jurisdiction to
try genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. We see here that international
justice in 1998 was no longer – is no longer – a moment in history; it is neither an
ad hoc or post-conflict solution. It has become an institution. This is what happened.
What was created in Rome was more than a court. It is a comprehensive and global
international criminal justice system. […]
(Photo courtesy of Amnesty International)
For more information about AIUSA’s
international justice work, please watch
Justice Without Borders, AIUSA’s documentary
film released in late 2007. One
may watch the film online, take related
action, and sign up to host a local screening
at .
Substantial law has now been codified in one detailed text. The content of different
international conventions such as the Genocide Convention [and] the Geneva Convention
& its Protocols has been incorporated into the Rome Statute. We have elements of
crimes that have now been meticulously defined and built on the experience of the ad
hoc tribunals. … The definitions of sexual violence have been further elaborated in the
Rome Statute. Special emphasis has been placed on crimes against children.
Another example I can give you for why I said that we have created a comprehensive
global system is that different legal and prosecutorial traditions have been integrated
into a new international model. Victims have been given the right to participate in the
proceedings. This is happening for the first time at the international level. The voices
of the victims and their interests have been formally included in different stages of the
proceedings. A Trust Fund … for the reparation and the compensation of victims … has
been created in parallel with the International Criminal Court.
Another example is that the scope of the ICC jurisdiction now reaches beyond national
or even regional boundaries. The predecessors to the ICC, the ICTY and the ICTR
and the Special Court of Sierra Leone, were limited in scope to particular territory
or jurisdiction. The ICC is worldwide. It is a worldwide criminal justice system. Our
34 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

jurisdiction will extend over crimes that
are committed over the territory or by the
nationals of over 100 states parties. I can
even say that it would extend to the entire
world because the UN Security Council
can refer a case anywhere in the world to
the International Criminal Court.
But even more important was the decision
by states to give the Prosecutor the ability
to trigger the jurisdiction of the Court.
Certain provisions allow the Court to act
without an additional trigger, meaning the
Prosecutor does not have to wait for the
states to refer a case to him, neither does
he have to wait for the UN Security Council
to refer a case to him, but the Prosecutor
on his own, where the Court has
subject matter jurisdiction, can move in,
collect information and try the case. Why
this is important is that if the Prosecutor
uses this power, it is purely a judicial decision
by the Prosecutor; not by the state;
not by the UN Security Council. This is
the first time that an international tribunal
is able to do that. This is why I think this
is a very defining provision for the new
legal framework that we have created for
ourselves.
Let me again emphasize that the Rome
Treaty was not defined or drafted overnight.
I think that the Rome Statute is a
strong and consistent body of law. The
drafters of the Rome Statute were very
well aware [that] justice in the context of
conflict or peace negotiation would definitely
present difficulties, and they have
prepared the institution well to meet these
challenges. They have made very careful
decisions. For instance, there is a very high
threshold of gravity for the jurisdiction of
the Court [where its] jurisdiction was established.
They have created a system of
complementarity which was designed so
that the Court would intervene as a court
of last resort, in that when a state where
the Court has jurisdiction is not able or is
not willing to take action, then the Court
can take action. Again, this is why I said
that a very comprehensive international
criminal justice system was created; it
is not just the Court that we are talking
about. States, I think, have demonstrated
their understanding and have given very
firm support of the Court by the tremendous
speed in which the ICC was ratified.
Within four years … the Rome Statute entered
into force. For international treaties,
I think this is a precedent.
It is the law. It is the new law. The issue
now that we have is no longer whether we
disagree or we agree with the pursuit of
justice in moral or even in practical terms.
The ICC, the Court, is the law.
In the last 5 years, we have opened investigations,
four investigations in fact. This
is in the Democratic Republic of Congo
(DRC), in Northern Uganda, in Darfur in
the Sudan and in the Central African Republic
(CAR). All of these countries unfortunately
are still engulfed in conflicts
of various degrees. We have also analyzed
the situation in Venezuela and we have
analyzed the activities of nationals of 25
states parties that are involved in Iraq. We
are currently monitoring … situations on
three different continents, including Colombia,
Afghanistan, Kenya and in Côte
d’Ivoire in West Africa. In all of these
cases, we have collected evidence and the
Court has protected the witnesses and victims,
and the victims have started participating
in the proceedings. As of today, …
the judges of the International Criminal
Court have issued ten arrest warrants.
After five years, the Rome System is in
motion. It has become an operational tool
to end impunity for the crimes that are
committed in violent conflicts all around
the world. The challenge now is how the
decisions of the International Criminal
Court will be implemented by the politicians,
the international community. This
is the challenge that we face. The Prosecutor
often surprises diplomats in The
Hague and in New York and elsewhere
by telling them that the law and international
justice is not just for the judges. It
is also not just for the prosecutors and the
defense counsel. This is also the law for
political leaders, military and even the
negotiators. This is the law. We’re saying
that because it is only with their full
commitment that we really can all work
together to prevent the crimes and especially
to consolidate the judicial efforts
that we are doing now.
35 • Minerva #32 • June 2008
We the Prosecutors, we the lawyers, will
do our part, but we will do it in the courtroom.
It is the political leaders who have
the responsibility to ensure that the law
will be respected by all actors. That is
important. They have a responsibility, I
think, to actively and consistently support
and enforce the decisions of the Court.
The law cannot adjust to political needs;
it is not possible. Others have to adjust. It
is the challenge that we face to show that
we are consistent, especially in the commitment
that we have all made in Rome to
end impunity for the massive crimes that
are being committed.
The Prosecutor and we at the Court have
a judicial mandate. The role that we have
is to prosecute those who bear the greatest
responsibility for the most serious crimes
where, as I said, based on complementarity,
the national authorities are either
failing to act or are failing to act genuinely,
as we know of sham proceedings
— this is something that can happen. The
aim of our Office is to contribute to the
prevention of such crimes by ending impunity,
by strengthening the rule of law,
especially by highlighting the sufferings
of the victims, and by marginalizing the
most violent leaders that we have today.
What we do, we do in the courtroom and
in the field. But as I said, other actors
have to adjust. What we have to stop doing
is offering impunity to war criminals
or people who may have committed war
crimes, genocide or crimes against humanity
in exchange for security, because
when you offer them immunity, you offer
them security. In the framework of the
Rome Statute, these crimes can definitely
no longer be ignored, neither can they be
rewarded.
Sometimes [peace] negotiators … say
that we have taken away from their toolkit
instruments such as amnesty or immunity,
and we always remind them that
such tools at least in most cases did not
work. The Rome Statute was built based
on the failures and the lessons that we
have learned in the past. This was when
the international community failed to prevent
genocide. We also remind them that
the Rome Statute has offered a new tool,
and this is the law. It is the law for one; it
is the law for all. This is a new law that I
think we all can use to be able to manage
the violence. It is an independent, impar-

tial court that will enforce the law where
the states fail to do so. The responsibility
of our Office is to prove criminal responsibility
of the persons charged. As I said,
this is our part, and this is our part that we
will do in court. The culture of impunity
must stop.
This is the challenge; this is the major
challenge that not only the ICC faces,
but that the international community also
faces. Some of the international organizations
… involved in the management of
international conflicts should better respect
this new framework that we have.
The criminals that are sought by the Court
should be isolated and surrendered. This
is what we all have to do and I think that
we should all commit to it. Dealing with
this new reality is difficult; it is not easy.
The individuals that we seek today are
enduring the protection of armies, sometimes
they are enduring the protection of
militias and some of them are even members
of the government, as seen in the case
of Ahmad Harun. So the difficulties that
we face I will not underestimate. They
are real difficulties that we all face. What
we need to do, I think, is show leadership
now. It is time that we have some clear
activity to overcome these difficulties. If
the political leaders give up, I think the
very system that was created in Rome is
undermined. That’s the bottom line.
We see how the international community
is today addressing the problems that we
have in Uganda and in Darfur — where
in Darfur, for instance, the government
of Sudan is denying the crimes, denying
the reality, and labeling the destruction
of communities in Darfur as intertribal
clashes. We know they are not intertribal
clashes. It is organized; it is happening.
We try to urge the political leaders and I
think this is not only for the ICC to do; you
have your role in it. We have to remind
the political leaders of [Rome] 1998: that
was a unique political opportunity that we
had and it is time that we also rise to that
challenge. The law that we have today
makes the distinction between a soldier, a
terrorist, a policeman or a criminal.
One of the remarkable achievements of
Rome is that the armies around the world
… today are adjusting their regulations.
This is, I think, a direct consequence of
the Rome Statute. They are adjusting their
regulations to avoid the responsibility or
the possibility of committing acts under
the ICC jurisdiction. I think this is one of
the ways to stop crimes.
We also need citizens and political leaders
from all over the world requesting the
arrest of Ahmad Harun and Joseph Kony
as a first step. This is a first step for any
agreement and I think it will make a difference
for peace. It will make a difference
for the Ugandans, for the Darfuris.
What is simply at stake is the life or death
of millions … .
We cannot let the victims continue to wait.
These are people who took risks. They
took risks in situations of ongoing conflicts,
where you still have militias running
around, where you have brutal people
running around. We have to discreetly
work and talk with these people to get
their evidence and be able to present it in
court. I think these people deserve justice.
The perpetrators of these crimes continue
to threaten to resume the violence if
they are not given one form of amnesty
or another. … This is blackmail; really,
this is blackmail. They cannot commit all
these crimes for all these years and then
today say if you do not give me this, I
will continue. This is blackmail. They are
blackmailing the international community
and we need to really look into ourselves;
can we break the system? Can we?
That is what we need to ask ourselves.
I always say, of course we can. In 1830,
… those who were proposing to end slavery
were called different names. Some
said they were dreamers, some said they
were naïve, some even called them troublemakers
for proposing to end slavery.
But they succeeded. And I think we can
also.
“Justice as an Essential
Component of Peace”
[I]n recent years the marriage between
[the] two fundamental pillars of the United
Nations — peace and justice — has become
increasingly strenuous. More and
more the international community is
struggling to find a balance … . This has
become more pronounced as the judicial
work of the ICC begins to take shape,
amidst increased efforts by the United
Nations to achieve peaceful political
solutions to … internal armed conflicts
around the world. The recurrent question
has been: should perpetrators of grave
crimes such as genocide, war crimes and
crimes against humanity enjoy amnesty as
a trade-off for cessation of conflict? …
The challenge for negotiators is finding
solutions that are compatible with rules
of international law. The grim reality in
many peace negotiations is that negotiators
have to face the very leaders who
participated in the commission of grave
crimes and who will often seize the opportunity
to demand non-judicial alternatives
to prosecution as a precondition for
peace. Should the international community
give in to such blackmail?
… Peace and justice are not mutually
exclusive; they are in fact complementary
… . To sacrifice justice on the altar
of peace would be tantamount to giving a
new lease of life to impunity, and will, in
the long run, lead to more crimes. Justice
is an essential component to sustainable
peace.
- Karen Odaba Mosoti, of the
International Criminal Court Liaison
Office in New York, at a United Nations
University forum, 6 February 2008
36 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

The Economics of Insecurity
Caroline Thomas
October 2007
Professor Caroline Thomas is the
Deputy Vice Chancellor at the University
of Southampton, one of the UK’s leading
research universities, and a Professor of
Global Politics. Her research, publications
and teaching have been in the broad
area of South/North relations, global environmental
politics and human security,
with a particular focus on globalization
and inequality. Professor Thomas has
published prolifically in these areas, and
enjoyed the support of a range of sponsors
such as the Ford and MacArthur
Foundations and the UK’s Economic and
Social Research Council. She also has
held a number of research fellowships,
such as at the Royal Institute of International
Affairs, London, which culminated
in the publication of a book, The
Environment in International Relations,
to mark the 1992 UNCED in Rio.
This paper was developed for the International
Women Leaders Global Security
Summit, a project of the Annenberg
Foundation Trust at Sunnylands in partnership
with The White House Project,
the Council of Women World Leaders
and the Women Leaders Intercultural Forum.
The views expressed in this paper
are the author’s alone, and do not express
those of the Summit or its partners. The
author would like to acknowledge the
very helpful comments of conference
partners, especially Elizabeth Mackin,
Heather Grady and Ursula Oswald
Spring, and critical friends in the UK,
notably Mary Morrison,
Steve Morris and Pat Usher.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The development successes of the past 60 years have been significant in raising the living
standards of millions of people and transforming the economies of many nations.
Yet despite these achievements, the economic insecurity of many individuals, communities,
states and arguably even entire regions, is growing. The rewards of economic
growth and global economic integration are spread unevenly, with many excluded
from their benefits. Factors of discrimination based on gender, ethnicity and migration
status, for example, further disempower particular individuals and groups.
Links among economic stagnation or decline, low incomes, inequality and conflict are
being established by researchers across the world, and often they are further linked
with environmental degradation and poor governance. In turn, economic insecurity is
not only an affront to human dignity, but poses a threat to state security and regional
stability. The political failure to deal effectively with exclusion from systems of wealth
and asset creation is already contributing to conflict within and among states. This is
seen most graphically in Sub-Saharan Africa, where people and states are caught in a
“poverty-conflict-poverty” trap.
The current two-track response of “pro-poor growth” advocated by G8 governments,
the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, and the Millennium Development
Goals advocated by the United Nations (UN), while well-intentioned, are
too limited to meet the scale of the challenge.
A new approach to development is needed, based on different priorities and values:
meeting the basic needs of all humanity, respecting the environment and supporting
sustainable solutions. Women leaders have the necessary experience and commitment
to articulate an alternative vision and to play strategic roles in developing strategies
and mechanisms needed to move us beyond the important but limited Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs) and pro-poor economic reforms toward deeper, sustainable
global transformation. Women need to take the lead in:
• Articulating a new vision of global security that reinforces the concepts of protection
and empowerment of those who are vulnerable, as well as the link between this and the
stability of states and the international order;
• Redefining development approaches to focus more directly on generating sustainable
and decent work opportunities, especially for those in insecure sectors such as agriculture
and in the informal economy;
• Championing the legal empowerment of the poor by identifying specific measures
through which their voices and identity (as citizens and workers, for example) can be
strengthened, and their protection and opportunities can be enhanced;
• Promoting the notion of global citizenship and shared responsibility that leads to
partnership, collective action and consumer awareness on fair distribution of wealth,
environmental sustainability, respect for cultural diversity and representative and responsive
governance;
• Rebalancing the relationship between state and market, particularly increasing the
ability and authority of governments to protect vulnerable citizens against marketinduced
insecurity;
37 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

• Influencing the G8 and other OECD
countries to honour existing aid commitments,
and scaling up those that incorporate
a focus on broad-based employment
that takes into account the specific priorities
and needs of women;
• Scaling up aid for low-income, lowgrowth,
post-conflict countries; and
• Promoting equitable trade policies
through stronger pressure on World Trade
Organization members to overcome the
current mercantilist approach to trade negotiations,
and ensuring the needs of the
poorest states are met and their vulnerable
populations protected.
BACKGROUND
The development successes of the past
60 years have been significant in raising
the living standards of millions of people
and transforming the economies of many
nations. Yet despite these achievements,
the economic insecurity of many individuals,
communities, states and arguably
even entire regions, is growing. One
of the most marked changes in people’s
lives is the increasing informalization of
labour, both in developing and developed
countries. At the same time, the very concepts
of social security and social safety
nets have become open to debate and far
more complex to sustain given the trends
in labour markets as well as other factors
such as migration or aging populations in
numerous countries. Due partly to these
changes and partly to an increasing concentration
of wealth and market power,
the rewards of economic growth and
global economic integration are spread
unevenly, with many excluded from their
benefits. Discrimination based on factors
such as gender, ethnicity and migration
status further disempower particular individuals
and groups.
Economic insecurity provides one lens
through which to view the reality of daily
life for the half of humanity living in
chronic poverty. Generally it refers to the
lack of consistent access to and control
over the means to achieve economic wellbeing,
and lack of power to change the
situation. Individuals have limited ability
to move beyond a subsistence livelihood
and begin to accumulate skills and assets
to combat economic marginalization. Individual
and community insecurity is affected
by national and global policies that
may prioritise open markets, competitive
investment regimes, price stability and financial
liberalisation over the well-being
of individuals. In addition, governments
can pose a threat to human security by
instituting policies that inadvertently fuel
instability or by investing in military expenditure
rather than creating jobs or providing
social security. 1
The people whose existence is defined by
routine economic insecurity include the
one billion, 20% of the global population,
living at or below the internationally
identified poverty line of US$1 per day,
and the further two billion living on US$2
per day. 2 It is estimated that fully 70% of
these are women and girls. 3
Viewed through their employment status,
there are some 550 million working poor
earning less than US$1 per day, most of
whom work in the informal economy. 4 It
is estimated that about half of these are
self-employed, while the other half earn
wages working for informal enterprises,
formal enterprises, or households. As
the Commission on the Legal Empowerment
of the Poor has pointed out, for
wage workers, their labour – their human
capital – is often their only asset, and for
many self-employed workers their labour
is their main asset. Yet labour rights and
labour regulations have been an overlooked
or highly debated area of development
policy, particularly in framing
such rights and regulations in ways that
include agricultural workers and those in
the informal economy whose livelihoods
are most insecure.
40% of people existing below US$1 a day
live in South Asia (30% of the population
there), but it is Sub Saharan Africa where
the problem of poverty is worsening. Sub
Saharan Africa accounts for nearly 30%
of the world’s extreme poor now, compared
with accounting for less than 12%
of the extreme poor in 1981. 5
For most of those facing economic insecurity,
lack of representation in organisations
and lack of identity as citizens,
workers, entrepreneurs and asset holders
38 • Minerva #32 • June 2008
perpetuate their impoverishment. Moreover,
the direct experience of poverty is
often linked to significant horizontal inequalities
of a social, economic and political
nature, and is related to gender, race,
other social characteristics or geography.
For example, there are 5 million internally
displaced people in Sudan, of whom 2.3
million are from Darfur where social differences
are exacerbated by environmental
pressures. These horizontal inequalities
add to income inequalities and lack
of opportunities and may continue over
many generations. 6
Even where governments are committed
to the wellbeing of all their citizens
– which is not always the case – the nature
of globalisation over the last 25 years
has often limited the policy space governments
have to craft economic and social
policies that address insecurity. The
combined effects of economic insecurity
at multiple levels have often worked to
mutually reinforce inequality, human suffering
and fragile states.
Food Insecurity and Precarious
Employment in Supply Chains
An illustration of this process can be seen
in food insecurity. Food insecurity is a
fact of life for many of the world’s poor.
Three-quarters of poor people live in rural
areas. Yet rural livelihoods in agriculture,
always difficult, are being undermined
further by the unfolding of global economic
integration, with inadequate alternative
work opportunities created in urban
areas. The progress of trade liberalisation
for many countries has meant that heavily
subsidized food from rich countries such
as the US and the EU finds its way to markets
in poor countries (often as food aid)
where it negatively affects the market opportunities
for local farmers.
In Ghana, for example, local farmers have
faced competition from imports and neither
market forces nor government intervention
has helped farmers to adequately
withstand the competition. Without employment
alternatives and the means to
purchase imported foodstuffs, households
and communities are disrupted. Potential
economic benefits of rural-urban migration
are offset by the personal risks faced

y those who move, especially women,
who face precarious employment opportunities
in towns and cities. An example
is girls from former rice-producing villages
in northern Ghana (where much of
the rice consumed now comes from the
US and China), who go unaccompanied
to Ghana’s second city of Kumasi to eke
out a living as load carriers.
There is the other side of the trade coin,
of course. Africans have said in the WTO
and elsewhere that import controls, particularly
on cotton, are holding them back.
Cotton producers in West and Central Africa
have called for an end to domestic
and export subsidies on cotton. In effect,
they want free trade but two-way trade,
not the dumping of subsidized products
from abroad.
A second example that illustrates today’s
economic insecurity is the value chain of
the coffee sector. About 25 million small
farmers depend directly on coffee production
in over 50 countries. This chain
usually extends from poor farmers facing
insecurity through a series of middlemen
to global commodity traders in financial
centres and international coffee
companies to those who consume coffee
regularly in developed countries. During
the 1980s, export production increased,
partly fuelled by policy advice of the IMF
and the World Bank to gain foreign exchange
to repay mounting external debt.
As several countries pursued the same advice
simultaneously, oversupply of coffee
resulted so that since the early 1980s the
nominal coffee price has declined about
70%, reaching a 30-year low in 2001.
At the same time, institutions in developing
countries that support farmers, such
as agricultural extension services and
production and marketing facilities, are
often poorly resourced or were decimated
through imposed limits on government
intervention and expenditure. In many
places, the impact of volatile market forces
and institutional changes on the lives
of smallholder peasant farmers and plantation
workers has been devastating. And
women’s central role — both productive
and reproductive — in these households
ensures that they bear the brunt of economic
downturns.
The experience of the coffee sector illustrates
a much wider problem: Commodity
price volatility and a long-term decline
in trade for primary products affect millions
of households in the poorest countries,
often those countries also wracked
by conflict (see below). And the difficulty
facing coffee producers is mirrored by
the experiences of other farmers such as
those who grow cotton and tea.
Growing Inequality and
Links with Conflict
Despite the significant economic gains of
the last 60 years, inequality is increasing
within and among states and the world’s
regions. 7 Prevailing economic models
have tended to favour capital over labour,
and increasingly favour those with education
and digital access over those without.
This is perpetuating chronic poverty
and exclusion. Factors of discrimination
based on gender, ethnicity and migration
status, for example, further disempower
particular individuals and groups. Deepening
divides are evident in GDP growth
and per capita GDP growth over a similar
period across a range of states and regions.
This economic divergence poses a
threat to security at many levels: human,
state, regional and global.
The Human Security Commission (2004)
noted the links among deprivation and
violence, and war, poverty, crime and
economic slowdown. 8 A growing body
of research confirms the links among
poverty, inequality, low/no growth, low
income, high military expenditure and
violent conflict. 9 Poverty feeds insecurity
and insecurity feeds poverty, both at the
level of the state and the individual. The
UNDP has summed this up in noting that,
“the conflict trap is part of the poverty
trap”. 10 Poverty causes more deaths than
armed conflict. And the poorer the country,
the greater the likelihood of its people
experiencing civil war. Unfortunately the
poorest countries often also suffer from
three other “traps”: bad governance, landlocked
status and the natural resources
trap. These seem to be mutually reinforcing
and magnify the challenge of moving
out of Least Developed Country (LDC)
status. 11
39 • Minerva #32 • June 2008
Among the LDCs, 12 those with an income
of US$600 or more per capita are half as
likely to experience civil war as countries
with one of US$250 or less. The majority
of the 50 countries listed by the UN
as least developed are in Sub-Saharan Africa,
which correlates with the high levels
of poverty and conflict prevalent in that
region: “Almost every country across the
middle belt of the continent — from Somalia
in the east to Sierra Leone in the
west, from Sudan in the north to Angola
in the south — remains trapped in a volatile
mix of poverty, crime, unstable and
inequitable political institutions, ethnic
discrimination, low state capacity and
the ‘bad neighbourhoods’ of other crisisridden
states - all factors associated with
increased risk of armed conflict.” 13
Economic divides on a global scale can
fuel insecurity by, for example, encouraging
flows of economic migrants or creating
groups of disaffected people with a
very deep sense of injustice.
The threat posed by economic divergence
is part of a broader challenge: the significant
gains of economic growth experienced
in much of the world have come
about through careless disregard for the
natural environment. The environmental
cost of much of the world’s economic
growth (for example, the effects of global
warming on rainfall patterns) will fuel
insecurity as already vulnerable communities
face increasing challenges in
agriculture and an increasing number of
natural disasters like famine and floods.
The populations at economic risk from
environmental effects are the very people
who are least able to protect themselves.
It is a cruel irony that vulnerable people
who are “energy poor,” are more at risk
of flood, famine and despair, in part because
the “energy rich” are fuelling global
warming. 14
ACTORS AND PROCESSES
Has insecurity been addressed
by development policy?
In recent decades, international development
policy and action have been driven
by the continued push for a globalized
economy through liberalisation and de-

egulation, albeit with a “pro-poor” orientation,
and the adoption of the Millennium
Development Goals, specific quantifiable
targets to be met by 2015.
The former, of course, has roots going
back to the end of World War II when the
rules governing the international economy
(drawn up largely by the US and UK)
suggested a particular balance between
state and market. But at that time, while
the direction was toward liberalisation,
there was a clear acknowledgment that
national governments needed to be able to
respond to social issues such as universal
education and the need for full employment.
As former colonies gained their independence
as states, the role of the state
in promoting growth and development
was accepted.
But this changed significantly in the early
1980s in favour of market-based solutions
to development challenges. This
was a direct result of policy choices in the
developed Western nations, both for ideological
reasons and because of perceived
capacity problems in developing country
institutions. Moving away from the
broader based, open UN framework of
the 1970s, policy advice from the International
Financial Institutions (the IMF and
the World Bank) became dominant. The
scope of individual government authority
was reduced, and the space for the market
to operate unhindered was expanded.
Advocates of this rebalancing of state and
market expected both the maximisation
of global welfare (i.e. that wealth generated
would reach the bottom), and the
repayment of Third World debt, which
was regarded as a problem of temporary
liquidity rather than insolvency. Global
economic integration became synonymous
with development policy and was
championed by an increasingly coordinated
set of public international institutions,
UN conferences and private actors.
In all of this the question of economic insecurity
facing individuals and their communities
was left largely unexamined.
What was not addressed sufficiently was
the crucial problem: public policies did
not allow governments to respond to their
citizens’ economic insecurity other than
through rudimentary palliative measures.
Policies failed to address the risks inherent
in an increasingly globalized economy
and institutions of global governance
have not prioritized securing livelihoods
for people living on the margins of an
economy. As a result, little was done to
help fragile states and regions become
stronger and more able to deliver for their
citizens. For example, policies failed to
address the need to halt the continuous
decline in market share of farmers in the
poorest and most conflict-prone countries
that rely on the export of primary commodities.
15
Coming after and alongside the push for
aggregate and speedy economic growth
was the launch of a campaign for addressing
fundamental social issues - the
Millennium Development Goals, the
quantifiable targets set out to measure
progress on development by 2015. Clearly,
achievement of the MDGs depends on
a real partnership between governments
of developed and developing countries,
not only in terms of additional aid but also
debt relief policies and policy space for
achieving the specific targets for poverty
and hunger, education, gender equality,
maternal health and child mortality, HIV/
AIDS and environmental sustainability.
But while these laudable MDG goals address
the shortcomings of development
policies in the 1980s and 1990s, they say
too little about what is required to develop
meaningful economic opportunities and
economic security for women and men.
While important, the MDGs are limiting.
On poverty, for example, the challenge
is not simply to reduce the proportion of
global citizens living in extreme poverty
by 2015, but also to reorient our vision
and strategies for sustainable development
so that no one is living in extreme
poverty and gender and other inequalities
are overcome.
Fundamental solutions that were obvious
to many of those living in poverty around
the world – that farmers and those in the
informal economy most need greater
power and representation within markets
– were left untried. Important priorities
for developing country governments, such
as greater price stability in international
markets, were considered impractical.
40 • Minerva #32 • June 2008
Nevertheless, there is growing recognition
that the status quo in addressing international
development and poverty reduction
is inadequate, and that although
universal access to education and health
has been revitalized in development aims,
too little is done to address the precarious
livelihoods of much of the world’s poor.
Moreover, as inequality and un-addressed
social issues have increased, so has solidarity.
From consumer awareness campaigns
to the World Social Forum, the unintended
impacts of globalisation remain
of deep concern. OECD countries and the
international financial institutions have
modified their policies to some extent to
address social priorities defined within
poorer states themselves, by a combination
of government and civil society engagement.
And to a limited degree, the
appropriate balance between state and
market has been re-examined to acknowledge
what is needed to enable a government
to fulfill its duties to its citizens.
A role for women
Building on the contextual background
above, the relevant policy and content
areas for women leaders to address include:
• Articulating a new vision of global security
that reinforces the concepts of protection
and empowerment of those who are
vulnerable, as well as the link between
this and the stability of states and the international
order;
• Finding ways to reverse growing inequalities;
• Redefining development approaches to
focus more directly on generating sustainable
and decent work opportunities, especially
for those in insecure sectors such as
agriculture and the informal economy;
• Championing the legal empowerment of
the poor by identifying specific measures
through which their voices and identities
(as citizens and workers, for example)
can be strengthened and their protections
and opportunities enhanced;
• Promoting the notion of global citizenship
and shared responsibility that leads
to partnership, collective action and consumer
awareness on fair distribution of

wealth, environmental sustainability, respect
for cultural diversity and representative
and responsive governance;
• Rebalancing the relationship between
state and market, particularly increasing
the ability and authority of governments
to protect vulnerable citizens against market-induced
insecurity;
• Influencing the G8 and other OECD
countries to honour existing aid commitments,
and scaling up those that incorporate
a focus on broad-based employment
that takes into account the specific priorities
and needs of women;
• Scaling up aid for low-income, lowgrowth,
post-conflict countries; and
• Promoting equitable trade policies
through stronger pressure on WTO members
to overcome the current mercantilist
approach to trade negotiations, and
ensuring the needs of the poorest states
are met and their vulnerable populations
protected.
THE IMPORTANCE
OF WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP
Women leaders can play an important role
in reorienting development policies to address
root causes of economic insecurity.
While strong leadership is needed by both
women and men, if women leaders take
on this challenge individually and collectively
it is more likely to catalyze fresh
and focused approaches that are sustained
over time. In the last decade women leaders
have regularly championed the experiences
of women and men whose livelihoods
are buffeted by forces beyond their
control.
Women leaders can take a cue from political
leaders who have led in such a way in
their own countries, like President Ellen
Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia who has taken
bold action domestically and with international
actors to help her country recover
from decades of strife and chronic poverty.
They can demonstrate the kind of leadership
shown by Nobel Laureate Wangari
Maathai whose Green Belt Movement in
Kenya 16 has shown how women can work
in the face of government opposition to
improve their own condition and address
threats to the natural environment.
There is much to learn from direct action
by and for women in South Asia. 17 Perhaps
the best-known example there is SEWA, 18
the Self-Employed Women’s Association,
which has worked since 1972 to support
the invisible self-employed women
workers who depend for their survival on
their own labour (e.g. as manual labourers,
porters and vendors). Founded under
the leadership of Ela Bhatt, SEWA grew
and championed work, income, food and
social security for members and self-reliance
in decision-making and economics.
SEWA has worked in partnership with the
WHO, the Indian government and various
NGOs and spawned similar initiatives in
Yemen, Turkey, and elsewhere.
Latin America also has many success stories
of direct grassroots action by women
to address their economic insecurity. 19
There are interesting examples of senior
leaders nurturing women as change
agents, e.g., in Brazil, both to ensure their
representation in politics and to increase
their influence as advocates for justice
and equality. 20
A powerful example of women based in
the Global North engineering change for
women everywhere is the Women’s Environment
and Development Organisation
(WEDO), 21 founded in advance of the
UN’s 1992 Conference on Environment
and Development by Bella Abzug, which
has organised women’s contributions to
international policymaking, the Women’s
Caucus at the UN, and facilitates the coming
together of women from around the
world to take action.
CONCLUSION
This Summit provides a unique opportunity
for inspirational women leaders to
initiate work on a renewed vision of global
security. Promoting economic security
is an important aspect of this. The vision
will be instrumental in catalyzing leaders
of developed countries to adopt policies
that bring balanced benefits to women and
men no matter where they live. And it will
be important to influence the public not
only in developed countries but also the
opinion shapers and decision-makers in
countries like China and Brazil, convincing
them that the well-being of all rests
41 • Minerva #32 • June 2008
on concern for all. Women could be at the
forefront of a groundswell of public support
for a vision like the one articulated by
UNDP in 2003: quality economic growth,
supportive of human development, is that
which is job creating, poverty reducing,
participatory, culturally enshrined and
environmentally friendly. 22 This would be
a significant contribution to addressing
economic insecurity.
We are witnessing a growth in the numbers
of women working at the highest levels
across all sectors, complemented by a
vast community of women organising at
the grassroots level in support of change.
Their experiences have raised awareness
of barriers to change and lessons are being
learned about how to counter resistance
and form strategic alliances and supportive
networks. At the political level, there
is growing recognition of the importance
of nurturing women change agents to ensure
female representation and advocacy
for justice and equality. 23
Many leaders at this Summit are already
experts in engineering coalitions for
change across political, social and business
spheres. Many have been involved
in pressing for change in the policies of
multilateral organisations on areas such
as gender, development, environment,
security or rights. Others have built coalitions
within their own states in difficult
circumstances and have enjoyed policy
successes (e.g. domestic violence laws in
Brazil and family courts in Egypt). 24
At the global level, champions are needed
to provide and sustain direction at the
highest institutional levels. Many women-led
regional groupings already exist
and can be built upon. These leaders will
be important in working publicly and behind
the scenes. Such champions need to
rely on a supportive infrastructure – other
stakeholders who share their vision and
act as change agents at different organisational
levels, raising awareness, following
through, reinforcing messages and
becoming involved on specifics in their
respective domains.
This agenda is more than a lifetime’s
work. It is time for women, as leaders, to
take the next step together.

Footnotes:
1 UNDP (2005), Human Development Report 2005 (New York: United Nations), p. 160.
2 Data from the World Bank, 2002. The World Bank, “Global Economic Prospects 2006: The
Economic Implications of Remittances and Migration”, 2006, pgs. 8-9.
3 UN Dept. of Public Information, Backgrounder, Gender Equality and the Millennium Development
Goals, 2003, http://www.un.dk./temp/IWDBackgrounder.pdf.
4 International Labour Organization, “World Employment Report 2004–05: Employment,
Productivity, and Poverty Reduction”, December 2004, p. 24.
5 Data from the World Bank, 2002. Shaohua Chen and Martin Ravallion, “How have the
world’s poorest fared since the early 1980s?” The World Bank, June 2004.
6 UNDP (2005), Human Development Report 2005 (New York: United Nations), p. 163.
7 UNCTAD (2006) Trade and Development Report (Geneva: UNCTAD), pp. 46-7.
8 Human Security Commission (2004) Final Report, http://www.humansecurity-chs.org/finalreport/index.html.
9 For example: Centre for International Cooperation and Security (2005), The Impact of
Armed Violence on Poverty and Development (Bradford University: Centre for International
Cooperation and Security, www.bradford.ac.uk/cics), pp. 1-98; Control Arms Campaign
(Amnesty International, International Action Network on Small Arms, Oxfam International)
(2006), Arms Without Borders: Why a globalised trade needs global controls; Nafziger, E. W.
and Auvinen J. (2002), “Economic Development, Inequality, War and State Violence”, World
Development, 30 (2): 153-163; Stewart, F. (2003), “Conflict and the Millennium Development
Goals”, Journal of Human Development, 4(3): 325-351.
10 UNDP (2005), Human Development Report 2005 (New York: United Nations), p.157.
11 Collier, P. (2007), The Bottom Billion (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
12 In 2006, 50 Least Developed Countries were identified, each exhibiting a per capita income
under US$750, human resource weakness (poor health, nutrition, education, adult literacy),
and economic vulnerability. 16 were landlocked and 12 were small islands. Such low-income
countries accounted for over half of the countries experiencing violent conflict 1990-2003.
13 Human Security Centre (2005), Human Security Report 2005, www.humansecuritycentre.
org/images/stories/HSReport2005, p. 4.
14 See Litovsky, A. (2007), “Energy Poverty and Political Vision” at http://www.opendemocracy.net/node/2551/print.
15 UNCTAD (2006), Trade and Development Report (Geneva: UNCTAD), p. 20.
16 See www.greenbeltmovement.org.
17 For example, the Chipko Movement demonstrates how direct action by grassroots groups
can contribute to environmental and economic sustainability. While not built exclusively
around women, women came to play the most significant role in the movement [preventing
loggers from felling trees]. Another South Asian success story is provided by the Grameen
Bank, … provid[ing] microcredit to poor women. … See http://www.grameen-info.org.
18 See www.sewa.org.
19 See Oswald, U. (2007), “Bottom-up Capacity Building: Women and family business”.
20 See Cornwall, A. (2007), in “Addressing the Preconditions: Women’s Rights and Development”,
at www.pathwaysofempowerment.org.
21 See http://www.wedo.org.
22 UNDP (2003), Human Development Report: Millennium Development Goals: A compact
among nations to end human poverty, www.undp.org, p. 23.
23 Cornwall, A. (2007), “Pathways of Women’s Empowerment”, posted 30 July 2007 at
www.opendemocracy.net/node/34188/print.
24 On the implementation of the Maria da Penha Law on Domestic Violence in Brazil, see
http://www.pathways-of-empowerment.org/research_building_projects.html#Maria. On
Egypt’s family courts, see M. Al Sharmani at www.opendemocracy.net/article/democracy_
power/5050/egypt_family_law.
From the International Women
Leaders Global Security Summit
Call to Action:
To address the economics of insecurity,
we will partner with other leaders to
• Clearly and consistently articulate that
poverty is an affront to human dignity, is
a source of global instability, disproportionately
affects women, and is a violation
of human rights for which states and nonstate
actors must be held accountable.
• Set international standards of reporting
on corporate responsibility that incorporate
human rights and environmental
standards.
• Restructure economic and development
priorities to end unfair trade rules and
focus more directly on generating productive
and decent work opportunities,
especially for the poor — the vast majority
of whom are women — in insecure sectors
such as agriculture and the informal
economy.
• Promote core labor standards and decent
work, including labor rights for informal
workers, business rights for informal
entrepreneurs, and property rights
and social protection for all.
• Press donors to honor their foreign assistance
commitments without conditionalities,
especially for fragile states and
Least Developed Countries, to build longterm
capacity and market access, while
addressing urgent threats to livelihoods,
life and human dignity.
42 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

The global water crisis is
evident. We need a global
solution in form of a United
Nations covenant on water.
A UN Covenant on the Right to Water:
An Idea Whose Time Has Come
Maude Barlow
Maude Barlow is Chair of the Council
of Canadians and author of Blue Covenant,
The Global Water Crisis and the
Coming Battle for the Right to Water.
She posted this essay on 18 February
2008 on the website of The Movement
Vision Lab, which “brings together
grassroots organizers and social justice
advocates to share and debate long-term,
visionary ideas for the future”.
Its reprinting is authorized under a
Creative Commons license by the Center
for Community Change, founded in 1968
“to honor the life and values of Robert
F. Kennedy” and build “a new politics
based on community values”
The right to water is a concern for the global community. How do we support the right
to water for everyone and ensure that no future generation has to suffer from living
without clean water?
All over the world, groups who are fighting for local water rights are championing an
international instrument on the right to water. Due to over-development and climate
change, fresh water is becoming increasingly scarce. In addition, in many communities
across the globe, people cannot get access to whatever clean water does exist without
paying private corporations.
The global water crisis is evident. We need a global solution in form of a United Nation
Covenant on Water.
For the past 15 years, the World Bank and the other regional development banks have
promoted a private model of water development in the global South. This model has
proven to be a failure. High water rates, cut-offs to the poor, reduced services, broken
promises and pollution have been the legacy of privatization.
At the March 2006 4th World Water Forum in Mexico City, the UN cited the failure of
privatization and called for governments to re-enter the water services arena. Calls for a
UN Covenant to re-assert the crucial role of government in supplying water to the poor
increased dramatically at the Forum and new impetus was given to this campaign.
Why a UN Covenant?
The fact that water is not now an acknowledged human right has allowed decisionmaking
over water policy to shift from the UN and governments toward institutions
and organizations that favour the private water companies and the commodification
of water. These institutions include the World Bank and other regional development
banks, the World Water Council, the Global Water Partnership and the World Trade
Organization.
Not only have these institutions vigorously promoted the interests of the private water
companies in the global South, they have ceded much political control over water policy
to them. Many nations-state governments have gone along with this trend, allowing
creeping privatization with little or no government oversight or pubic debate.
Behind the call for a binding instrument are questions of principle that must be decided
soon as the world’s water sources become more depleted and fought over:
• Is access to water a human right or just a need?
• Is water a common good like air or a commodity like Coca Cola?
• Who is being given the right or the power to turn the tap on or off – the people? Governments?
Or the invisible hand of the market?
• Who sets the price for a poor district in Manila or La Paz – the locally elected water
board or the CEO of Suez?
[continued]
43 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

What is the Practical Use of a Covenant?
Would a Covenant on water solve the world’s water crisis? Of course not. Almost two
billion people now live in water stressed parts of the world and the situation is getting
worse, not better. But it would set the framework of water as a social and cultural asset,
not an economic commodity. As well, it would establish the indispensable legal
groundwork for a just system of distribution.
A Covenant on the right to water would serve as a common, coherent body of rules for
all nations and clarify that it is the role of the state to provide clean, affordable water to
all of its citizens. Such a Covenant would also safeguard already accepted human rights
and environmental principles.
It would also set principles and priorities for water use in a world destroying its water
heritage. The Covenant I envisage would include language to protect water rights for
the earth and other species and would address the urgent need for reclamation of polluted
waters and an end to practices destructive of the world’s water sources.
At a practical level, a right to water Covenant gives citizens a tool to hold their governments
accountable in their domestic courts and the “court” of public opinion, as well
as seeking international redress.
A Covenant could also include specific principles to ensure civil society involvement
for conversion into national law and nation action plans. This would give citizens an
additional constitutional tool in their fight for water.
Why should activists in the United States care?
No country needs to be held more accountable to this crisis than the United States.
Many of the companies privatizing water are based in the United States and the US is
among the chief backers of the privatization strategy through the World Bank and other
mechanisms. If we are to stop this crisis, the United States government must become
part of the solution, not the problem.
In addition, water privatization is encroaching in US communities, being fought back
at every turn by citizens insisting that water is a basic right and should be free for everyone.
A UN Covenant will help advance these struggles in the U.S. as well.
More broadly, it is essential that American activists push for greater recognition of international
law and treaties in the United States. In the long run, this will not only help
advance causes in the United States where the international community is leading and
domestic lawmakers are lagging behind, but it will also help shift the political center of
gravity away from the US alone. US policies should not be dictating the world’s fate.
We need robust international standards and communities of action so that the world’s
diverse peoples may, together, identify key problems and enact viable solutions.
Support among civil society groups around the world is growing rapidly and we are
collecting the names of these groups for reference in the near future. For instance, a
right to water convention has been adopted by Red Vida, the network of grassroots
groups fighting for water justice all through the Americas.
The right to water is an idea whose time has come. Let us make sure no future generation
ever again has to suffer from the horrors of living without clean water.
Ms Barlow invites anyone wishing to
become involved in this movement to
visit the Blue Planet Project at the Council
of Canadians’ website .
44 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

BOOK REVIEW
Global Environmental Governance,
Perspectives on the Current Debate
edited by Lydia Swart & Estelle Perry
Marquita K. Hill
March 2008
Marquita Hill, retired to Virginia from
the University of Maine’s Department
of Chemical Engineering, presented in
Minerva #28 (February 2005) an overview
of some of the many transboundary
pollution problems that cannot be
solved without international cooperation,
based on the second edition of her book,
Understanding Environmental Pollution,
published in 2004 by Cambridge University
Press. Her review of several books
on biological warfare appeared in
Minerva #24 (November 2002).
Lydia Swart is Executive Director of
the Center for UN Reform Education and
Estelle Perry is its President.
Global Environmental Governance,
Perspectives on the Current Debate was
published by the Center for UN Reform
Education in May 2007.
In the Introduction, Swart and Perry point out that global climate change is not the
only “inconvenient truth”. Another is that “global environmental problems require
global solutions”. However, “the institutional deficiencies of global environmental
governance … hamper global efforts to effectively address climate change” and many
other environmental issues. This book’s intent is to identify shortcomings in the United
Nations system for handling environmental issues and examine recommendations to
overcome them. These problems “revolve around a lack of authority, institutional capacity
and resources”. “There is growing realization that unless global environmental
governance is dramatically improved, the goal of providing environmental security for
the world’s peoples cannot be achieved.”
The problem: Ninety million people are added to the world population each year and
yet, already with our current population, one in three persons lacks enough fresh water;
greenhouse gases continue to accumulate; ecosystems necessary to our survival continue
to be degraded; and land degradation threatens food security, especially in Africa.
Humans have not been able to stop this trend despite the United Nations Environment
Program (UNEP). This program, founded in 1972, is weak, under-funded, and, thus,
ineffective in the functions assigned to it.
Possibly, we could improve this situation by strengthening UNEP. To this end, a chapter
is devoted to “Moving Forward by Looking Back: Learning from UNEP’s History”.
The UNEP was not purposefully established as a “weak, underfunded, overloaded, and
remote organization”. There was great hope that it would “serve as the world’s ecological
conscience”. It would also acquire and disperse reliable environmental information,
set goals and standards, and provide technical assistance as well as education & training
and public information. Too, it would speed up actions on urgent environmental
problems.
Unfortunately, UNEP is a Program. Within the UN hierarchy, a Program has the least
independence and authority, and must rely on voluntary financial contributions for its
operations. Moreover, environmental responsibilities are spread throughout many UN
organizations. Worse, there is no database that would allow one to find which organizations
are active in a specific environmental activity. This statement leads to a conclusion
as to the biggest weakness of the current global environmental governance: there
is a lack of coordination.
Overall, there is “a disconnect between the magnitude of environmental problems on
the one hand and the ability of contemporary institutions to effectively address them
on the other”. Even worse, the “challenges of environmental governance are huge and
still growing”.
Despite this pessimistic assessment, there is progress, sometimes amazing. Advanced
industrialized countries now spend 2–3% of their GNP on the environment. Some of
the many treaties enacted through UNEP have been effective. The best known, in terms
of its effectiveness, is the reduction of stratospheric ozone reduction. Others are re-
45 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

ductions in European acid rain and in the
number and volume of oil spills into the
oceans.
The last chapters of this book offer ideas
for and progress toward policy and institutional
options for the future Global
Environmental Governance. There is general
agreement that just strengthening
UNEP is not enough to allow it to cope
with all the environmental challenges facing
humanity. A new agency is required.
One possibility is to upgrade UNEP into
a Specialized Agency, the World Environment
Organization (WEO), analogous
to the World Health Organization or the
Food and Agriculture Organization. This
would improve coordination of global environmental
governance, enhance recognition
of environmental problems among
governments, and assist in developing the
capacities for environmental improvement
in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
An alternative approach first proposed by
the European Union is to transform UNEP
into the United Nations Environment Organization
(UNEO). Again, this would be
a Specialized Agency with a budget most
probably based on assessed (not voluntary)
contributions. It would be established on
the basis of an international treaty, which
would give it some autonomy from the
UN. Not being a subsidiary of the UN, it
would have political clout and the ability
to develop a strengthened scientific base.
It would also give developing countries
the opportunity to have meaningful influence
on the UNEO’s work.
Whatever system of global environmental
governance is envisioned, and despite
the “urgency of environmental problems
facing the world”, the governance will
not work to prevent further environmental
degradation unless UN Member States
fully commit themselves to making the
system work. This is our greatest challenge.
Political Globalization: A New Vision of
Federal World Government
by James A. Yunker
(Lanham MD: University Press
of America, Inc., 2007)
BOOK REVIEW
Political Globalization: A New Vision
of Federal World Government
by James A. Yunker
Ronald J. Glossop
17 January 2008
Ronald J. Glossop is Professor Emeritus
at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville
(SIUE), a member of the national
board of Citizens for Global Solutions
Education Fund, Chair of Citizens for
Global Solutions of Greater St. Louis,
Vice-President of UNA of Greater St.
Louis, Coordinator of the St. Louis
Coalition for the ICC, and President of
the American Association of Teachers
of Esperanto. He has taught a course on
“Global Problems & Human Survival”
for twenty years. Dr Glossop is the
author of World Federation? (1994) and
Confronting War (4th edition, 2001).
This book aims to be a wake-up call both to world federalists and non-world federalists.
To world federalists the message is: adjust the details of your objective so that
you can overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of achieving your goal. To the
non-world federalists the message is: the world community needs a world government
just as local and national communities do, and global problems such as ever-moredestructive
wars, the spread of nuclear weapons, the deterioration of the environment,
and the growing gap between rich and poor need to be addressed by a real government
with a legislature, police forces, and the power to tax rather than the governance system
which now exists.
Professor Yunker’s proposed solutions are the same as he put forth in his earlier book,
Rethinking World Government, namely, that the world community very much needs (1)
a limited but real world federation, a Federal Union of Democratic Nations [FUDN] to
resolve conflicts non-violently and without military threats as well as to deal with other
community problems just as is routinely done within most nations and (2) a systematic
plan (a World Economic Equalization Program [WEEP] or global Marshall Plan) to
gradually equalize the economic status of people in all countries. He also repeats the
view that proponents of world government must consider why their view is so readily
dismissed by most people and modify their proposal in order to overcome these objections.
46 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

The main two reasons for opposition to
the creation of a world government are:
(1) the fear that such an all-powerful global
government could become a worldwide
tyranny from which there is no escape and
(2) the fear that a democratic world government
controlled by the majority poor
of the world would use its power to require
what Yunker calls “Crude Redistribution”
of the world’s wealth in order to
get more equality. To nullify these fears,
Yunker proposes that the world federation
to be created (a) would allow participating
nations to maintain whatever kind of
military force they wish (including having
nuclear weapons) and (b) would allow
nations to leave the federation at any
time without penalty. Additionally, in the
world legislature there would be (c) a
dual voting system. Separate votes would
be taken on a material basis (where the
number of votes a country has depends
on its wealth) and on a population basis
(where the number of votes a country has
depends on its population. This system
means that no measure could be adopted
that doesn’t have the support of the rich
countries, but also that no measure could
be adopted that doesn’t have the support
of the poor countries. Yunker believes that
such a limited world government would
dispel the fears which now cause opposition
to a world government in the rich
countries. It would also address the fears
in poor countries that a world government
would be a way for the rich countries to
maintain and even solidify their control
over the poorer, weaker countries.
The other part of his proposal is the
program — described and persuasively
argued for in chapters 4, 5, and 6 — to
gradually decrease the gap between the
rich and the poor. Yunker, an economics
professor at Western Illinois University,
uses computer simulations to show that
there is good reason to believe that over
several decades the economic situation in
poor countries could be substantially improved
while economic growth would be
slowed only slightly in rich countries. He
emphasizes that both the establishment of
a world government and WEEP should
be viewed as experimental efforts which
would be ended if it became apparent that
they were not achieving their goals.
Yunker’s argumentation for his WEEP is
much more persuasive than his argumentation
for world government, although he
is eager to show that both are needed and
that they are somewhat dependent on one
another. His basic argument for world
federation is that the world community
has been gradually moving toward more
cooperation for a long time (pp. 297-301
and 307-325) and concern about national
sovereignty has been declining (p. 287).
The fact that the transformative move to
world government has not yet been made
does not show that it can’t or shouldn’t be
made. Yunker displays a readiness to discuss
the weaknesses in his argument for
world federation, admitting that the world
has not had many successful experiences
of creating federations out of previously
existing nation-states and that in a fair
number of cases federations have disintegrated
(pp. 289-296). But, he argues, if
government is a good thing at the local
level, the national level, and the regional
level, why would it not be a good thing at
the global level (p. 335)?
Yunker’s book is full of repetitions. He
admits this (p. 337), but says that it is
necessary to “break through the encrusted
prejudice against world government” (p.
337) which has come about because of the
unlimited character of the world government
put forth by its previous proponents.
What is needed to counter this prejudice
is the recognition that the more limited
kind of world government being proposed
by Yunker will not arouse the fears fed by
the traditional views of what a world government
would be. People will see that it
is possible to have the benefits of world
government without arousing such fears.
But there are questions that need to be addressed.
Probably the most obvious one
is how the Federal Union of Democratic
Nations (FUDN) is any more of a government
than the League of Nations or the
existing United Nations. Yunker criticizes
these confederal organizations for their
ineffectiveness, which he blames on their
not having their own military forces, their
not being able to levy taxes, and their officials
being appointed by the national
governments rather than being elected
(p. 309). But in his proposed FUDN the
national governments will be allowed to
maintain their own military forces, even
with nuclear weapons, and would be free
to leave the union whenever they wanted,
which they would be likely to do if the
FUDN ever decided to use military force.
Consequently, the military forces of the
FUDN are likely to be virtually powerless
against the more powerful nations.
How would the FUDN be any less helpless
than the League of Nations was? The
FUDN might be able to levy taxes, but
its financial resources would probably be
very limited compared to those of larger,
richer national governments. With regard
to the election of FUDN officials, Yunker
does not seem to appreciate how difficult
that would be to carry out. Could laws
about exactly who could vote, how much
money could be spent on campaigning,
and so on be enforced throughout the
whole world?
The United Nations has coercive power
when the Security Council approves a
given course of action. Military force can
be used against nations that attack other
nations or that refuse to abide by Security
Council resolutions. It is true that the
permanent five have a veto, so no action
can be taken against them or other nations
which they support. But would the situation
be any different with the FUDN as
long as the individual powerful national
governments are allowed to keep their
military forces and nuclear weapons?
Yunker, as is so often the case with proposers
of world government, fails to deal
with the question of how we proceed from
where we are now to the desired goal.
How might the move toward the FUDN
get started? Might the UN General Assembly
call a conference to address the
issue? Might NATO members or the European
Union or some particular national
governments (e.g. Australia, Brazil, Canada)
take the lead in calling a conference to
consider the proposal? Could anything be
done if the government of the USA were
opposed? Maybe Yunker thinks that his
proposal is the kind that the US government
could support, but unfortunately it
is not easy to find a way to persuade those
with great power to share their power (or
their wealth) with others.
47 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

OVERVIEW
INSIDE VIEW
CRITIQUE
RESPONSE
BOOK DISCUSSION
Global Democracy
The Struggle for Political and Civil Rights in the 21st Century
by Didier Jacobs
Claude Buettner, Didier Jacobs, Joseph Schwartzberg
March & April 2008
Claude Buettner wrote this introductory
review for the newsletter of the Minnesota
Chapter of Citizens for Global
Solutions, of which he is president. It is
reprinted with his permission.
I - OVERVIEW (Claude Buettner)
… One proposition of this brilliant book is that the United Nations, the International
Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization together form our
current global government, albeit an ineffective one. But it is the global government
that the permanent members of the Security Council want: a “weak confederation”,
with veto and opt-out privileges for a select group of powerful nations, the so-called
P-5, and a “federation”, with no veto and no opt-out privileges, for all others.
Mr Jacobs asserts, only slightly tongue-in-cheek, that the global government we already
have is characterized as a system of apartheid, in which one’s position in the
pecking order is determined by the color of one’s passport.
Among the take-away points in Global Democracy’s conclusion are:
• Institutions are essential (“Governance without government” is, at best,
nonsense).
• “Global democracy is a big idea that is astonishingly easy to communicate:
‘We believe all people should have equal say in decisions that affect all of them’;
‘The World Trade Organization is not democratic and that is not OK’; …‘The Security
Council does not have proper checks and balances; that’s bad in national politics,
it’s also bad in world politics.’”
• In our everyday conversation we can promote global democracy by referring
to the UN or the WTO as “our global government”. But this is not enough; eventually
ordinary citizens will rightfully expect to elect their representatives in that government.
• The peace movement needs to form and promote a long-term strategy for
change (even in between unpopular wars) instead of abdicating that role to nationalist
and benevolent imperialist think tanks.
Didier Jacobs, Special Advisor to the
President at Oxfam America, holds a
Masters degree in Public Policy from the
Kennedy School of Government, Harvard.
He has been a researcher at the London
School of Economics and Catholic University
of Louvain, as well as an aid
worker for Médecins Sans Frontières in
Liberia. He serves on the Steering Committee
of the World Federalist Institute of
Citizens for Global Solutions.
This essay is an adaptation of a presentation
he made at the annual meeting of
Citizens for Global Solutions in
Minneapolis, October 2007.
FMI:
Reframing the Global Solutions debate in this way is worth considering in spite of the
risk that it will be seen by some as excessively ambitious. As we slide well into the 21st
century, it’s time to reframe our stand on how we can solve such seemingly intractable
global problems as environmental degradation and nuclear arms, among others, that
are beyond the capacity of the currently undemocratic “global government” to manage
effectively.
II - INSIDE VIEW (Didier Jacobs)
I initially came to the United States for graduate studies in public policy. I recall that
it was in my second class that I learned about the concept of framing an issue. Framing
a policy issue is to communicate about it from the perspective that is most attractive
to the people you try to convince. The arguments that are most persuasive to you
are not necessarily the most persuasive to others. Reframing an issue is therefore like
talking about it in a foreign language: it is the same subject, but it sounds very different.
Reframing an issue is like wearing tinted glasses: you look at the same thing,
48 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

ut it has different colors. One could say
that this book is all about reframing world
federalism in a way that is most relevant
to Americans today.
The title is Global Democracy. It could
have been World Federalism instead, but I
chose not to use that title for the same reasons
that the World Federalist Association
changed its name to Citizens for Global
Solutions. The sub-title gives the new
frame through which I write about world
federalism. It is: The Struggle for Political
and Civil Rights in the 21st Century.
World federalism is a civil rights issue.
The usual frame for world federalism is
the creation of a world government. But
very few people think they want a world
government. To most people, world government
sounds scary, overbearing, authoritarian.
On the other hand, everybody
supports civil rights. Nobody is going to
argue against them. So if we manage to
frame world federalism as a civil rights
issue, we have made a major breakthrough.
How do I manage to frame world federalism
as a civil rights issue? It is very easy:
I assert that we already have world government.
World government is not utopia. It is reality.
World government is not futuristic. It is
history; it is a part of our historical heritage.
How come we have not noticed? We have
not noticed the existence of our world
government because the United Nations
system does not quite look like other governments
we are familiar with. There are
many kinds of governments.
Our world government is not a communist
regime like Cuba. It is not an absolute
monarchy cum theocracy like Saudi Arabia.
It is not a medieval empire, although
it has some resemblance to that: it has a
Byzantine structure. Its authority is contested
in many parts of the world. And its
geographic boundaries are not clear, as
some countries are members of one international
institution but not the other.
Our world government is not a liberal
democracy either, although again it has
some resemblance to it: the UN system
respects freedom of speech and association.
It consists of modern bureaucracies.
The United Nations system is none of the
above and yet it is a government in the
simple sense that it is an organization that
does public policy. That is my definition
of a government anyway: an organization
that does public policy.
The World Trade Organization, for instance,
has adopted 30,000 pages of legal
text, which its member-states must respect
in their entirety. These pages contain very
precise economic regulations that greatly
influence national economies. The WTO
even has a quasi-judicial body to arbitrate
disputes of implementation, and can take
sanctions against states that do not respect
the rules. Why on earth don’t we call that
a federal world government? Or a branch
of it, anyway.
I suggest the following thought experiment.
Let us imagine a moment that the
United Nations General Assembly was
directly elected by the people. And let’s
assume that it had co-decision power on
all matters currently dealt with by the UN
Security Council, the WTO, the IMF and
the World Bank. So all the decisions that
these bodies now make would also need
to be approved by the directly-elected
General Assembly.
I think that if that were the case most
people in the streets would agree that, of
course, we have a world government, and
Joe Blogh is my representative. Everything
else in the UN system could remain
the same. If only there were elections,
people would recognize their world government,
because the concept of elections
is very closely associated with the concept
of government.
But of course, not all governments are
elected. What we have is a world government
that is not democratic. It is an apartheid
regime. We live under global apartheid.
Americans and Europeans make
decisions, and the rest of the world must
follow the rules, without voice. That is
plainly unfair, and here is where the civil
49 • Minerva #32 • June 2008
and political rights frame comes into the
picture.
So my book is about the struggle for political
equality in the 21st century. The
struggle for nationals of poor nations to
have equal say in decisions that affect all
humankind. There are global policies on
trade, on climate change, on nuclear proliferation
and so on and so forth. I claim
that these policies should be decided according
to the “one person, one vote” rule.
And I argue that it is realistic to expect
that to happen by the end of this century.
I compare this struggle with previous
civil rights struggles, such as the movements
for women’s suffrage in the 19th
and early 20th centuries, or the working
class movement for suffrage around the
same period, or the struggle to end apartheid
in South Africa.
In the first part of the book, I criticize
current political science on the subject of
global governance. I discuss concepts like
governance and government, democracy,
federalism and confederalism, or sovereignty,
and define them in ways that allow
us to view the world through a whole new
frame, the frame of global democracy.
In the second part, I present a picture of:
• how our world government could democratize
incrementally in the coming
century,
• how that would improve its effectiveness
to cope with this century’s global
challenges,
• and, last but not least, what political
forces could drive the democratization
process.
Tad Daley tells of the East Berliners who,
back in 1983, imagined a future without
wall a hundred years later. Back in 1983,
it was impossible to discern the political
forces that would lead to the collapse of
the Berlin Wall only six years later. But
today, it is possible to discern the political
forces that might bring about global
democracy, and that is the story I tell in
the book.
For sixty years, the goals of the world
federalist movement have been the cre-

ation of a democratic and federal world
government. We are half-way there: we
have a federal world government, albeit
not a democratic one. We can be proud of
being half-way in our journey. That is one
lesson from the book.
A second lesson is that we should be
careful about how we communicate. We
should not talk about world government
in the future tense; we should talk about it
in the present tense. That way, we will no
longer be perceived as utopians. We will
be perceived as relevant.
Here is another thought experiment. Let’s
imagine that Citizens for Global Solutions
(CGS) convinced many other NGOs to
call the UN, the WTO, the IMF, the World
Bank etc. “our global government”. Then,
soon enough, journalists will pick up that
phrase. And then people will start reading
about their global government in the daily
paper: “Today, our global government decided
X on climate change”; “Today, our
global government failed to make any
decision on Darfur”. Then people will
start asking: “Wait a minute, did I vote
for these guys? And the idea of global democracy
will take root.
The third lesson is that it is easier to mobilize
people against an actual and current
harm than in favor of some benefits that
they may get in the future. It is easier to
mobilize people against the global apartheid
than in favor of a stronger global
government.
Because of the “creation of a world government
frame”, CGS has so far focused
its energy on extending the reach of our
global government. It focuses on “more
global government” rather than on “fairer
global government”.
The current CGS priorities — Law of the
Sea, the International Criminal Court,
and UNEPS — are all examples of “more
global government”. (However, some
issues are relevant to both “more” and
“fairer” global government.)
By contrast, there is a big movement out
there — the so-called anti-globalization
movement — that puts more emphasis
on “fairer” global government. It challenges
the legitimacy of the WTO, the
IMF and the World Bank rather than trying
to extend their reach. There is also the
peace movement, which mobilizes people
against the injustice in Iraq.
Some Americans lose their jobs because
of WTO rules. Some Americans lose their
sons & daughters because of the American
veto in the Security Council, without
which the Security Council might have
explicitly outlawed the war against Iraq,
which might have prevented that war. Our
global government does affect the lives of
Americans a lot. In some cases, it hurts
them. And they do take notice.
No wonder then, that trade unions, environmental
organizations, and NGOs like
the one I work for, Oxfam, have managed
to mobilize millions of Americans against
unfair trade agreements. No wonder then,
that the peace movement has mobilized
millions of Americans against the war in
Iraq, and has managed to have a real impact
on Congressional elections.
By contrast, it is very hard to mobilize
Americans in favor of the Law of the Sea
or UNEPS, or other good causes to expand
the reach of our global government.
And working on selected issues such as
the ICC or UNEPS is a niche for a small
organization with limited resources. UN-
EPS is an issue for which CGS can actually
exercise leadership within the NGO
community. By contrast, CGS’ voice
would be barely audible in the debate between
free traders and protectionists.
But think about it another way.
50 • Minerva #32 • June 2008
The organization I work for, Oxfam, is
one of the largest global campaigning
groups. We advocate on international
trade, international finance, climate
change, human rights issues, and many
conflicts around the world. Yet we do not
have a vision for global governance in the
21st century. We try to influence scores
of global public policies, but we barely
try to influence global decision-making
processes. Amnesty International, Greenpeace,
the AFL-CIO, Peace Action, and
others: many large US or global advocacy
organizations work daily on important
global public policy issues, without
a vision for our global government. It is
hard to convince the Senate to ratify the
Law of the Sea. But it could be easier to
convince other progressive organizations
that they ought to pay attention to global
decision-making processes as well as to
global public policies.
With CGS at a critical strategic juncture,
I take this opportunity to propose devoting
some of resources to a program that
would specifically target big, progressive
campaigning organizations to:
• teach them how to talk about our global
government,
• help them analyze how their current advocacy
is likely to affect our global government,
and
• encourage them to develop a vision for
our global government in the 21st century.
I believe NGOs ought to challenge the
World Bank or the WTO. But the way
they do it can be either constructive or destructive.
It can point to global democracy
or to a reversal to global anarchy. CGS
could play a very positive role of bringing
along other organizations to consider how
advocacy on their pet issue can impact the
broader project of building global democracy.
And of course, my book provides
the intellectual framework necessary to
do this.
The fourth and last lesson I propose for
Citizens for Global Solutions is that we
ought to be more critical and aggressive
toward our world government. So far,
CGS has always adopted a quite ambiguous
attitude toward the UN system. On
the one hand, we are very supportive of
the UN. On the other, we call for lots of
reforms to strengthen both its legitimacy
and effectiveness.
In theory, there is no contradiction here.
We support global solutions to global
problems. So we support the current global
institutions that can deliver such solutions,
and at the same time, we call for
reform, or for new institutions to promote
solutions where current institutions fail.
In practice, however, there often is a contradiction.
It is hard to call for reform of

an institution, and at the same time shield
it and cocoon it. If you want to reform an
institution, it is better to create a sense of
crisis around it. We should not fear another
showdown at the Security Council.
We should look forward to it. Instead,
whenever the UN is seriously challenged
by nationalists, we run to the rescue. The
antagonists of the UN have been very assertive,
and they have scared us, but they
are a minority. They are reactionaries.
They are not the mainstream. They have
much less influence on the second Bush
Administration than they had on the first
one. And they are likely to be even more
marginalized or completely absent in the
next administration. They will keep a
blocking minority in the Senate for some
time. But they are not powerful enough to
bring the UN system down.
Not only do we already have a world government,
but that world government is
here to stay. For it is backed by very powerful
interests supporting the status quo in
the UN system. I mentioned the 30,000
pages of legal text of the WTO earlier.
Global business stands squarely behind
them. Think of more powerful interests
than that!
The United Nations is not about to collapse.
Most if not all national governments
want it to continue to play the roles
it plays. The US public is also pro-UN by
large margins. The next President of the
United States just cannot ignore that. Even
President Bush no longer ignores it.
So the UN system does not need rescue;
it needs reform. And for that, Citizens for
Global Solutions should join other political
forces, like Oxfam and many other
organizations that are part of the global
movement for social justice. Together, we
must challenge the legitimacy of the system,
and challenge it hard.
As long as the world federalist frame was
to create a world government, it made
sense to cocoon the global institutions that
did exist. But if the world federalist frame
becomes civil rights, we should challenge
that government vigorously.
If the powers that be eventually faced the
choice between reforming the UN or letting
it collapse, I bet they would reform
it, because they need it, and know it. So
let’s bring on the crisis that will force that
choice!
Joseph Schwartzberg, Professor Emeritus
in Geography at the University of
Minnesota and President of the Minnesopta
Chapter of Citizens for Global Solutions,
writes and lectures extensively
on UN reform and is writing a book titled
Designs for a Workable World.
III - CRITIQUE (Joseph Schwartzberg)
Thanks to the originality of Didier Jacobs’ thinking, the logical organization of the text,
the clarity and persuasiveness of his writing, and the excellent documentation of his
sources, one can learn much from reading Global Democracy, especially in regard to
the work of the WTO.
I share his view that major global government reforms are more likely to come about
incrementally than via the wholesale process of UN Charter revision, though I would
certainly not rule out the latter possibility.
Also, I think his point is well taken that we already have some form of “world government”,
even though many people prefer to use the term “governance” instead, and I
agree that we are likely to lose our intended audience if we insist on the need to “create”
a world government where none exists.
I am put off, however, by Mr Jacobs’ revisionist definitions of federalism and strong and
weak confederalism. He uses the terms to relate not only to national governments,
which is correct, but also to particular governmental institutions, which, in my view
(following the work on federalism by the jurist K.C. Wheare) is incorrect. The key
element of a federation in Wheare’s view is a constitutionally guaranteed division of
powers between a central government and the constituent states (provinces, whatever)
making up the nation over which the central government exercises some degree of
authority. I am particularly critical of the notion that an institution such as the Security
Council (among others) can be federal to some of its members and confederal to others.
I know of no one else who uses the terms in the way that Didier Jacobs does. To his
credit, he is consistent in his approach, but it is unconvincing.
(Vanderbilt University Press, 2007)
Another complaint is that I think he underestimates the lingering importance of assumptions
about sovereignty. Admittedly, sovereignty — the ability of a nation to exert
legal control over what takes place within its own borders — has been seriously compromised
in most parts of the world, but nations continue to subscribe to the fiction that
they are in control and conduct their international affairs accordingly.
51 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

But to go to the heart of Didier Jacobs’ argument, I would agree that his recommendations
are plausible and that, if they were to play out in the way that he advocates, the
world would be a great deal better off than it is today. But “plausible” does not translate
into “probable” or “most desirable”.
Basically, what he seems to be arguing — although never stated explicitly — is for
by-passing the fundamentally flawed and insufficiently democratic UN system and
strengthening and/or creating “second-tier” institutions, most notably NATO (renamed)
and the WTO, under the leadership of mainly Western democracies, to perform tasks
that the UN is insufficiently capable of doing well. I believe that approach would tend
to polarize the world, with a group of nations, led mainly by China, in one camp and
another group, led mainly by the US, in the other. My sense is that the US has, in the
last couple of decades (and especially in the G.W. Bush years), so badly compromised
its own moral authority, brain-washed its own citizenry, and promoted a wildly inaccurate
view of the rest of the world, that we have forfeited whatever claim to leadership
we once enjoyed. I think it will take decades to repair the damage. Moreover, I would
foresee the process of building up communities of “democratic” membership in the
second-tier institutions as being subject to perennial political pressures and the acceptance
of double standards such that our friends will time and again be given the benefit
of the doubt and be seen as democratic, whereas nations whose foreign and economic
policies we don’t happen to like will be branded as despotic.
My own preference would be to reform and strengthen the existing organs, to create
needed new organs under the UN umbrella, and to make all such organs, with the sole
exception of the UN Human Rights Council, maximally inclusive. I would be prepared
to give a voice to those with whom I now strongly disagree in the expectation that doing
so is likely, over time, to lessen the gulf between their views and my own. The best
way to move undemocratic nations in the direction of greater democracy, in my opinion,
is to maintain polities, social systems and economies that much of the populations
in the world’s less democratic societies will wish to emulate, just as they now emulate
so much of Western culture. The process is not likely, in my view, to play itself out any
more slowly than the one that Mr Jacobs recommends. Regrettably, neither he nor I
has a crystal ball to ascertain whether future change will be more along the path that he
recommends than along the one that I favor.
Global democracy is, Didier Jacobs argues,
an idea whose time has come – and
he is surely right about that. Drawing on
his extensive experience in economics,
international affairs, and as a citizen of
the European Union, Jacobs presents
a concise, clear, and realistic case for
moving forward on what is likely to be
the great civil rights struggle of the 21st
century. This is a book that everyone interested
in creating a better world should
read, discuss, and act upon.
- Peter Singer,
Princeton University.
Global Democracy tackles one of the
most important questions of our time:
how to bring global governance under
a modicum of democratic control. In
the age of “governance without government”,
Didier Jacobs reminds us that
institutions matter, and that the concept
of political equality is as relevant at the
global level as it is at the national level.
- David Held,
London School of Economics
IV - RESPONSE (Didier Jacobs)
The world is changing, and I propose new definitions for familiar words to reflect that
change. The boundaries between states and international institutions are increasingly
blurred. Most analysts agree that international institutions engage in “global public
policy”, and refer to them with increasingly convoluted terms such as “system of global
governance”. Why not simply call them what they are: “our global government”? I
believe in the power of ideas, and the power of words. If most activists referred to the
UN, World Bank, WTO etc. as “our global government”, the media would soon take
on that phrase, and people would question why they do not elect representatives to that
government.
“Global governance” is little more than a euphemism hiding the lack of democracy at
the global level of government. Likewise for “federalism”. Joe Schwartzberg may be
nostalgic of a neat definition of federalism that was useful in the past. But what is the
essence of a federation and of a confederation? The essence of the difference is that the
federated entities can escape the rules of a confederation (either by vetoing them or by
opting out of them) but can be forced to abide by them in a federation (no veto or optout
right). By that simple definition, the WTO has de facto achieved world federalism
by stealth. World federalism is no longer a utopia, it is reality! And the task is now to
democratize our federal world government.
The future that I advocate is one where
the United Nations continues to play the
roles it plays today, as well as it can, but
where nations that are willing to cooperate
more closely to build a better world do
so in various international forums. Two
principles should guide those “secondtier”
institutions: inclusiveness and sharing
power. Inclusiveness means that all
nations willing to respect more demanding
rules of cooperation should be welcome
to join: nations would stay out only
because they are not willing to abide by
the rules, not because they are not invited
in the first place. Sharing power ultimately
means applying majority voting with
the “one person, one vote” rule, although
there can be many intermediate steps to
get there. So, contrary to Joe Schwartzberg’s
understanding, this is not the old
model of US-led alliance.
52 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

BOOK REVIEW
The Great Experiment:
The Story of Ancient Empires, Modern States,
and the Quest for a Global Nation
by Strobe Talbott
Ronald J. Glossop
3 April 2008
Ronald J. Glossop, Professor Emeritus
at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville
(SIUE), is Chair of the Steering
Committee of the World Federalist Institute
of Citizens for Global Solutions. He
is the author of World Federation?
(1994) & Confronting War (4th ed., 2001).
Strobe Talbott, president of the Brookings Institute, provides us an excellent overview
of human political history enriched by personal experiences and comments, all organized
to show how humanity is slowly but surely creating ever larger political units to
the point where now the next step is a creation of a global nation, a politically unified
community that encompasses the whole Earth. Talbott gave us his general viewpoint in
his 1992 article in TIME when he said, “I’ll bet that within the next hundred years . . .
nationhood as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global
authority” (pp. 126-27). He now adds, “I have qualified my forecast somewhat, but
not in essence” (p. 127). The book’s vast historical sweep, apparent in the subtitle, is
also evident in the three parts into which the 405-page survey is divided: “The Imperial
Millennia” (roughly up to 1914), “The American Centuries” (roughly up to the end of
the Cold War in 1990), and “The Unipolar Decades” (from 1991 to the present). There
are also another 71 pages of notes in this carefully documented work.
This book is a dramatic erudite narrative of human history told by a top-notch American
scholar with an insider’s view of current events. Strobe Talbott and Bill Clinton
shared a house while both were Rhodes Scholars at Oxford University (p.17), and
Talbott later was asked by Clinton to be his Deputy Secretary of State. Talbott’s own
account of his life and career, which includes 21 years with TIME, is in the “Introduction”
(page 11).
World federalists will especially enjoy reading chapter 10 titled “The Master Builder”,
which covers the end of World War II, the beginning of the UN, and the all-too-brief
flourishing of the world federalist movement. Most readers will be surprised to learn
that Harry Truman, from the time he graduated from high school in 1901, carried a
scrap of paper in his wallet on which were written 12 lines of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s
poem “Locksley Hall”, including the lines “Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and
the battle-flags were furl’d, In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World”.
Talbott notes that “Truman recopied this text by hand as many as forty times during
his life” (p.184) and that in a 1951 conversation with author John Hersey Truman said,
“Notice that part about universal law. … We’re going to have that someday. I guess
that’s what I’ve really been working for ever since I first put that poetry in my pocket”
(p. 210).
The Great Experiment: The Story of
Ancient Empires, Modern States, and the
Quest for a Global Nation
by Strobe Talbott
(New York, London, Toronto, Sydney:
Simon & Schuster, 2008)
The negative reaction of world federalists to the UN plus their arguments for a radical
change are described in detail. One example is this quotation from Einstein’s September
1945 letter to J. Robert Oppenheimer: “The wretched attempts to achieve international
security, as it is understood today by our governments, do not alter at all
the political structures of the world, do not recognize at all the competing sovereign
nation-states as the real cause of conflicts. Our governments and the people do not
seem to have drawn anything from past experience and are unable or unwilling to think
the problem through. The conditions existing today force the individual states, for the
sake of their own security based on fear, to do all those things which inevitably produce
war. At the present state of industrialism, with the existing complete integration
53 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

of the world, it is unthinkable that we can
have peace without a real governmental
organization to create and enforce law on
individuals in their international relations.
Without such an over-all solution to give
up-to-date expression to the democratic
sovereignty of the peoples, all attempts to
avoid specific dangers in the international
field seem to me illusory” (p. 197).
The book also contains several statements
that suggest that world federalist
ideas are having some influence in unexpected
places. For example, Talbott notes
that in the first edition of his 1948 classic
Politics Among Nations prominent
realist political theorist Hans Morgenthau
observed that “the argument of the advocates
of the world state is unanswerable.
There can be no permanent international
peace without a state coextensive with
the confines of the political world [and]
a radical transformation of the existing
international society of sovereign nations
into a supranational community of individuals”
(p. 198). In 1992 Ronald Reagan
said that he could foresee “a standing UN
force — an army of conscience — that
is fully equipped and prepared to carve
out human sanctuaries through force if
necessary” (p. 258). In his 2006 farewell
address at the Truman Library and
Museum in Independence, Missouri, UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan said, “The
United States has given the world an example
of a democracy in which everyone,
including the most powerful, is subject
to legal restraint. Its current moment of
world supremacy gives it a priceless opportunity
to entrench the same principles
at the global level” (p. 391).
Talbott provides interesting inside accounts
of crucial events and international
meetings during the years of the Clinton
administration as well as an insightful
analysis of the actions and views of individuals
in the current Bush administration.
His last chapter, “The Crucial Years,” focuses
on the upcoming U.S. Presidential
election and the policies Talbott believes
the United States should adopt as well as
the issues that must be addressed. “The
next administration should . . . waste no
time in demonstrating that respect for international
law is once again part of the
bedrock of U.S. foreign policy” (p. 393).
There should be greater support for the
United Nations, but beyond that “the UN
needs to be incorporated into an increasingly
variegated network of structures
and arrangements — some functional in
focus, others geographic; some intergovernmental,
others based on systematic
collaboration with the private sector, civil
society, and NGOs” (p. 394). The United
States should “encourage regional organizations
to develop their own capacities
as well as habits of cooperation with one
another and with the UN itself” (p. 395).
Also “ensuring a peaceful twenty-first
century will depend in large measure on
narrowing the divide between those who
feel like winners and those who feel like
losers in the process of globalization” (p.
395).
With regard to the most urgent problems
to be tackled, Talbott points to “two clear
and present dangers. One is a new wave
of nuclear-weapons proliferation; the other
is a tipping point in the process of climate
change. These mega-threats can be
held at bay in the crucial years immediately
ahead only through multilateralism
on a scale far beyond anything the world
has achieved to date” (p. 395). Talbott
concludes with this comment: “By solving
[these] two problems that are truly
urgent, we can increase the chances that
eventually . . . the world will be able to
ameliorate or even solve other problems
that are merely very important. Whether
future generations make the most of such
a world, and whether they think of it as a
global nation or just as a well-governed
international community, is up to them.
Whether they have the choice is up to
us” (p. 401). It seems to this reviewer
that Talbott strays from his own basic insights
when he suggests that the nuclear
proliferation problem might be resolved
by multilateralism on a grand scale in the
absence of a prior revolutionary change
to the global nation system (that is, to a
world federation) which would substantially
restrict national sovereignty.
54 • Minerva #32 • June 2008
Eva B. Olds
5 November 1922 – 5 April 2008
This issue is respectfully dedicated
to the memory of Eva B. Olds, a
friend of Minerva, whose life was
devoted to pioneering multiple roles
for women. “My mother comes from
the Pleiades – all sparkle,” writes her
daughter, Professor Linda Olds.
Notes
&
Resources
HUMAN SECURITY:
STUDENT ATTITUDES
In its early phases, Paul Evans’ University
of British Columbia web-based
course, “Human Security in the Emerging
International System”, gathered more
than 25 definitions of human security in
many different languages, ranging “from
those that are comprehensive and holistic
to those that are narrow and focused. Using
such a continuum, Lloyd Axworthy’s
focus on humanitarian interventionism
is considered biased towards the narrow
side, while those interested in both
conflict and development are considered
broad.” As early as 2001, Evans reported
(at a Harvard JFK School of Government
workshop on “Measurement of Human
Security”) “an interesting ‘generational
gap’ appearing — students instinctively
lean towards the comprehensive approach
and are unbothered by challenges to traditional
notions of sovereignty”.
~
GLOBAL HUMAN SECURITY
REPORT
At the same conference in 2001, Andrew
Mack announced that he would shift from
Harvard to the University of British Co-

lumbia to develop a “Global Human Security
Report” focusing on violence (war,
conflict, crime, genocide, human rights
abuses). In his remarks on that occasion,
he emphasized that understanding the
concept of human security is “not purely
an issue of analytics, but also of shared
political and moral values”; however, “focus
and coherence are necessary in any
individual research activity if human security
is not to be discredited, in the way
that ‘structural violence’ was”, he commented.
Mack asserted that the report was
needed because the “UN does not have a
research culture”, and “security-development-governance”
need to be brought together.
Although there would be data constraints,
of course, the Report would try
to develop a composite index, including
ranking of countries, with a view toward
prevention of violence.
The first Human Security Report was issued
in 2005. It was produced by the Human
Security Report Project, then located
at the University of British Columbia’s
Human Security Centre, now (since May
2007) at the School for International Studies,
Simon Fraser University, Vancouver.
FMI: www.humansecurityreport.info
~
HUMAN SECURITY UNIT
The Human Security Unit (HSU) was
established in May 2004 in the United
Nations Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) “to integrate
human security in all UN activities.
By combining the management of the
United Nations Trust Fund for Human
Security (UNTFHS) with the dissemination
and promotion activities on human
security, the HSU plays a pivotal role in
translating the concept of human security
into concrete activities and highlighting
the added value of the human security
approach as proposed by the Advisory
Board on Human Security (ABHS)”.
~
COPENHAGEN CONSENSUS
(a) PEACEKEEPING
A report claiming to be the first cost-benefit
analysis of UN peacekeeping initiatives,
based on a study of civil conflicts
around the world over the past four decades,
has been prepared for the Copenhagen
Consensus, a project to analyze the
costs and benefits of various solutions to
world problems. It finds that “the international
community would get better value
for money from peacekeeping operations
if it created a standing military force to
come to the rescue of democracies threatened
by coup or civil war. … It argues that
peacekeeping is even more cost-effective
when provided in the form of an ‘over the
horizon’ security guarantee — a commitment
to send in foreign troops if needed”
(Reuters, 22 April 2008). In a telephone
interview with Reuters, report co-author
Paul Collier, professor at Oxford University’s
Centre for the Study of African
Economies said: “It would be much better
if it were just regularised as UN guarantees
instead of … ad hoc, hit-and-miss
former colonial (arrangements).”
The Copenhagen Consensus Center
“analyzes
the world’s greatest challenges and
identifies cost-efficient solutions to meeting
these challenges. The Center works
with multilateral organizations, governments
and other entities concerned with
mitigating the consequences of the challenges
which the world is facing. With the
process of prioritization, the center aims to
establish a framework in which solutions
to problems are prioritized according to
efficiency based upon economic and scientific
analysis of distinct subjects.”
It was conceived and is headed by a controversial
figure in studies of climate
change amelioration, Bjørn Lomborg,
author of The Skeptical Environmentalist
and then-director of the Danish government’s
Environmental Assessment Institute.
The initial project was co-sponsored
by the Denmark and The Economist newspaper.
A book summarizing the Copenhagen
Consensus 2004 conclusions, Global
Crises, Global Solutions, edited by Lomborg,
was published in October 2004 by
Cambridge University Press. After the
project’s first two conferences of economists,
the Center itself was established at
the Copenhagen Business School, to organize
the 2008 conference.
55 • Minerva #32 • June 2008
(b) MALNUTRITION
The 2008 Copenhagen Consensus results
were issued on 30 May, reportedly after
an expert panel assessed over two years
of reseach by more than 50 economists to
make a prioitized list of 30 specific solutions
to “some of the biggest challenges
facing the world”. Ranked #1: nutrition
for the 150 million childrn who are undernourished.
~
FOOD
Ahead of the World Bank meeting in April,
with drastically rising food prices provoking
unrest in developing countries, Bank
head Robert Zoellick proposed for discussion
“a massive, coordinated international
plan to reduce hunger”, a “new deal” for
global food policy, according to Agence
France-Presse. The International Monetary
Fund, at its spring meetings in Washington,
already had issued a dire warning about
potential “terrible consequences” of the
food crisis. At a closing news conference,
IMF managing director Dominque Strauss-
Kahn said that development gains made in
the past five or 10 years could be “totally
destroyed” and that resulting social unrest
could lead to war.
Thirty-seven countries currently face food
crises, according to the Food and Agriculture
Organization.
~
MANAGING CHANGE AT UN
New publication from the Center for UN
Reform Education: Managing Change at
the United Nations .
~
BULLETIN ON FEDERALISM
The Centre for Studies on Federalism
(Turin, Italy) announced in February a
new issue (3/2007) of the Bibliographical
Bulletin on Federalism, available at
. The online Bulletin
“provides a timely update on new articles
on federalism and an archive useful
to researchers all over the world”, cover-

ing “specific topics related to federalism,
such as the theory and practice of federal
states; multi-level systems of government
and governance; the theory, practice and
reform of international organisations; processes
of regional integration; federalism
as a political idea. The specific policies of
federal polities are not considered other
than as case studies relevant to institutional
and theoretical arguments, strictly
related to federal ideas and structures.”
~
PUBLICATIONS ABOUT ICC
In The Politics of Constructing the International
Criminal Court: NGOs, Discourse,
and Agency (May 2008), Michael
J. Struett of North Carolina State University
writes: “It should be clear that the
NGOs’ countless written and verbal interventions,
in formal and informal settings,
decisively shaped the final result on virtually
every provision of the statute. That
outcome can only be explained through
the logical force of the communicatively
rational arguments put forth by NGOs.”
Courting Conflict? Peace, Justice and the
ICC in Africa (March 2008), by Nicholas
Waddell and Phil Clark, includes essays
by individuals belonging to several CICC
member organizations .
The War Crimes Research Office (WCRO)
at American University’s recent report
(March 2008), “The Gravity Threshold of
the International Criminal Court”, reviews
“the underlying purpose of the threshold
as understood by the drafters of the Rome
Statute, analyses the application of gravity
in the situations and cases that have
come before the Court thus far, and offers
recommendations aimed at clarifying
both the objectives of the threshold and
the factors relevant to its satisfaction”
.
In his February 2008 briefing titled “The
Justice Dilemma in Uganda”, United
States Institute of Peace Rule of Law
program adviser Scott Worden provides a
background of the Ugandan conflict and
offers recommendations on how to move
forward with a comprehensive justice
plan .
“Prosecuting Aggression”, Noah Weisbord’s
article in the winter 2008 issue of
the Harvard International Law Journal,
puts the current negotiations on this issue
in the context of past initiatives, begins to
forecast prosecutorial challenges created
by alternative formulations, and identifies
the main prosecutorial challenges common
to all formulations to consider how a
case against a political or military leader
for the crime of aggression might look
.
“Puissances et impuissances de la Cour
pénale internationale: des ambiguïtés de
la notion de complémentarité”, an article
by Benjamin Bibas & Emmanuel Chicon
in the French online magazine Mouvements
(13 April 2008 ),
offers
an assessment of the work of the ICC on
the occasion of the tenth anniversary of
the Rome Statute, focusing primarily on
the principle of complementarity.
According to the Coalition for the International
Criminal Court, Dr Cenap Çakmak,
in “Civil Society Actors in International
Law and World Politics: Definition, Conceptual
Framework, Problems” (International
Journal of Civil Society Law, January
2008 ),
explores “the relationship between transnational
civil society organizations and
the rise of a new, participatory, and pluralistic
global governance. Dr Çakmak
uses the CICC as an indicator of this phenomenon,
pointing to the Coalition’s truly
global nature, links with governmental
authorities, and its position as a leading
force behind adoption of the Rome Statute
and the ICC.”
~
ICC GENDER REPORT CARD
56 • Minerva #32 • June 2008
On 30 November 2007, the Women’s
Initiatives for Gender Justice launched
the Gender Report Card on the International
Criminal Court for 2007 at the Assembly
of States Parties in New York. It
was the third year that the WIGJ Gender
Justice Gender Report Card provided an
overview and assessment of each of the
situations where the ICC is conducting its
investigations, the charges, major judicial
decisions during the year, the developments
in jurisprudence regarding victims’
participation, and the institutional developments
at the ICC regarding appointments
and policies. The Gender Report
Card 2007 and the speech given at the
launch by the WIGJ Executive Director,
Brigid Inder, are available at .
~
HUMAN TRAFFICKING REPORT
The US Department of State released the
2008 Trafficking in Persons Report on 4
June 2008. This eighth annual report, covering
the globe during the period of April
2007 through March 2008, serves as the
US government’s “primary diplomatic
tool to encourage partnerships and determination”
in counteracting human trafficking.
It may be downloaded at .
~
DRC DOCUMENTARY
In Lisa F. Jackson’s film, “The Greatest
Silence: Rape in the Congo” (Special Jury
Prize, Sundance 2008), she talks to survivors,
caregivers, law enforcement officials,
UN peacekeepers, and some rapists.
~
CHILD SOLDIERS REPORT
The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child
Soldiers issued its first report since 2004
in May. It describes current patterns of
child soldier use, early effects of bringing
perpetrators before the ICC & the Special
Court for Sierra Leone, and major shortcomings
in programs to reintegrate child
combatants. In addition to the important
example of high-level prosecutions, “it is
really important that recruiters face consequences,”
said Coalition Director Victoria
Forbes Adam.

~
THE COUNCIL OF
WOMEN WORLD LEADERS
The Council is a network of current and
former women prime ministers, presidents,
and cabinet ministers whose mission
is to “mobilize the highest level of
global women leaders for collective action
on issues of critical importance to
women and equitable development”. It
has ten years of experience convening
women leaders and working with grassroots
organizations and multilateral institutions.
The Advisory Group of the
Council includes six male former heads
of state. FMI: www.cwwl.org
~
WOMEN LEADERS
INTERCULTURAL FORUM
WLIF, a program of Realizing Rights:
the Ethical Globalization Initiative, is a
network of women leaders of different
generations, cultures and professional
disciplines, committed to “bringing about
a more secure and just world”. It aims
to “increase the participation of women
leaders in conflict resolution and in policy-making
on security by supporting
the effort of principled women leaders
and coordinating diplomatic missions of
women leaders to areas of acute crisis”.
FMI: www.realizingrights.org
Both The Council of Women World Leaders
and the Women Leaders Intercultural
Forum are working to support the International
Colloquium on Women’s Empowerment,
Leadership Development,
International Peace and Security in Liberia
in March 2009, to be co-convened by
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
and President Tarja Halonen of Finland.
At a planning meeting in Liberia in January
2008, WLIF organized workshops
on “The Economics of Insecurity” and
“Gender and Climate Change”. WLIF
also is responsible for coordinating the
Colloquium’s content on international
peace and security. The Council of Women
World Leaders is serving as Vice-Chair
for North America, working closely with
counterparts in Europe and Africa.
~
WOMEN’S LEARNING
PARTNERSHIP
& GLOBAL SECURITY SUMMIT
At the November 2007 Global Security
Summit, President Mahnaz Afkhami committed
the WLP to support the outcomes
by producing and distributing training
materials for political participation that
will emphasize “tranformational leadership”
and democratic processes. A manual
translated into the 17 languages used by
WLP’s partner organizations in 20 countries
in the global south will document the
experience and expertise of Palestinian
women and women in Afghanistan, Iran,
Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe
in peacebuilding & conflict resolution
and present curricula for women
activists to strengthen their organizations.
The purposes are to “use technology for
advocacy and networking, engage young
women and men in democratic leadership
and human rights advocacy with curricula
and trainings designed … for them, and
connect women‘s organizations from the
global south, especially Muslim majority
countries, with women in the developed
world so that they may collaborate, support
and learn from one another”. FMI:
www.learningpartnership.org
~
REAL SECURITY FILM
Under the auspices of the Annenberg
Foundation Trust at Sunnylands, Iris
Films, a non-profit company “dedicated
to making films that address social justice
issues”, is producing a documentary,
“Real Security”, observing the work of
Betty Bigombe, former Minister of State
from Uganda, Brazilian Minister of the
Environment Marina Silva, a forest activist,
and Sarah Sewall, director of the Carr
Center for Human Rights at Harvard.
~
WOMEN’S EARTH ALLIANCE
According to Melinda Kramer, founding
director of the Women’s Earth Alliance
(interviewed by Rhyen Coombs in World
Pulse, 1 April 2008), the Alliance is “a
global organization that links women
working in environmental sustainability
from around the world. And we provide
opportunities for women to exchange
resources, share best practices, build alliances
around various environmental
issues, and really amplify the voices of
women [on] environmental sustainability.
In particular, we have a focus on water
because women are so inextricably
linked to issues of water.” The Alliance is
working with GROOTS in Kenya, which
specializes in women’s collectives & cooperatives;
the Green Belt Movement; A
Single Drop, based in the Philippines; and
a small international organization called
Crabgrass. An African-led continental
training conference that the Alliance
planned for March in Kenya had to be
postponed because of the turmoil there.
The Alliance also has a “Transformative
Advocacy” project, linking women professionals
in environmental justice law
and other specialties with local women
activists to collaborate on “a particular issue
in a particular region based on a stated
need” — beginning this month with Native
American women in the southwest.
FMI: www.womensearthalliance.org
~
INTERCULTURAL SPACES
The Irish Royal Academy organized a
symposium in 2003, calling for thought
on the inextricable links between culture
& language & identity as their “conflicts
and synergies” shift in a “globalized”
world with its “plethora of intercultural
spaces”, featuring both intense cultural
exchange and seemingly growing intolerance.
In the recently resulting book, Intercultural
Spaces: Language-Culture-Identity,
edited by Aileen Pearson-Evans and
Angela Leahy (New York, Peter Lang,
2007, 301pp), various conference participants
— from the worlds of politics, literature,
education and the theater and from
different geographical backgrounds — attempt
to discern the characteristics of the
cultural cross-currents in order to define
and emphasize the positive and minimize
the negative.
57 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

~
EXPLORATION FUND
George Soros announced in March the
creation of a $2million fund at the Open
Society Institute to help prompt some
risk-taking and entrepreneurship among
scholars, journalists, and activists working
on “national security; citizenship,
membership and marginalization; authoritarianism;
and new strategies and tools
for advocacy”.
~
ROBOTS
Fans of robots named “Minerva” will
want to know, thanks to Minerva reader
Mary Ellen Crowley, that there are several,
including a Minerva robot that gave
tours in the Smithsonian National Museum
of American History, a Minerva
transformer robot (Japanese cartoon), a
Minerva LEGO robot, and a robot system
for neurosurgery named MINERVA!
The Department of Public Affairs at
JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration
Agency, believes Minerva readers will
enjoy knowing more about their exploration
rover as follows:
“JAXA and IHI Aerospace have
cooperatively developed the asteroid
exploration rover ‘MINERVA’, which
stands for MIcro Nano Experimental Robot
Vehicle for Asteroid. MINERVA has
the unique mobility by hopping, which is
specialized in the micro-gravity environment.
The weight of MINERVA is about
0.6[kg]. MINERVA has 3 CCD cameras
to observe the surface precisely and 6
thermometers to measure the temperature
of the surface. MINERVA has on-board
computer with high performance to explore
autonomously.
“MINERVA is the first small
body exploration rover in the world,
which was taken to the asteroid 1998SF36
by Japanese spacecraft “Hayabusa”. On
12th November 2005, MINERVA was
deployed by Hayabusa spacecraft. Unfortunately
MINERVA could not arrive at
the surface of the asteroid, but Hayabusa
could communicate with MINERVA and
confirm that the health of MINERVA was
good.”
Minerva photo courtesy of JAXA
Back cover:
A Grazing Encounter Between Two Spiral Galaxies
(NGC 2207 and IC2163)
Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI) - This image was created from
3 separate pointings of Hubble. The Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 data sets were
obtained by Debra Meloy Elmegreen (Vassar College), Bruce G. Elmegreen (IBM Research
Division), Michele Kaufman (Ohio State Unniversity), Elias Brinks (Universidad
de Guanajuato, Mexico), Curt Struck (Iowa State University), Magnus Thomasson
(Onsala Space Observatory, Sweden), Maria Sundin (Goteborg University, Sweden),
and Mario Klaric (Columbia, South Carolina).
“Trapped in their mutual orbit around each other, these two galaxies will continue
to distort and disrupt each other. Eventually, billions of years from now, they will
merge into a single, more massive galaxy. It is believed that many present-day galaxies,
including the Milky Way, were assembled from a similar process of coalescence of
smaller galaxies occurring over billions of years.”
58 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

59 • Minerva #32 • June 2008

60 • Minerva #32 • June 2008