Sinking the “Responsibility to Protect”
By Barbara Crossette

Rarely does a catchphrase in common currency around the United Nations break out into wider public debate. The “responsibility to protect” has made that leap, thanks to the leaders of Sudan and their lawless militias, President Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, and the paranoid military rulers of Burma, which they call Myanmar.

The responsibility to protect—reduced to “R2P” among insiders—was a bold new principle adopted by the member countries of the UN in a 2005 world summit in New York. In essence, what it says is that governments have the duty to shield their citizens from mass abuses, including crimes against humanity and genocide. If and when governments fail to exercise that responsibility, the wider world has the right to step in, using a range of options from passive sanctions policies to forceful intervention.

From the start, this was a controversial doctrine. The last secretary-general, Kofi Annan, met a barrage of criticism from developing nations when he first described the principle and called for its implementation as the “right to intervene.” For many, that sounded too much like an invitation to stronger, often former colonial, powers to invade. The warning signs have always been there: Try to override our sovereignty and see what happens.

Now the world is seeing how hard if not impossible it will be to turn the principle into action. That has not deterred politicians and advocacy groups from demanding that the world live up to its pledge. In the United States Congress, in the French and British governments, and among such influential actors as the International Crisis Group and international human rights organizations the principle has been held up as a guiding light.  Read more.

Military Stalls Aid in Burma
By Farah Ameen

The rapid increase in the death toll and the risk of fatalities from water-borne diseases and starvation in Burma over the last two weeks have been compounded by the military government’s restrictions on international efforts to help with the devastation caused by Cyclone Nargis.

 With more than 100,000 killed and up to 2.5 million Burmese people affected by the May 2 cyclone and its aftermath, the junta is finally succumbing to world pressure. At a meeting of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Singapore on Monday, the Burmese government agreed to accept significantly more international aid for cyclone victims, but stipulated that supplies be channeled through regional personnel and organizations rather than Western agencies. The government will also host a meeting of aid donors; it claims that the losses from the disaster have exceeded $10 billion.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, whose efforts to speak with junta leader General Than Shwe were thwarted, will arrive in Burma on Thursday to try to speed up relief efforts. The UN is concerned with “saving lives, not with politics,” said Ban. It is “not too late to try to save more people,” said Michele Montas, Ban’s spokesperson. “The whole purpose of the trip is to accelerate the pace of disaster relief. He hopes his presence can really make things go faster,” she added.

Meanwhile, John Holmes, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, has been in Burma since May 18, assessing the situation. According to UN reports, relief coordination on the ground was better than Holmes had anticipated, considering that the first week after the disaster the Burmese junta denied visas to foreign aid workers, before it slowly started easing the restrictions. Read more.