Security Challenges Volume 7 Number 4 (Summer 2011)

Security Challenges
Volume 7 Number 4 (Summer 2011)

Security Challenges
ISSN 1833 – 1459
EDITORS:
Dr Stephan Frühling and Dr Benjamin Schreer
Managing Editors
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Robert Wylie Geoff Hunt
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EDITORIAL BOARD:
Robert Ayson
Victoria University
Wellington, New Zealand
Ross Babbage
The Kokoda Foundation
Canberra, Australia
Sam Bateman
University of Wollongong
Wollongong, Australia
Leszek Buszynski
International University of
Japan, Tokyo, Japan
Eliot Cohen
John Hopkins University,
Washington, DC, USA
Ralph Cossa
Pacific Forum CSIS
Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
Bates Gill
Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute,
Stockholm, Sweden
Gerald Hensley
Former Secretary of Defence
New Zealand
Rod Lyon
ASPI
Canberra, Australia
Andrew Mack
Simon Fraser University
Vancouver, Canada
Rizal Sukma
Centre for Strategic and
International Studies
Jakarta, Indonesia
Ramesh Thakur
Asia-Pacific College of
Diplomacy, Australian
National University
Canberra, Australia
William Tow
Department of International
Relations, Australian National
University
Canberra, Australia
Akio Watanabe
Research Institute for Peace
and Security
Tokyo, Japan
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RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT AND PROTECTION OF CIVILIANS
Vesselin Popovski
The Concepts of Responsibility to Protect and Protection of Civilians:
‘Sisters, but not Twins’ ......................................................................................... 1
Ramesh Thakur
Libya and the Responsibility to Protect:
Between Opportunistic Humanitarianism and Value-Free Pragmatism................ 13
Michael G. Smith, Jeni Whalan and Peter Thomson
The Protection of Civilians in UN Peacekeeping Operations:
Recent Developments.......................................................................................... 27
Hugh Breakey and Angus Francis
Points of Convergence and Divergence:
Normative, Institutional and Operational Relationships between R2P and PoC... 39
Charles Sampford
A Feuerbachian Inversion:
From Sovereign Rights and Subjects Duties to Citizen Rights and State Duties 51
MYANMAR
John Blaxland
Myanmar: Time for Australian Defence Cooperation .......................................... 61
Christopher B. Roberts
Changing Myanmar:
International Diplomacy and the Futility of Isolation ............................................. 77
ARTICLE
Vandra Harris and Aaron P. Jackson
Learning Each Other’s Language:
Doctrine and AFP-ADF Interoperability ................................................................ 103

Editors’ Note
Welcome to the Summer 2011 edition of Security Challenges. The recent
Libya intervention has put the future of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P)
back on the international agenda. In this edition, Ramesh Thakur and other
prominent authors discuss this concept and its practical implications from
different angles. Moreover, Myanmar seems to have embarked on a
process of significant political change in recent months. In this context, John
Blaxland writes about the potential for defence engagement between
Australia and Myanmar, while Christopher Roberts argues for ending
international sanctions against the regime. Finally, the edition features an
article by Aaron Jackson and Vandra Harris on the crucial issue of how to
promote interoperability between the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and
the Australian Defence Force (ADF).
Stephan Frühling
Benjamin Schreer
Managing Editors
December 2011
The Kokoda Foundation
and the
Security Challenges Editorial Team
wish to acknowledge the generous support of
The Australian Department of Defence
and
Jacobs Australia
for the production and printing of the journal.

Security Challenges, Vol. 7, No. 4 (Summer 2011), pp. 1-12. - 1 -
The Concepts of Responsibility to
Protect and Protection of Civilians:
‘Sisters, but not Twins’
Vesselin Popovski
This article examines the differences and commonalities between the concepts ‘Protection of
Civilians’ (PoC) and ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) in terms of their origins, evolution and
applicability to various situations. Such comparative analysis is necessary as to avoid confusion
and misinterpretation. The main argument is that the two can be regarded as ‘sister’ concepts,
reinforcing each other, particularly when it comes to critical situations, the most recent example
being the international responses to the deadly threats to civilians in Libya in February-March
2011 and the measures imposed by the UN Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973. The
article also assesses whether the responses to the crisis in Libya represent a triumph or a
failure of the ’sister’ concepts.
With the failures of the international community and warring parties to protect
civilians in major armed conflicts in the last two decades—including Bosnia-
Herzegovina, Liberia, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Timor Leste, Democratic
Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Darfur and elsewhere—two
related, but distinct concepts have risen on the international agenda: the
duty for Protection of Civilians (PoC) in armed conflict and the Responsibility
to Protect (R2P) people from mass atrocities. There is a close relationship
between R2P and PoC. They share the same concern—civilian suffering
from mass human-induced violence—and both have underpinned
international policy and calls for interventions. But there are also important
differences in their scope and the situations and ways in which they can be
applied. One can argue that they are ‘sister’ concepts: it is important to keep
in mind their differences, as to avoid confusion and gaps in responsibilities;
but also it is important to exploit the commonalities between the two as to
bring mutual reinforcement and co-operation among actors. The two
concepts have co-existed for more than a decade, but there has hardly been
any in-depth comparative analysis nor a clear differentiation so far, apart
from a short anonymous brief written for the Global Centre for R2P.
1
The
UN Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973 on Libya utilised both
concepts and have provided us with an opportunity to undertake a more
detailed comparison.
1
‘The Relationship between the Responsibility to Protect and the Protection of Civilians in
Armed Conflict’, Policy Brief, Global Centre for the Policy to Protect, 9 May 2011,
<http://responsibilitytoprotect.org/The%20Relationship%20Between%20POC%20and%20R2P-
%20Updated.pdf> [Accessed 3 December 2011].

Vesselin Popovski
- 2 -
Protection of Civilians
The origins of PoC in armed conflict can be traced in the history of the
development of the norms of war, prescribed in early religious texts and
developed by many scholars of politics and ethics over many centuries.
2
The need to protect the life of civilians and other non-combatants in armed
conflicts has been gradually accepted in international humanitarian law,
universalised and codified in the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention. The
Fourth Geneva Convention—‘Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in
Time of War’
3
—coined the term PoC, and grounded its international legal
establishment. PoC, therefore, emerged as relevant to situations of armed
conflict only—if there is no armed conflict, where civilians are defined as the
opposite of combatants, PoC transforms itself into protection of citizens (that
can confusingly also be abbreviated as PoC) in times of peace, which is
covered by the well-developed and comprehensive body of human rights.
PoC is more limited than the peace-time protection of citizens and more
limited than the protection of all non-combatants in times of war—it would
not, for example, include the protection of wounded or captured soldiers,
which are dealt within the First, Second and Third Geneva Conventions.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), some UN agencies
with protection mandates, such as OCHA (Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs), UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees), and some humanitarian NGOs interpret the concept of PoC as
one of their core activities and apply it in a broader sense, covering not only
the period of armed conflict, but also protecting civilians in post-conflict
situations, too. PoC has been under regular consideration by the UN
Security Council since 1999, when it received the first report of the
Secretary-General on the subject.
4
Responsibility to Protect
In parallel with the increased attention to PoC, another concept, R2P, has
emerged out of a similar concern—the failure to protect people from
systematic mass atrocities.
5
In 1996, the then Representative of the UN
2
See V. Popovski, G. Reichberg and N. Turner (eds.), World Religions and Norms of War
(Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2009).
3
‘Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. Geneva, 12
August 1949’, International Humanitarian Law—Treaties & Documents, International Committee
of the Red Cross, 2005, <http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/FULL/380?OpenDocument> [Accessed
November 2011].
4
S/1999/957, 8 September 1999. For a full list of all UN Security Council resolutions and
Secretary General Reports on PoC, see <http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/site/
c.glKWLeMTIsG/b.4012213/k.481A/Protection_of_Civilians_in_Armed_ConflictbrUN_Document
s.htm> [Accessed 19 November 2011].
5
Ramesh Thakur, The Responsibility to Protect: Norms, Laws and the Use of Force in
International Politics (London: Routledge, 2011); Gareth Evans, The Responsibility to Protect:
Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and for All (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2008);
Alex J. Bellamy, Responsibility to Protect: The Global Effort to End Mass Atrocities (Cambridge:
Polity, 2009).

The Concepts of Responsibility to Protect and Protection of Civilians
- 3 -
Secretary-General on Internally Displaced Persons, Francis Deng, with his
team at Brookings published the seminal work Sovereignty as
Responsibility,
6
arguing that sovereignty can no longer be seen as a licence
for states to ignore people, but rather as states’ responsibility for the
humanitarian consequences of conflict. After yet another failure to protect
civilian population—Kosovo Albanians from the Milosevic regime’s
repressions in 1998-99—and the controversial un-authorised military
intervention by NATO, an International Commission on Intervention and
State Sovereignty (ICISS) was formed from the initiative and sponsorship of
the Canadian Government, that coined the phrase R2P in its 2001 Report.
7
R2P has become a worldwide shared concept, when in September 2005
almost 150 world leaders—the largest ever gathering in history of Heads of
States—adopted the document ‘World Summit Outcome’
8
at the opening of
the UN General Assembly 60
th
Session in New York, spelling out the newly
emerging norm in paragraphs 138-140 of the document. The UN General
Assembly continued debating R2P in several of its sessions as is evident
from the Reports of the UN Secretary-General in 2009, 2010 and 2011,
9
always enjoying a huge support, and with very few countries, still reluctant to
accept it.
R2P thus applies to serious situations of mass atrocities, but it does not
cover all violations of human rights, nor suffering from natural disasters—as
horrific as these might be. One test of the R2P limitations was the 2008
Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar, when some of the initial founders of the
concept—Bernard Kouchner and Lloyd Axworthy—attempted to speak about
Myanmar’s reckless ignorance of the human suffering as a failure to exercise
R2P.
10
This could have been possible under the original scope of the ICISS
2001 Report, but not under what was agreed upon by the UN General
Assembly in the 2005 World Summit Outcome document. One may argue
that if the Myanmar regime’s deliberate impediments to humanitarian
assistance had continued and the misery and starvation of people could
amount to a policy of extermination, a crime against humanity, then such
deliberate inflicting of additional human suffering (not the victimisation from
the natural disaster per se) could have triggered the applicability of R2P.
However, if evidence does not support such a finding of a crime against
6
D. Rothchild, Fr. Deng, I. W. Zartman, S. Kimaro, T. Lyons, Sovereignty as Responsibility:
Conflict Management in Africa Brookings (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1996).
7
International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), The Responsibility to
Protect, Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (Ottawa:
International Development Research Centre, December 2001).
8
‘2005 World Summit Outcome’, Fact Sheet, UN Department of Public Information, September
2005, <http://www.un.org/summit2005/presskit/fact_sheet.pdf> [Accessed 3 December 2011].
9
2009 UN SG Report: Implementing the Responsibility to Protect; 2010 UN SG Report: Early
Warning, Assessment, and the Responsibility to Protect; 2011 UN SG Report: The Role of
Regional and Sub-regional arrangements in Implementing the Responsibility to Protect.
10
For analysis, see ‘Cyclone Nargis and the Responsibility to Protect’, Myanmar/Burma Briefing
No. 2 by the Asia-Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect,
<http://www.r2pasiapacific.org/documents/Burma_Brief2.pdf> [Accessed 3 December 2011].

Vesselin Popovski
- 4 -
humanity, an R2P framework cannot be activated, and in such a case other
mechanisms—human rights machinery, humanitarian assistance—could be
applied instead.
In the case of R2P, the threshold between what falls in and what falls out of
the concept lies in the determination of the four atrocity crimes and
accordingly, it should not be equated to the general duty to protect citizens
from various disasters, nor should its mechanisms be equated with general
conflict prevention or conflict resolution; these can be regarded as a much
larger and historically more developed agenda. Although prevention of
conflicts in general can be a useful contribution in avoiding the occurrence of
potential mass atrocities during these conflicts, the focus of the R2P
preventive mechanisms should be specified to address particular atrocity
crimes. R2P, although narrowed in scope, should have a deep resource:
from the domestic, bilateral, regional and international mechanisms, starting
from power-sharing agreements (Kenya)
11
to the use of military force as a
last resort (Libya) can form its arsenal.
Differentiating R2P and PoC
The two concepts have a similar origin, they share the same initial
humanitarian impulse, but they have different scope and applicability. Not all
war crimes would fall under PoC, because some of them are not committed
against civilians, for example, mistreatment of prisoners of war. But all war
crimes would fall under R2P, as they represent one of the four atrocity
crimes. War crimes against civilians, as well as crimes against humanity
committed during armed conflict, would fall under both R2P and PoC and in
these situations the two circles of R2P and PoC would overlap.
A situation that would fall under PoC, but not R2P, for example, would be the
protection of civilians threatened from escalating armed conflict, if mass
atrocities are not planned and committed as part of such armed conflict. A
situation that would fall under R2P, but not PoC, would be, for example,
ethnic cleansing or crimes against humanity without nexus to an armed
conflict. On one hand, PoC is narrower than R2P—if all war crimes trigger
R2P, not all war crimes would fall under PoC—some are not committed
against civilians. On the other hand, R2P is narrower than PoC; it would not
apply in every armed conflict, but only in those in which mass atrocities have
been systematically planned and committed.
Interestingly, a situation that originally was not an armed conflict, can
escalate into an armed conflict and engage the PoC. The first UN Security
11
Mark Schneider, ‘Implementing the R2P in Kenya and Beyond’,
<http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/publication-type/speeches/2010/implementing-the-responsibility-
to-protect-in-kenya-and-beyond.aspx> [Accessed 2 December 2011]; also ‘Kenya in Crisis’,
Africa report No. 137, <http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/africa/horn-of-africa/kenya/137-
kenya-in-crisis.aspx> [Accessed 2 December 2011].

- 5 -
Council Resolution 1970 (26 February 2011) on Libya describes atrocities
against peaceful demonstrators—not yet an armed conflict—and activates
R2P (crimes against humanity), but is technically not yet a PoC situation.
The second UN Security Council Resolution 1973 (17 March 2011) already
describes the situation in Libya as a civil war, not simply protests and riots,
and the PoC comes to life (in parallel with R2P) as it applies in non-
international armed conflict. Another interesting element, emphasised in
Resolution 1973, is that PoC is an obligation of all parties in conflict,
therefore it urges not only the Gaddafi regime, but the rebels, as well, to
protect civilians. If R2P is a matter for states only, PoC can be an obligation
for non-state actors.
The comparison between the legal sources of R2P and PoC can be
illustrated as follows:
Table 1: Comparison of Legal Sources for R2P and PoC
R2P Legal Sources PoC Legal Sources
1948 Genocide Convention (genocide) 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention (PoC),
International Humanitarian Law (IHL), jus in bello
traditions
1949 four Geneva Conventions and their
Additional Protocols (war crimes)
UN Security Council Resolutions: thematic (Res.
1894) and country-specific mandates to PoC
1998 Rome Statute for ICC (crimes against
humanity, forceful deportation)
Refugee Laws (1951 Convention, 2009 African
Union Convention on Internally Displaced
Persons)
Domestic Law Ottawa protocol banning landmines
Bilateral, Regional Law 2010 Convention on Cluster Munitions
UN Charter, Chapter VI, VII, VIII measures Relevant Human Rights Laws—prohibition of
recruitment of children in armed forces
Relevant Human Rights Laws—non-
discrimination of ethnic minorities
Table 1 (though not exhaustive), demonstrates well both similarities and
differences: if all four Geneva Conventions are relevant to R2P, only the last
(fourth) Geneva Convention is relevant to PoC. The whole volume of human
rights laws would be too large for both R2P and PoC, and only parts of it will
be relevant; for example, the non-discrimination of minorities would be
relevant to R2P, if minorities rights are gradually abused, this can escalate
into ethnic cleansing or genocidal policies. In another example, children’s
rights may be relevant to PoC in the case of a serious impact of armed
conflicts on children. The legal sources for PoC would also include refugee
laws, some disarmament treaties, and prohibiting certain weapons like
chemical weapons, landmines or cluster munitions that cause excessive
civilian suffering.

Vesselin Popovski
- 6 -
Table 2 (being, as Table 1, also not exhaustive) indicates the similarities and
differences between R2P and PoC in terms of the actors engaged in the
various types of protection:
Table 2: Comparison of Actors Engaged with R2P and PoC
R2P Actors PoC Actors
UN Secretary General Special Advisors Armed Forces
Police, law enforcement institutions (Pillar 1)
Peace Operations, UN Security Council,
Department of Peace-Keeping Operations
(DPKO)
Regional actors: African Union, European
Union, League of Arab States, others
UN Agencies:
UNHCR, OCHA
DPKO, UNHCR, High-Commissioner for
Human Rights, Peacebuilding Commission,
UNICEF, Special Rapporteur on Children; Aid
donors, capacity builders, NGOs (Pillar 2)
ICRC
Mediators, fact-finding missions, Secretary-
General (non-coercive measures); UN Security
Council (coercive measures, Pillar 3)
Humanitarian NGOs
International Criminal Tribunals
Some actors would engage in both R2P and PoC, but others will have
specific mandate in just one type of protection. Although R2P may have the
ambition to engage almost everyone, illustrated in the formula ‘narrow, but
deep response’, some actors—PKO, UNHCR, ICRC, OCHA—that are very
willing to apply PoC, are reluctant to engage with R2P, considering it a
potential jeopardy for their mandates.
R2P and PoC concepts are ‘sisters, but not twins.’ They are close in
relationship and share similar humanitarian concerns; yet, their specificity is
important and should not be confused. Agencies that acknowledge and
engage in PoC have been reluctant to attach their mandate to R2P, seeing
the concept as too interventionist. In fact, one needs to be reminded that
R2P contains very little interventionism—even within the Pillar Three
12
machinery, military intervention forms only a last option. Adding that R2P
has a very large preventative agenda, there is not much to worry about; R2P
came into existence as a counter-point to intervention, it is about helping
potential victims of atrocities. Although technically not a firm international
legal obligation, it has reached global acceptance and every General
Assembly debate proves this. R2P, as the ‘younger sister’, does not
undermine action, rather it catalyses it; it can mobilise political will and serve
12
The 2009 UN SG Report: ‘Implementing the Responsibility to Protect’ divided R2P into three
pillars: first pillar—states domestic responsibility to protect; second pillar—states and
international organizations assist other states to protect; and third pillar—when states manifestly
fail to protect, the international community through the UN Security Council adopt timely and
decisive measures, including coercion, under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.

- 7 -
the PoC agenda well. The ‘sister’ concepts, R2P and PoC, can reinforce
each other, but also can compete with each other.
R2P and PoC: Libya 2011
One may argue that R2P and PoC merge closer when it comes to very
critical situations such as in February-March 2011 in Libya, where R2P
rapidly developed from Pillar One to the whole scope of Pillar Three, ‘timely
and decisive response’, when Libya manifestly failed to protect. The
categorisation of the situation as civil war brought PoC language into
Resolution 1973 and it became a textbook resolution for a parallel
application of both PoC and R2P.
Libya 2011 is not the first time when R2P was referred to by the UN Security
Council—previous Security Council resolutions on Sudan (Darfur) and Côte
d’Ivoire also used R2P language.
13
Also, Libya is not the first time when the
Security Council has authorised use of force to protect civilians—the
bombing of Bosnian Serb military targets around Sarajevo in 1995 was
aimed mostly to protect the Bosnian Muslim civilian population and was
under the solid authorisation by the Security Council. I would even question
that Resolution 1973 is the first time the Security Council has authorised the
use of force for human protection against the wishes of a functioning state,
and that the closest the Council came to doing so in the past, was in Security
Council Resolution 794 (1992) in Somalia and Resolution 929 (1994) in
Rwanda.
14
Let us not forget Security Council Resolution 688 (1991) in the
aftermath of the first Gulf War that established a no-fly zone to protect the
Kurdish minority in Northern Iraq, certainly against the wishes of a
functioning state (Iraq) and in a very similar situation to that in Libya—
Saddam Hussein was threatening a huge part of the Iraqi (Kurdish)
population with massacre. Although Resolution 688 did not use the
language ‘all necessary means’, the no-fly zone in Northern Iraq was not a
paper-tiger—it was supported with limited air strikes several times in the
1990s, with the intervening states referring to Resolution 688 as a
justification for their military actions. Resolution 688 was adopted when the
R2P did not exist yet as a defined concept, and when PoC was simply a
legal requirement from the Fourth Geneva Convention, therefore one can
regard the two Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973 on Libya as the
first real test of utilising the two ‘sister’ concepts, R2P and PoC, to stop a
potential mass slaughter of a civilian population.
13
See for example text from Resolution 1962 (2010) on Côte d’Ivoire: “recalling that the Ivorian
leaders bear primary responsibility for ensuring peace and protecting the civilian population in
Côte d’Ivoire and demanding that all stakeholders and parties to conflict act with maximum
restraint to prevent a recurrence of violence and ensure the protection of civilians”.
14
Alex J. Bellamy and Paul D. Williams, ‘The New Politics of Protection?’, International Affairs,
vol. 87, issue 4 (2011); also A. Bellamy, ‘Libya and the Responsibility to Protect: The Exception
and the Norm’, Ethics & International Affairs, vol. 25, no. 3 (2011).

Vesselin Popovski
- 8 -
Resolution 1970
The Security Council invoked R2P immediately when on 26 February 2011 it
considered the deadly risk and the urgent need to protect the Libyan
population from atrocities, and adopted Resolution 1970, condemning the
use of force against civilians, deploring the gross systematic violations of
human rights, expressing deep concerns at the deaths of civilians and the
incitement to hostility by the Libyan Government. The Council considered
that the widespread and systematic attacks against the civilian population
may amount to crimes against humanity, referring to one of the four atrocity
crimes and triggering the applicability of R2P. In explicit text and in a
separate paragraph, Resolution 1970 recalled the Libyan authorities’
responsibility to protect (emphasis added) its population.
Resolution 1970 demanded an immediate end to violence, urged Libya to act
with utmost restraint, to respect human rights, to ensure safety of all foreign
nationals, to allow safe passage of humanitarian and medical supplies, and
lift media restrictions; and referred the situation to the International Criminal
Court (ICC)—an additional signal that R2P crimes might have been
committed. It also imposed Chapter VII sanctions on Libya, namely an arms
embargo, strengthened with a call upon States to inspect all cargo, that may,
upon reasonable ground to believe, contain prohibited items; a travel ban
against 16 Libyan officials, listed in Annex I of the Resolution, among them
Gaddafi himself, some of his family members and military leaders, involved
in violence; and an asset freeze against six designated individuals, listed in
Annex II of the Resolution—Gaddafi, four of his sons and one daughter.
There was no positive reaction, rather the opposite; Gaddafi not only ignored
Resolution 1970, but committed clear breaches of it, refusing to permit
humanitarian aid convoys into the besieged Misrata and Ajdabiya, a clear
failure by Libya to exercise R2P. The search for a peaceful solution through
the UN Special Envoy and the African Union High-Level Committee
continued, but gradually most governments and regional organisations
realised that the use of diplomatic efforts only would not protect the Libyan
people in lethal danger. Acknowledging Gaddafi regime’s manifest failure to
protect people, the international community shifted to enforcement
measures: on 12 March 2011 the League of Arab States (LAS) called on the
Security Council to impose immediately a no-fly zone on the Libyan Air
Force and to establish safe areas as precautionary measures to protect the
civilian population.
Resolution 1973
This demand for a no-fly zone by the LAS proved to be crucial.
15
The United
Kingdom, France and Lebanon (the latter representing LAS) introduced a
15
Bellamy and Williams, ‘The New Politics of Protection?’.

- 9 -
new resolution, Security Council Resolution 1973 (17 March 2011) which
urged the parties involved in armed conflict to “bear the primary
responsibility to take all feasible steps to ensure protection of civilians
(emphasis added)”. In Resolution 1973, PoC came to life, as the situation
moved from a riot—which does not qualify as ‘armed conflict’—to a civil war,
or a non-international armed conflict, in the language of the Geneva
Conventions. This was an important development, as the Security Council
could now strengthen its decisions based on obligations under international
humanitarian laws, applicable only in time of (civil) war and add war crimes
jurisdiction into what has already been established as R2P obligations in
Resolution 1970 on the basis of potential crimes against humanity. In
Resolution 1973, all the force of PoC (applicable to armed conflict) is added
to the force of R2P, previously already activated in Resolution 1970. The
‘sister’ concepts R2P and PoC in Resolution 1973 were synergised, their
legal and political forces merged to urge the Security Council to utilise all its
overwhelming power under Chapter VII, including the use of force—to
protect the civilian population and civilian-populated areas. This timely and
determined decision of the Security Council, a body often accused of being
obsolete, can be regarded as a triumph of both PoC and R2P.
Paragraph 4 of Resolution 1973 under the sub-title ‘Protection of Civilians’
contained the authorisation of the use of force in the well-known formula ‘to
take all necessary measures’. Paragraph 5 added into the authorisation of
the use of force, the establishment of a no-fly zone. Another new measure
imposed by Resolution 1973 is a ban on flights where states shall deny
permission to Libyan aircraft to take off from, or land in, or overfly their
territory. Resolution 1973 in its two Annexes added additional designations
of individuals, to whom the travel ban or the asset freeze will apply.
Resolution 1973 also strengthened other measures already adopted in
Resolution 1970: Paragraph 13 of Resolution 1973, enforcement of the arms
embargo, replaced Paragraph 11 of the previous resolution, adding an
additional authorisation to use force—after calling upon all vessels and
aircraft of flag States to co-operate with the inspections of the arms
embargo; the Security Council also authorised UN Member States‚ to use
“all necessary measures commensurate with the specific circumstances to
carry out such inspections”. Similar precedents can be found in the history
of the enforcement of sanctions in Southern Rhodesia in 1966 (Security
Council Resolution 221), Iraq-Kuwait in 1990 (Security Council Resolution
665) and others. This additional and limited authorisation to use of force in
Resolution 1973 does not, curiously, target Libya only; it can be applied
against any other state (including its vessels and aircraft) that may violate
the arms embargo.
Here comes probably the most controversial—legally and politically—issue
in my analysis: Resolutions 1970 and 1973 not only prohibited the supply of
any weapons to Libya, but also authorised limited use of force to intercept
such supplies. Therefore, when in late June 2011 the French parachuted

Vesselin Popovski
- 10 -
machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and munitions to the Libyan
rebels, could, hypothetically, Russia, officially protesting this as a violation of
Resolution 1970,
16
use force against the French aircraft delivering such
weapons to rebels in contravention of the Resolutions? Ironically, such
hypothetical use of force by Russia to prevent the French supplies of
weapons to Libyan rebels, would have been in compliance with Paragraph
13 of Resolution 1973.
Resolution 1973 was adopted with ten votes in favour and five abstentions:
Brazil, China, Germany, India and Russia. These five countries—two
permanent members and three strong candidates for permanent
membership—voiced their preference to seek a peaceful solution when
abstaining from the vote. Interestingly, Resolution 1973 does not eliminate
efforts for a peaceful solution; in fact it repeats and extends them. In its
statement, Russia recalled its own earlier draft resolution, calling for a
ceasefire and dialogue, but it is doubtful whether such a mild resolution
would have been instrumental. Calls for a ceasefire were never in shortage.
Many were made by UN officials and regional organisations, but in vain. On
the contrary, announcement of a ceasefire came from Gaddafi immediately
after the adoption of Resolution 1973 and this demonstrated how important
for the concept R2P is, if the international community is able to utilise the
R2P machinery to its deepest scope—threat and use of military measures
under Chapter VII.
R2P and PoC after Libya
I share views expressed by various scholars
17
that Security Council
Resolutions 1970 and 1973 represent a triumph of R2P and PoC. It would
have been a defeat of R2P and PoC, if Resolutions 1970 and 1973 were not
adopted and Gaddafi could massacre the citizens of Benghazi. The
Resolutions are a triumph of R2P, because for the first time since the
concept emerged 10 years ago, the full and deepest scope of its
implementation was utilised. The Pillar One domestic responsibility to
protect was referred to in Resolution 1970, and when this responsibility was
manifestly flouted and the regime threatened its own population with
massacre, the responsibility shifted to the international community; and, both
the UN and regional organisations engaged in the full scope of Pillar Three
measures: negotiations, diplomatic pressure, sanctions and, when all these
proved to be ineffective, the authorisation for the use of force came from the
only legal authority—the Security Council.
16
Statement by Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, ‘Russia Criticizes France over Arming Libyan
Rebels’, RT, 30 June 2011, <http://rt.com/news/france-supplying-rebels-country/> [Accessed 19
November 2011].
17
See Gareth Evans, ‘Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes: The R2P Balance Sheet After Libya’, the
Second Renate Kamener Oration, Leo Baeck Centre, Melbourne, 31 July 2011; Alex Bellamy,
Tom Weiss, Jennifer Welsh and other authors in the Roundtable: Libya, RToP, and
Humanitarian Intervention, Ethics & International Affairs, vol. 25, no. 3 (2011).

- 11 -
The removal of Gaddafi from power was nowhere stated as an aim in the
Resolutions; Gaddafi was mentioned but in terms of referral to the ICC, the
freezing of his assets and the ban on travel. Also, the military action was
only one part of the whole coercive regime established by the Resolutions.
A common mistake is to see R2P simply as a military intervention. In fact,
the international community has a lot of options before it comes to military
intervention: Chapter VI dialogue and mediation, non-military sanctions
(Article 41), and only if these fail, military intervention (Article 42). What the
responses to the crisis in Libya show, is that the Chapter VI and the Article
41 measures could be shortened to move faster towards a ‘timely and
decisive’ military response. Libya also showed that consensus can often be
difficult, particularly when it comes to the last resort. It was the extraordinary
coincidence of many factors in Libya
18
that allowed the triumph of R2P and
PoC.
If Libya demonstrated the fullest opportunity and the triumph of R2P and
PoC, Syria showed the opposite—the limits of the ‘sister’ concepts. The
difficult question from Kosovo in 1999 (that triggered the debates that gave
birth to R2P), ‘How to save people from mass atrocities, when a state
manifestly fails to protect them and the UN Security Council is paralysed?’, is
back on the table. The biggest R2P triumph so far, in Libya, could be
followed by probably the biggest R2P failure so far—to protect people in
Syria and elsewhere. If the UN and regional organisations do not act with
the same determination as they did in Libya, the danger of selectivity in the
application of R2P and PoC will continue to cloud international law. In the
words of Dr. Simon Adams, Executive Director of the Global Centre for the
R2P: “While tanks, troops and even warships have been unleashed against
ordinary Syrians, the Security Council has so far failed in its responsibility to
protect civilians. Syria has become a stain upon the conscience of the
world.”
19
Conclusion
The concepts R2P and PoC originated from a similar concern, potential
human suffering and innocent victimhood from wars or mass atrocities, and
developed in parallel over the last decade. I presented in the comparative
analysis above the commonalities and differences between the two concepts
and emphasised that they can reinforce each other, but they can also enter
into competing agendas. Although collaboration is always preferable,
ignorance of the differences between the two concepts may create confusion
and counter-productivity.
18
Bellamy, ‘Libya and the Responsibility to Protect’.
19
Global Centre for R2P Media release ‘Syria at the Crossroads: UN General Assembly Must
Uphold their Responsibility to Protect’, <www.globalr2p.org/media/pdf/Syria_Press_Release_
21_November_2011.pdf> [Accessed 3 December 2011].

Vesselin Popovski
- 12 -
Professor Ed Luck, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General
on R2P, called the two concepts ‘cousins, but not sisters’; but this was
before Resolutions 1970 and 1973 on Libya. After Libya, which
demonstrated the important of progress in the development of awareness,
adoption and implementation of both R2P and PoC concepts, I would not
hesitate to define R2P and PoC as ‘sisters, but not twins’. The two concepts
may exist separately in normal circumstances, but when the lives of people
are gravely threatened in critical situations, as occurred in Libya in February-
March 2011, they should reinforce each other and merge closer as to avoid
gaps in order to protect the innocent people at risk.
Vesselin Popovski is Senior Academic Programme Officer at the Institute for Sustainability and
Peace, United Nations University in Tokyo. He develops research, teaches and publishes in
peace and security, international law, human rights and global governance. He co-edited the
books: International Criminal Accountability and the Rights of Children (2006); World Religions
and Norms of War (2009); Democracy in the South (2010); Human Rights Regimes in the
Americas (2010); Blood and Borders (2011). He has completed a trilogy on modern trends and
innovations in governance, co-editing Engaging Civil Society (2010), Building Trust in
Government (2010) and Cross-Border Governance (2011). Another major book Legality and
Legitimacy in Global Affairs is forthcoming with Oxford University Press. He took part in two
major international initiatives: the International Commission on Intervention and State
Sovereignty, that produced the concept ‘Responsibility to Protect’, and the Princeton Principles
of Universal Jurisdiction. popovski@unu.edu.

Libya and the Responsibility to Protect:
Between Opportunistic
Humanitarianism and Value-Free
Pragmatism
Ramesh Thakur
Since the Treaty of Westphalia, sovereignty has been backed by the norm of nonintervention.
By contrast, the responsibility to protect (R2P) strikes a balance between unauthorised
unilateral interventions and institutionalised indifference. With a rapidly deteriorating
humanitarian situation in Libya in early 2011, the United Nations (UN) authorised the use of
force to protect an imminent slaughter of civilians but prohibited taking sides in the internal civil
war, intervening with ground troops, or effecting forcible regime change. The record of NATO
actions in Libya marks a triumph for R2P but also raises questions about how to prevent the
abuse of UN authority to use international force for purposes beyond human protection.
Military action by international forces in Libya in 2011 marks the first instance
of the implementation of the sharp edge of the new norm of the responsibility
to protect (R2P). It was a successful example, if also a controversial one.
Until the twentieth century, state sovereignty included the right to go to war
and an unchallengeable monopoly on the lawful use of force domestically.
Gradually by the time of the creation of the United Nations (UN) in 1945 and
more rapidly thereafter, the right to use force internationally was restricted to
self-defence against armed attack or under UN authorisation. Historically,
the norm of nonintervention notwithstanding, individual states had also
intervened inside sovereign jurisdictions to stop the slaughter of kith and kin
or co-religionists.
1
Under the impact of the Holocaust and starting with the
Genocide Convention in 1948, the international community asserted the
collective right to stop states killing large numbers of civilians inside their
borders.
Even so, for 350 years—from the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 until 1998—
sovereignty functioned as institutionalised indifference. International
interventions in Kosovo and East Timor in 1999 broke that mould and were
the backdrop to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s search for a new norm.
His genius lay in channelling historic ideational transformations into new
1
For a study of the relevance of R2P to the problem of states with ethnic ties spread across
national borders, see Walter Kemp, Vesselin Popovski and Ramesh Thakur (eds.), Blood and
Borders: The Responsibility to Protect and the Problem of the Kin-State (Tokyo: United Nations
University Press, 2011).

Ramesh Thakur
- 14 -
institutional linkages. Instead of collective gnashing and wailing during
atrocities followed by a traumatic repeat afterwards, yet again, of promises of
‘Never Again’, he pushed for a new doctrine to take timely and effective
action. With Canada’s help, an international commission formulated the
innovative principle of the responsibility to protect.
2
The UN was neither designed nor expected to be a pacifist organisation. On
the contrary, its origins lie in the anti-Nazi wartime military alliance among
Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union. Its primary purpose is the
maintenance of international peace and security. The chief responsibility for
doing this is vested in the all-powerful UN Security Council as the world’s
sole and duly sworn in sheriff for enforcing international law and order.
The system of collective security against interstate aggression never
materialised. In the decades after World War II the nature of armed conflict
was transformed.
3
Interstate warfare between uniformed armies gave way
to irregular conflict between rival armed groups. The nature of the state too
changed from its idealised European version. Many communist and some
newly-decolonised countries were internal security states whose regimes
ruled through terror. Increasingly, the principal victims of both types of
violence were civilians. Advances in telecommunications brought the full
horror of their plight into the world’s living rooms. R2P spoke eloquently to
the need to change the UN’s normative framework in line with the changed
reality of threats and victims.
4
In the meantime, the goals of promoting human rights and democratic
governance, protecting civilian victims of humanitarian atrocities and
punishing governmental perpetrators of mass crimes became more
important. Our understanding and appreciation of human rights and
commitment to their promotion and protection have deepened and
broadened.
5
The chief impulse to human rights is the recognition that every
human being is deserving of equal moral consideration. It is an acceptance
2
The Responsibility to Protect, Report of the International Commission on Intervention and
State Sovereignty (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre for ICISS, 2001). The
Report is available on the website at <www.iciss.gc.ca>. See also Gareth Evans, The
Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and for All (Washington: Brookings
Institution, 2008); Ramesh Thakur, The Responsibility to Protect: Norms, Laws and the Use of
Force in International Politics (London: Routledge, 2011) and The People vs. the State:
Reflections on UN Authority, US Power and the Responsibility to Protect (Tokyo: United Nations
University Press, 2011); Thomas G. Weiss, Humanitarian Intervention (London: Polity, 2007);
Alex J. Bellamy, Responsibility to Protect: The Global Effort to End Mass Atrocities (Cambridge:
Polity, 2009).
3
See Andrew Mack et al., Human Security Report 2005 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2005).
4
For an account of the UN’s transformation since 1945, see Ramesh Thakur, The United
Nations, Peace and Security: From Collective Security to the Responsibility to Protect
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
5
See Roger Normand and Sarah Zaidi, Human Rights at the UN: The Political History of
Universal Justice (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008).

Libya and the Responsibility to Protect
- 15 -
of a duty of care by those living in safety towards those trapped in zones of
danger. The UN’s normative mandates on security, development and
human rights alike embody this powerful intuition.
6
Failure to act in the 1994 Rwanda genocide
7
and non-UN-authorised
humanitarian intervention in Kosovo in 1999 set off angry and deeply divisive
recriminations around the world for acts of omission and commission.
8
In
the wake of that controversy, the 2001 report of the International
Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) argued that the
essential nature of sovereignty had changed from state privileges and
immunities to the responsibility to protect people from atrocity crimes.
Where the state defaulted on its solemn responsibility owing to lack of will or
capacity, or because it was itself complicit in the commission of the
atrocities, the responsibility to protect tripped upwards to the international
community acting through the authenticated structures and procedures of
the UN.
The importance of sovereignty as the key organising principle of the modern
world order needed and received a strong affirmation in the ICISS report.
The Commission took pains to emphasise that a cohesive and peaceful
international system is more likely to be achieved through the cooperation of
effective and legitimate states than in an environment of fragile, collapsed,
fragmenting or generally chaotic states.
9
Reconceptualising sovereignty as responsibility
10
was not a radical departure
from established precept and practice. Nowhere is the authority of the state
absolute. Internally, it is constrained and regulated by constitutional power-
sharing arrangements and shared between different levels of government:
local, provincial and national. It is also distributed among different sectors of
public authorities at any one given level, such as the legislature, executive,
judiciary and bureaucracy. Internationally, too, in human rights covenants,
UN practice and state practice itself, sovereignty is understood as embracing
responsibility. The UN Charter is itself an example of an international
obligation voluntarily accepted by member states.
6
This is most powerfully articulated in Kofi A. Annan, In Larger Freedom: Towards
Development, Security and Human Rights For All, Report of the Secretary-General, document
A/59/2005 (New York: United Nations, 21 March 2005).
7
See Kingsley Moghalu, Rwanda’s Genocide: The Politics of Global Justice (Houndmills:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
8
See Albrecht Schnabel and Ramesh Thakur (eds.), Kosovo and the Challenge of
Humanitarian Intervention: Selective Indignation, Collective Action, and International Citizenship
(Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2000).
9
This was the assumption behind a joint project between the Carr Center of Harvard University,
the International Peace Academy and the United Nations University: Simon Chesterman,
Michael Ignatieff and Ramesh Thakur (eds.), Making States Work (Tokyo: United Nations
10
For further elaboration, see Trudy Jacobsen, Charles Sampford and Ramesh Thakur (eds.),
Re-envisioning Sovereignty: The End of Westphalia? (London: Ashgate, 2008).

Ramesh Thakur
- 16 -
There is no transfer or dilution of the status of state sovereignty. But there is
a necessary change in the exercise of sovereignty: from sovereignty as
control to sovereignty as responsibility in both internal functions and external
duties. Anne Orford argues that contrary to claims that the requirement is to
put the R2P principle into practice, ICISS in fact put evolving practice of
contingent and softening sovereignty, and of increasing international
intrusions, into a new concept: the justificatory principle followed practice,
words followed deeds. R2P is an attempt to integrate existing and evolving
but dispersed practices of protection into a conceptually coherent account of
international authority.
11
The unanimous endorsement of R2P by the largest ever collection of world
leaders at the UN summit in 2005 was historic, for it spoke to the
fundamental purposes of the UN and responded to a critical challenge of the
21st century. Some 150 world leaders tightened the application of R2P to
four atrocity crimes: war crimes, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and crimes
against humanity. They affirmed that states have the primary responsibility
to protect all people within their territorial jurisdiction but that if they
manifestly failed to do so, owing to incapacity, unwillingness or complicity in
the crimes, then the international community, acting through the UN Security
Council, would take timely and decisive action to implement the international
responsibility to protect.
12
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon then refined the
principle further in the language of three pillars: Pillar One as the state’s own
responsibility; Pillar Two as international assistance to strengthen state
capacity to implement R2P obligations; and Pillar Three as coercive
international action, including measures not involving the use of force under
Article 41 of the United Nations Charter (for example economic sanctions,
arms embargoes, and asset freezes) and, ultimately, military force under
Article 42.
13
R2P captures and channels the convergence of some significant trends in
world affairs. Its preventive and rebuilding pillars involve strengthening a
state’s capacity to handle its own law and order problems. But its hard edge
requires the international community, acting through the UN, to take up the
slack when any state defaults on its sovereign responsibility to protect all
people inside its borders.
By its very nature, including unpredictability, unintended consequences and
the risk to innocent civilians caught in the crossfire, warfare is inherently
brutal: there is nothing humanitarian about the means. Still, the fact is that
our ability and tools to act beyond our borders have increased tremendously.
11
Anne Orford, International Authority and the Responsibility to Protect (Cambridge: Cambridge
12
2005 World Summit Outcome, adopted by UN General Assembly Resolution A/RES/60/1, 24
October 2005, paras. 138-40.
13
Ban Ki-moon, Implementing the Responsibility to Protect: Report of the Secretary-General
(New York: United Nations, Doc. A/63/677, 12 January 2009).

- 17 -
This greatly increases demands and expectations ‘to do something’ and the
fundamental question cannot be avoided: under what circumstances is the
use of force necessary, justified and required to provide effective
international humanitarian protection to at-risk populations without the
consent of their own government? Absent R2P, the intervention is more
likely to be ad hoc, unilateral, self-interested and deeply divisive. With the
R2P norm and guiding principles agreed to in advance, military action is
more likely to be rules-based, multilateral, disinterested and consensual.
Not a Western Implant
The R2P debate is emphatically not a West versus The Rest narrative.
Instead the theory and practice of state sovereignty is itself decidedly
European. Developing countries, not Western ones, are the likely targets of
international military interventions. If their people are the principal
beneficiaries and their states the main victims when R2P is put into practice,
their scholars, think tank analysts, public intellectuals and journalists should
be the lead debaters. Asia has its own rich traditions that vest sovereigns
with responsibility for the lives and welfare of subjects while circumscribing
the exercise of power with the majesty of law that stands above the agents
of the state. In India Ashoka, the great Mauryan emperor (269–232 BC),
inscribed the following message on a rock edict: “this is my rule: government
by the law, administration according to the law, gratification of my subjects
under the law, and protection through the law”.
14
The debate is also wrongly framed on substance. In the real world, we know
that there will be more atrocities, victims and perpetrators—and therefore
more interventions. They were common before R2P; they are not
guaranteed with R2P. The real choice is not if interventions will take place,
but when, why, how, by whom and under whose authority. Unilateral and ad
hoc interventions will sow and nourish the seeds of international discord.
Multilateral and rules-based interventions will speak powerfully to the world’s
determination never again to return to institutionalised indifference to mass
atrocities.
R2P attempts to strike a balance between unilateral interference and
institutionalised indifference. It will help the world to be better prepared—
normatively, organisationally and operationally—to meet the recurrent
challenge of external military intervention wherever and whenever it arises
again, as assuredly it will. To interveners, R2P offers the prospect of
international legitimacy, reduced compliance and transaction costs and more
effective results. To potential targets of intervention, R2P offers the
reassurance of a rules-based system. Absent an agreed new set of rules,
14
Quoted in Stanley Wolpert, A New History of India (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977),
pp. 66–7.

Ramesh Thakur
- 18 -
there will be nothing to stop the powerful from intervening ‘anywhere and
everywhere’.
Gaddafi in the Crosshairs of a Changing Normative Order
R2P is narrow—it applies only to the four crimes of ethnic cleansing,
genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. But it is deep: there are
no limits to what can be done in responding to these atrocity crimes. In a
matching symmetry, support for R2P has been broad but shallow.
15
Libya in
2011 provided an opportunity to convert the noble sentiments and solemn
promise of R2P into meaningful action whose import will resonate long and
far. In poignant testament to its tragic origins and normative power, R2P
was the discourse of choice in debating how best to respond to the crisis.
R2P is not solely about military intervention. The world’s comfort level is
greater with action under Pillars One (building state capacity) and Two
(international assistance to build state capacity) than Pillar Three (coercive
international action with the final option being military intervention to protect
at-risk populations from atrocity crimes). But, to be meaningful, the R2P
spectrum of action must include military force as the option of last resort.
Three sets of issues were involved in framing the most appropriate and
effective response to the Libyan crisis: military capacity, legal authority, and
political legitimacy. Analysts were divided on the scale, complexity and
feasibility of a no-fly zone. Only the West has the requisite assets and
operational capability for military action in the Libyan theatre. But NATO
would have been ill-advised to take any military action on its own authority.
Political commentators warned of mission creep. But that would arise only if
ownership of the uprising was appropriated from the Libyans. No one asked
for foreign boots on the ground. UN legal authorisation could be restricted to
four military tasks: surveillance and monitoring, humanitarian assistance,
enforcement of the arms embargo, and enforcement of a no-fly zone.
The UN Security Council, Human Rights Council and Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon called on Libya to respect its R2P, human rights and international
humanitarian law obligations.
16
When their appeals were ignored, on 26
February, the Security Council demanded an end to the violence in Libya,
which “may amount to crimes against humanity”; imposed sanctions;
affirmed Libya’s R2P obligations; and referred Gaddafi to the International
15
See Ramesh Thakur, ‘The Responsibility to Protect and the North–South Divide’, in Sanford
R. Silverburg, ed., International Law: Contemporary Issues and Future Developments (Boulder:
Westview, 2011), pp. 32–47.
16
See ‘Security Council Press Statement on Libya’, United Nations document SC/10180
AFR/2120, 22 February 2011, <http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2011/sc10180.doc.htm>
[Accessed 5 September 2011]; ‘Ban Strongly Condemns Qadhafi’s Actions Against Protesters,
Calls for Punishment’, <http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=37599> [Accessed 5
September 2011].

- 19 -
Criminal Court (Resolution 1970).
17
On 4 March, both the Global Centre and
International Coalition for R2P published an open letter to the Security
Council pointing out that Resolution 1970 had failed to halt attacks taking
place at the moment and calling for additional protective measures.
18
Although Britain and France took the lead in trying to mobilise diplomatic
support for some military action to help the Libyan rebels, the critical turning
point was US backing. The key decision was made by President Barack
Obama at a meeting with top officials on 15 March. R2P gave him the
necessary intellectual and normative tool to act. He decided to side with pro-
interventionist advisers in favour of a definition of the Libyan crisis that was
closer to his instincts and consistent with the narrative that won him the
White House.
19
The game-changer was the juxtaposition of R2P as a
powerful new galvanising norm; the defection of Libyan diplomats who joined
the chorus of calls from the rebels for immediate action to protect civilians;
and Arab, French and British participation that provided political cover and
international legitimacy. In Iraq in 2003, Washington was the ardent suitor
for military intervention. In Libya in 2011, Washington was the reluctant
follower.
Adopted on 17 March by a 10-0-5 (China, Russia, Brazil, Germany, India)
vote, UN Security Council Resolution 1973 authorised the use of “all
necessary measures … to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas”: the
first UN-sanctioned combat operations since the 1991 Gulf War.
20
In the
Balkans, it took NATO almost the full decade to intervene with air power in
Kosovo in 1999. In Libya, it took just one month to mobilise a broad
coalition, secure a UN mandate to protect civilians, establish and enforce no-
fly and no-drive zones, stop Gaddafi’s advancing army and prevent a
massacre of the innocents in Benghazi.
Carefully crafted both to authorise and delimit the scope of intervention,
Resolution 1973 specified the purpose of military action as humanitarian
protection and limited the means to that goal. At a time when the recapture
of Benghazi by Gaddafi loyalists seemed imminent, Resolution 1973
authorised military action to prevent such civilian slaughter but not intervene
in the civil war (any state has the right to use force to suppress armed
uprisings), nor effect regime change. Occupying or dismembering Libya was
17
United Nations Security Council, Resolution 1970 (2011), 26 February 2011.
18
International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect and the Global Centre for the
Responsibility to Protect, ‘Open Letter to the Security Council on the Situation in Libya’, 4 March
2011, <http://globalr2p.org/advocacy/index.php> [Accessed 5 September 2011].
19
See Helene Cooper and Steven Lee Myers, ‘Obama Takes Hard Line with Libya after Shift by
Clinton’, New York Times, 18 March 2011.
20
United Nations Security Council, Resolution 1973 (2011), 17 March 2011. Previous
operations, such as in Bosnia, East Timor, Somalia or Congo, were or are peace operations
authorised to use force if challenged and not conceived as combat operations from the outset.

Ramesh Thakur
- 20 -
prohibited. Gaddafi was not to be directly targeted. To the extent that he
was so targeted, NATO exceeded UN authority in breach of the Charter law.
Obama’s insistence that the United States would not be deploying ground
troops aligned military means to the limited ambitions and objectives:
humanitarian protection, not regime change.
21
In contrast to the Bush
doctrine, under Obama the United States will act in concert with others, not
alone; coax, persuade and heed, not impose its will; and set clear limits on
goals and means. This did not please some shadow warriors. Referring to
the role of Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, and Samantha Power in the decision
to join the intervention against the inclinations of Defense Secretary Robert
Gates, National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon and Chief of
Counterterrorism John Brennan, Jacob Heibrunn derided Obama for
effectively having been henpecked into interventionism by “these Valkyries
of foreign affairs”.
22
Not to be outdone on misogyny, Mark Krikorian
commented caustically that “our commander-in-chief is an effete vacillator
who is pushed around by his female subordinates”.
23
Norm Consolidation or Abuse
As the collection of articles in this special issue makes clear, there is a close
normative and operational link between R2P and the protection of civilians
(PoC). The jury is still out on whether international military action in Libya
and Côte d’Ivoire will promote consolidation or softening of the twin norms.
There were inconsistencies in the muted response to protests and uprisings
in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia where vital Western geopolitical and oil
interests are directly engaged, and with the lack of equally forceful military
action in Syria and Yemen. Western failures to defend the dignity and rights
of Palestinians under Israeli occupation have been especially damaging to
their claims to promote human rights and oppose humanitarian atrocities
universally instead of selectively.
Despite the doubts, the alternative of standing idly on the sidelines yet again
would have added to the shamefully long list of rejecting the collective
responsibility to protect. Gaddafi would have prevailed and we have no
reason to doubt his threat to embark on a methodical killing spree of rebel
21
The commendable initial clarity was soon muddied, and policy benchmarks made needlessly
tougher, when Obama joined the British and French leaders in writing that although the goal of
military action was “not to remove Qaddafi by force”, “it is impossible to imagine a future for
Libya with Qaddafi in power”. Barack Obama, David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy, ‘Libya’s
Pathway to Peace’, International Herald Tribune, 14 April 2011.
22
Jacob Heibrunn, ‘America's Foreign Policy Valkyries: Hillary Clinton, Samantha Power, and
Susan Rice’, National Interest, 21 March 2011, <http://nationalinterest.org/blog/jacob-
heilbrunn/americas-foreign-policy-valkyries-hillary-clinton-samantha-p-5047> [Accessed 5
September 2011].
23
Mark Krikorian, ‘They Know Who Wears the Pants in This Country’, National Review Online,
21 March 2011, <http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/262607/they-know-who-wears-pants-
country-mark-krikorian> [Accessed 5 September 2011].

- 21 -
leaders, cities and regions alley by alley, house by house, room by room.
Had the world shirked its responsibility, Libya could have been the graveyard
of the new R2P norm and the UN might as well have sounded the last post
for it.
Libya marks the first time the Security Council has authorised an
international R2P operation. Côte d’Ivoire is the first time it has authorised
the use of military force by outside powers solely for PoC. Between them,
Resolutions 1973 and 1975 show that including R2P language in the
preamble might provide the normative justification for PoC demands in the
operational paragraphs of the UN mandates.
Many PoC champions fear the more overtly politicised agenda of R2P. This
ignores the reality of how they come together when atrocity crimes are being
committed. PoC advocates are nervous about being cross-contaminated by
R2P because they tend to focus on the soft side of the subject, such as
programs to train peacekeepers, rather than the sharp end of robust military
action. In justifying the authorisation of all necessary measures by the UN
peace operation in Côte d’Ivoire, UN Security Council Resolution 1975
reaffirmed “the primary responsibility of each State to protect civilians” and,
in the same sentence, reiterated that “parties to armed conflict bear the
primary responsibility to take all feasible steps to ensure the protection of
civilians”.
24
Seamus Milne, convinced that the Arab revolution had been hijacked by the
imperialist West in Libya, argued that “If stopping the killing had been the
real aim, Nato states would have backed a ceasefire and a negotiated
settlement, rather than repeatedly vetoing both”.
25
Terry Macalister, the
Guardian’s energy editor, believes that “The Libyan conflict has been a war
about oil if not ‘for’ oil”. The British and French governments have worked
“hand in glove” with the big energy companies in the war to rid Libya of
Gaddafi and secure access to future energy supplies, he argues. He asks
whether their cooperation is “a potent symbol that western politics and oil are
so closely intermeshed that the agendas of both are indistinguishable”?
26
In his speech to the General Assembly, India’s Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh made a thinly-veiled attack on the expansive interpretation by NATO
of Resolution 1973: “Actions taken under the authority of the United Nations
must respect the unity, territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of
24
United Nations Security Council, Resolution 1975 (2011), 17 March 2011.
25
Seamus Milne, ‘Libya’s Imperial Hijacking Is a Threat to the Arab Revolution’, Guardian, 24
August 2011, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/24/libyas-imperial-hijacking-
threat-arab-revolution> [Accessed 5 September 2011].
26
Terry Macalister, ‘So, Was this a War for Oil?’ Guardian, Friday 2 September 2011,
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/02/next-war-libya-one-for-oil> [Accessed 5
September 2011].

Ramesh Thakur
- 22 -
individual states”.
27
Russia and China led the chorus of dismay at the UN
appearing to take sides in the internal conflicts in Libya and Côte d’Ivoire.
28
They may be less willing in future to permit sweeping endorsements for
tough action, either by a coalition (Libya) or by UN peacekeepers (Côte
d’Ivoire).
Value-free pragmatism is no more an answer to the challenge of reconciling
realism and idealism than opportunistic humanitarianism. Brazil, China,
Germany, India, and Russia joined the African Union (AU) in positioning
themselves on the wrong side of the war—as witnessed in the triumphal visit
of British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas
Sarkozy to Libya in September—and on the wrong side of history insofar as
the emerging normative architecture is concerned. The AU moved to
recognise the rebel Transitional National Council on 20 September, only
after they had captured Tripoli. Among others, one risk for the AU is that the
new regime will highlight its Arab over its African heritage and identity.
29
The
reason this matters is that, following the Libya precedent, regional
organisations may well acquire a critical ‘gatekeeping role’ in the global
authorisation of R2P-type operations.
30
As long as the rising new powers
remain more concerned with consolidating their national power aspirations
than developing the norms and institutions of global governance,
31
they will
remain incomplete powers, limited by their own narrow ambitions, with their
material grasp being longer than their normative reach.
The Libyan people’s euphoria and NATO’s relief over the successful military
campaign is likely to temper criticisms of the manner in which NATO rode
roughshod over UN authorisation to protect civilians. For NATO had indeed
intervened on behalf of one side in a civil war and pursued regime change.
That said, we should not retreat into naivety on what may be required in
particular circumstances. Already in 2003, replying to criticisms of the ICISS
report by Adam Roberts, I had noted that “the primary motivation behind
intervention—the cause rather than the necessary condition—must not be
defeating an enemy state”. But “If defeat of a non-compliant state or regime
27
‘Manmohan Slams West for Using Force to Change Regimes’, Times of India, 25 September
2011, <http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-09-25/india/30200524_1_libya-
sovereignty-countries> [Accessed 26 September 2011].
28
See Patrick Worsnip, ‘ANALYSIS-U.N. Protection of Civilians at Issue after Libya’, Reuters,
13 May 2011 <http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/analysis-un-protection-of-civilians-at-issue-
after-libya> [Accessed 5 September 2011].
29
See Knox Chitiyo, ‘Has Africa Lost Libya?’, Guardian, 19 September 2011,
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/18/africa-libya-not-lost> [Accessed 19
September 2011].
30
See Alex J Bellamy and Paul D Williams, ‘The New Politics of Protection? Côte d’Ivoire, Libya
and the Responsibility to Protect’, International Affairs, vol. 87, no. 4 (2011), pp. 825-50.
31
See Amitav Acharya, ‘Can Asia Lead? Power Ambitions and Global Governance in the
Twenty-first Century’, International Affairs, vol. 87, no. 4 (2011), pp. 851-69.

- 23 -
is the only way to achieve the human protection goals, then so be it”.
32
In
Libya, the West’s strategic interests coincided with UN values. This does not
mean that the latter was subordinated to the former. It does mean, as with
Australia vis-à-vis East Timor in 1999, that there was a better prospect of
sustained NATO engagement than if Western interests were not affected.
Paris, London and Washington—and Ban—did not waver in their resolve,
despite critics from the left pushing for diplomacy, not war and critics from
the right calling for boots on the ground. The protracted wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan notwithstanding, too many expected or demanded instant
military gratification. In fact six months to overthrow an entrenched and
determined dictator is not excessively long. Moreover, it is also true that had
all the restrictions of Resolution 1973 been scrupulously observed, the war
would have been more protracted and messier, and coalition unity of
purpose and action would have been even more strained.
The outcome is a triumph first and foremost for the citizen soldiers who
refused to let fear of Gaddafi’s thugs determine their destiny any longer. It is
triumph secondly for R2P. It is possible for the international community,
working through the authenticated, UN-centred structures and procedures of
organised multilateralism, to deploy international force to neutralise the
military might of a thug and intervene between him and his victims with
reduced civilian casualties and little risk of military casualties. NATO military
muscle deployed on behalf of UN political will help to level the killing field
between citizens and a tyrant.
But the ruins of Libya’s political infrastructure and parlous state of its coffers
mean that the third component in the ICISS formulation R2P—the
international responsibility to rebuild and reconstruct
33
—will also be called
on. This will require the international community to stay engaged with state
building in Libya for some time. Fortunately, Libya’s physical infrastructure
remains mainly intact as there was no Iraq-style shock-and-awe bombing
campaign. The willingness, nature and duration of outside help will also help
to shape the judgment of history on whether Western motivations were
primarily self-interested geopolitical and commercial, or the disinterested
desire to protect civilians from a murderous rampage. As with the war itself,
however, the lead role will have to be assumed by Libyans themselves, while
the international community can assist without assuming ownership of the
process or responsibility for the outcome.
The price of that in turn may require the international community to accept
and live with the political choices made by the Libyans. The Transitional
32
Ramesh Thakur, ‘In Defence of The Responsibility to Protect’, International Journal of Human
Rights, vol. 7, no. 3 (Autumn 2003), p. 163.
33
The substance of this is incorporated within Pillar Two (international assistance) in the
subsequent reformulation of R2P by Secretary-General Ban.

Ramesh Thakur
- 24 -
National Council’s immediate priorities are to establish security, law and
order; prevent lootings and reprisals and avoid attacks on black Africans by
lighter-skinned Arabs as the new normal; defeat remaining pockets of
resistance by Gaddafi loyalists and prevent them from turning into a
protracted low-level insurgency, and establish control over the whole
country; restore infrastructure and public services; and ameliorate the
humanitarian situation. National reconciliation based on the politics of
concessions, compromises and power-sharing accommodation,
reconstruction and continuing regional and international support will be the
next order of business after immediate humanitarian needs have been met.
Conclusion
In both Libya and Côte d’Ivoire, regimes that had lost all domestic and
international legitimacy declared war on their own people. In both, global
political responses were shaped by universal values as well as strategic
interests, so that UN member states moved closer to mirroring traditional UN
policy and perspectives. Because the UN is taking the lead in redefining
sovereignty by aligning state prerogatives with the will and consent of the
people, the ruling class of any country must now fear the risk and threat of
international economic, criminal justice and military action if they violate
global standards of conduct and cross UN red lines of behaviour.
34
The two operations in Libya and Côte d’Ivoire therefore mark a pivotal
rebalancing of interests and values. In the old world order, international
politics, like all politics, was a struggle for power.
35
The new international
politics will be about the struggle for the ascendancy of competing normative
architectures based on a combination of power, understood as the
disciplined application of force, and values and ideas.
At the time of writing, the rebels had captured Tripoli but not Gaddafi. Hard
questions, unasked so as not to complicate the push for victory, will now
come to the fore. Who are the rebels? What do they stand for? For whom
do they speak? How much popular support do they command? Albeit
qualified and incomplete, therefore, Libya nevertheless does mark an
important milestone on the journey to tame atrocities on their own people by
tyrants.
In the words of former Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld, the UN was
“not created in order to bring us to heaven, but to save us from hell”.
36
34
For the intimate relationship between the twin normative agendas of R2P and international
criminal justice, see Ramesh Thakur and Vesselin Popovski, ‘The Responsibility to Protect and
Prosecute: The Parallel Erosion of Sovereignty and Impunity’, in Giuliana Ziccardi Capaldo
(ed.), The Global Community: Yearbook of International Law and Jurisprudence 2007, vol. 1
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 39-61.
35
This was most famously formulated in Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The
Struggle for Power and Peace, 4th
ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967).
36
Quoted in Brian Urquhart, Hammarskjold (New York: W. W. Norton, 1994), p. 4.

- 25 -
Failures in Africa and the Balkans in the 1990s reflected structural, political
and operational deficiencies that accounted for the UN’s inability to save
people from a life of hell on earth. R2P responds to the idealised UN as the
symbol of an imagined and constructed community of strangers: We are our
brothers’ and sisters’ keepers.
Ramesh Thakur is Professor of International Relations in the ANU’s Asia–Pacific College of
Diplomacy, and Adjunct Professor in the Institute of Ethics, Governance and Law at Griffith
University. He was Vice Rector and Senior Vice Rector of the United Nations University (and
Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations) from 1998–2007. He was a Commissioner
and one of the principal authors of The Responsibility to Protect, and Senior Adviser on
Reforms and Principal Writer of Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s second reform report. His
related books include The United Nations, Peace and Security: From Collective Security to the
Responsibility to Protect (Cambridge University Press, 2006); Global Governance and the UN:
An Unfinished Journey, co-written with Thomas G. Weiss (Indiana University Press, 2010); The
Responsibility to Protect: Norms, Laws and the Use of Force in International Politics (Routledge,
2011); Blood and Borders: The Responsibility to Protect and the Problem of the Kin-State, co-
edited with Walter Kemp and Vesselin Popovski (UN University Press, 2011); and The People
vs. the State: Reflections on UN Authority, US Power and the Responsibility to Protect (UN
University Press, 2011). His next major project is The Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy
co-edited with Andrew F. Cooper and Jorge Heine (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
ramesh.thakur@anu.edu.au.

The Protection of Civilians in UN
Peacekeeping Operations:
Recent Developments
The frequency with which peacekeeping operations have proved inadequate to protect civilians
has prompted substantial reform of peacekeeping mandates and practice. But it has also led to
significant normative developments within the wider UN system—not just in peacekeeping
mandates and practice. This article charts the normative, institutional and operations contours
of the protection of civilians in armed conflict within the UN, highlighting the particular
contributions of the Australian government to that agenda. It concludes by identifying four
pathways through which efforts to protect civilians can be improved. 1
In his report that coincided with Remembrance Day 2010, the Secretary-
General of the United Nations (UN), Ban Ki-Moon, reinforced the central
importance of the ‘protection of civilians’ (PoC) to UN peacekeeping, thereby
confirming protection as a key measure of UN effectiveness and credibility:
we must focus our efforts on enhancing protection where and for whom it
matters most—on the ground, in the midst of conflict and for the hundreds of
thousands of civilians who are, on a daily basis, at risk of, or fall victim to,
serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law.2
Armed conflict has tragic consequences for civilians. Too often in recent
conflicts, armed groups have intentionally targeted civilians as a tool of
war—including many in which UN peacekeepers were deployed. In Rwanda
in 1994, the United Nations system and its hopelessly inadequate
peacekeeping force were “almost paralysed in the face of a wave of some of
the worst brutality humankind has seen in [that] century”.
3
In 1995,
peacekeepers in the tragically named UN Protection Force oversaw the
establishment of ‘safe areas’ which were anything but for up to 20,000
civilians killed in and around Srebrenica, Sarajevo, Bihać, Goražde, Žepa,
and Tuzla.
4
And in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Major General
Patrick Cammaert reflected on the abhorrent prevalence of rape, noting that
1
The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors alone; they do not necessarily
reflect the position of the Australian government.
2
United Nations Security Council, Report of the Secretary-General on the Protection of Civilians
in Armed Conflict, S/2010/579, 11 November 2010.
3
United Nations Security Council, Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Actions of the
United Nations during the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda, S/1999/1257, 16 December 1999.
4
United Nations General Assembly, Report of the Secretary-General Pursuant to General
Assembly Resolution 53/35: The Fall of Srebrenica, A/54/549, 15 November 1999.

- 28 -
“[i]t has probably become more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in
armed conflict”.
5
The frequency with which peacekeeping operations have over the past two
decades proved inadequate to protect civilians has prompted substantial
reform of peacekeeping mandates and practice. But it has also led to
significant normative developments within the wider UN system—not just in
peacekeeping mandates and practice. An emerging priority for field
operations, PoC is also becoming a focal point within the UN security
system: an embryonic coordinating raison d’être among the UN’s central
organs—the Security Council, the General Assembly and the Secretariat—
and its member states and agencies.
In official statements, policy discourse and scholarly contributions, the
credibility of the UN is increasingly argued to hinge on its ability to protect
civilians. In his remarks at the 2010 UN Security Council open debate on the
protection of civilians in armed conflict, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon
stated that “saving and protecting people from the horrors of armed conflict”
is a central component of the UN’s ‘cardinal mission’. The UN’s New
Horizon agenda notes that consensus on policy and requirements for civilian
protection is “central to the success of current and future UN peacekeeping
operations”.
6
Paul Williams goes even further, arguing that PoC is critical to
the “legitimacy and success of individual peacekeeping operations but also
to the credibility of the entire UN system”.
7
Indeed, the protection of civilians is a core component of the UN’s
contemporary efforts to save generations form the scourge of war, echoed in
regional organisations and by national governments around the world.
Nowhere is this more evident than within the multidimensional peace
operations that today integrate protection as a cross-cutting issue to be
addressed by military, civilian and policing components acting in concert—
not by any one component alone. Yet the protection agenda within the UN
system is far outpacing the development of practical, operational methods
for actually fulfilling protection obligations in the field.
8
As Dennis McNamara
noted in 2009, while the last decade saw “major—and even quite radical”
5
Patrick Cammaert quoted in United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human
Rights, ‘Rape: Weapon of War’, <http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/
RapeWeaponWar.aspx> [Accessed 9 September 2011].
6
UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations and Department of Field Support, A New
Partnership Agenda: Charting a New Horizon for UN Peacekeeping (New York: United Nations,
July 2009), p. v.
7
Paul D. Williams, Enhancing Civilian Protection in Peace Operations: Insights from Africa,
Africa Center for Strategic Studies, Research Paper No. 1, (Washington DC: National Defense
University Press, September 2010), p.11.
8
On the history of civilian protection, see Siobhán Wills, Protecting Civilians: The Obligations of
Peacekeepers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

The Protection of Civilians in UN Peacekeeping Operations: Recent Developments
- 29 -
progress at the institutional level, “this has not led to more effective
protection in the field for most civilians caught-up in today’s wars”.
9
The Normative and Practical Contours of PoC
A task increasingly assigned to peacekeeping operations by the Security
Council, PoC is, at its roots, based on international humanitarian law, human
rights law and refugee law. The moral imperative to protect civilians is
grounded in inherent principles of humanity and codified in international
law.
10
For humanitarian actors, the touchstone definition of humanitarian
protection is that developed by the International Committee of the Red Cross
and endorsed by the Interagency Standing Committee:
all activities aimed at ensuring full respect for the rights of the individual in
accordance with the letter and the spirit of the relevant bodies of law, i.e.
human rights law, international humanitarian law, and refugee law. Human
rights and humanitarian organisations must conduct these activities in an
impartial manner (not on the basis of race, national or ethnic origin,
language or gender).11
The norm that civilians are not legitimate targets in war and should be
protected from the consequences of violent conflict is subject to little
contestation. As an operational objective and a practical task, however,
protecting civilians is a more challenging endeavour. The operational
implementation of civilian protection can and does mean different things to
different actors. In this way, conceptual debates regarding the ‘protection’
resemble those of other contested terms such as ‘security’—which may refer
to practices across a wide span of traditional national defence, international
collective security or broad human security, entailing distinctive policy
instruments and desired outcomes. Civilian protection can and does exist
outside of peacekeeping operations, which adds to the confusion. Further,
actions to ‘protect’ are not immune from unintended consequences.
9
Dennis McNamara, ‘The Politics of Protection’, keynote address to the conference ‘Protecting
People in Conflict and Crisis: Responding to the Challenges of a Changing World’, Oxford,
September 2009, available <http://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/pdfs/keynotepapermcnamara.pdf>
[Accessed 23 September 2011].
10
See Charles Sampford, this volume. These normative foundations of PoC are shared with
the related norm of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), endorsed by UN member states at the
2005 World Summit. However, where R2P is limited in application to preventing civilians from
four specific mass atrocity crimes—genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic
cleansing—PoC has much broader application: to protect civilians from conflict-related grave
harms, which may include the R2P atrocity crimes, but which also extend to serious human
rights violations and the broader human costs of armed conflict. For more on the relationship
between PoC and R2P, see Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, ‘The Relationship
between the Responsibility to Protect and the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict’, Policy
Brief, 9 May 2011, <http://responsibilitytoprotect.org/The%20Relationship%20Between%
20POC%20and%20R2P-%20Updated.pdf> [accessed 23 September 2011].
11
See International Committee of the Red Cross, Professional Standards for Protection Work,
(Geneva: ICRC, October 2009), p. 8.

- 30 -
As it exists in debates before the Security Council, and as it will be
considered here, the PoC agenda focuses primarily on the implementation of
protection through the mandates of UN peace operations. At the heart of
contemporary PoC debates is a difficult practical challenge: how should
protection mandates be operationalised? How can protection be
implemented in practice?
In this context, civilian protection is now broadly understood to be an
inherent objective of contemporary peacekeeping. For the authors of the
independent study commissioned by the UN’s Department of Peacekeeping
Operations (DPKO) and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs (OCHA), PoC is intrinsic to peacekeeping and “[m]issions are
presumed to deploy to protect civilians, which is an enduring, implicit goal of
operations”.
12
Importantly, where UN peacekeepers are deployed with protection
mandates, current guidance prescribes the adoption of multidimensional
strategies: just as peacekeeping is no longer the sole domain of soldiers,
protection can only be achieved through the concerted efforts of integrated
civil, military and police components within the peace operation, working in
collaboration with the UN Country Team when deployed, and with the host
state that retains ultimate responsibility for the protection of their citizens.
PoC straddles the traditional ‘3D’ divisions between diplomacy, defence and
development. It requires a fundamentally integrated approach, for which the
security forces and civilian structures of contributing states are often ill-
suited. It stands to reason that if multidimensional UN peacekeeping
missions are effectively to implement PoC, then countries contributing
troops, police and civilian personnel must also develop their own integrated
national approaches; it is unrealistic to expect that the United Nations can
implement PoC when its member states lack the necessary capabilities.
New approaches and ad hoc coordination mechanisms within contributing
member states are required to breakdown and re-link traditional silos of
effort, including for the development of national PoC doctrine.
The Evolution of PoC in UN Peacekeeping
The personnel of today’s peace operations face more difficult PoC
challenges than did ‘traditional’ peacekeepers. Developed during the Cold
War, traditional peacekeeping operations were deployed primarily to address
inter-state conflicts. Designed to implement agreed conflict settlements,
12
Victoria Holt and Glyn Taylor, with Max Kelly, Protecting Civilians in the Context of UN
Peacekeeping Operations: Successes, Setbacks and Remaining Challenges, independent
study jointly commissioned by the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the UN
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 17 November 2009, p. 210. Similarly, Paul
Williams views civilian protection as the ‘very essence’ of peacekeeping (Enhancing Civilian
Protection in Peace Operations, p. 7).

- 31 -
these operations were charged with monitoring ceasefires and buffer zones,
in largely consensual environments populated by state-controlled militaries.
To the extent that traditional peacekeeping missions helped to manage or
end conflict, they coincidentally may have contributed to protecting civilians.
However, PoC was neither the core concern nor the explicit mandate of
these earlier operations. Some earlier precedent can be found in the
wording of a leaflet, signed by Special Representative of the Secretary-
General Ralph Bunche and Force Commander General Carl Van Horn,
distributed to troops of the United Nations Operation in the Congo (ONUC),
deployed in 1960:
You serve as members of an international force. It is a peace force, not a
fighting force … Your task is to help in restoring order and calm in this
country which has been so troubled recently … Protection against acts of
violence is to be given to all the people, white and black. You carry arms,
but they are to be used only in self-defence. You are in the Congo to help
everyone, to harm no one.13
Deployed within a state and authorised to use force if necessary, ONUC
stands out from the UN’s other early peacekeeping endeavours, not least for
its demonstration of the fundamental tensions between sovereignty, consent,
impartiality, human rights and the broader maintenance of peace and
security.
These tensions continue to plague contemporary peacekeeping, with the
political, analytical and practical challenges of civilian protection at their core.
There is nothing ‘new’ about the human cost of conflict, nor anything
distinctly modern about the deliberate targeting of civilians as a tactic of
warfare. But for the UN, and for its constantly evolving instrument of
peacekeeping, the challenge of confronting these wrongs remains a
relatively new demand on the organisation. In Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia,
Haiti, East Timor, and in a host of African states, UN peacekeepers have
been deployed in settings where civilians have tragically been targeted in
deliberate attacks by armed parties. Mechanisms such as ceasefire
monitoring and interposition forces are no longer sufficient to address the
conditions of insecurity into which peace operations are deployed, where
often fragmented armed groups wage conflict across invisible ‘frontlines’ that
can too easily be concealed within communities. Peacekeepers are now
more often authorised to use all necessary means, including deadly force, in
the pursuit of their mandates.
Notably, there is no explicit mention of civilian protection in Boutros-Ghali’s
landmark An Agenda for Peace, which in 1992 laid out a new manifesto for
the post-Cold War United Nations, nor its 1995 Supplement, released after
13
Quoted in Herbert Nicholas, ‘UN Peace Forces and the Changing Globe: The Lessons of
Suez and Congo’, International Organization, vol. 17, no. 2 (Spring 1963), fn. 14, pp. 329-30.

- 32 -
the tragedy of Rwanda. In October 1995, DPKO released its ‘General
Guidelines for Peacekeeping’, which mentions civilian protection only once,
to question the feasibility and desirability of ‘safe areas’ that damage the
impartiality of peacekeepers.
14
By 1998, however, the demand for peacekeeping reform had seized UN
headquarters. In that year, the Secretary-General Kofi Annan marked an
important step in the UN’s emerging protection agenda by identifying PoC as
a ‘humanitarian imperative’. Outlining his justification for prioritising civilian
protection on the Security Council’s agenda, Annan characterised the
significance of PoC in a manner that continues to shape its debates today:
In recent decades, there has been a dramatic and unacceptable
deterioration in the level of adherence to humanitarian norms in crisis
situations … In the past, civilian populations were chiefly indirect victims of
fighting between hostile armies. Today, they are often the main targets,
with women suffering in disproportionate numbers while often also being
subjected to atrocities that include organised rape and sexual exploitation …
Adherence to international humanitarian and human rights norms by all
parties to a conflict must be insisted upon, and I intend to make this a
priority in the work of the United Nations.15
In the years that followed, the United Nations progressively embedded PoC
as a peacekeeping objective. In 1999, the Security Council established the
United Nations Assistance Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMISIL), authorising
it “within its capabilities and areas of deployment, to afford protection to
civilians under imminent threat of physical violence”.
16
The Security Council
has now authorised twelve UN peace operations with PoC mandates, eight
of which remain active at the time of writing in 2011: UNOCI in Cote d’Ivoire;
MONUSCO in the Democratic Republic of Congo; MINUSTAH in Haiti;
UNIFIL in Lebanon; UNMIL in Liberia; UNMISS in South Sudan; UNISFA in
Abyei; and UNAMID in Darfur.
17
The release in 2000 of The Report of the Panel on United Nations
Peacekeeping Operations, known as the Brahimi Report, catalysed
significant shifts in the UN’s approach to peace operations, including with
regard to PoC. The report identified numerous problems in UN
peacekeeping; among its many recommendations was the call for “robust
doctrine and realistic mandates”. The Brahimi Report observed that the UN
had often been unable to respond effectively to challenges on the ground
14
United Nations Department of Peace-keeping Operations, General Guidelines for Peace-
Keeping Operations (New York: United Nations, 1995); see also Williams, Enhancing Civilian
Protection in Peace Operations, p. 13.
15
United Nations, The Causes of Conflict and the Promotion of Durable Peace and Sustainable
Development in Africa, Report of the Secretary-General, A/52/871—S/1998/318, 13 April 1998,
paras 49-50.
16
United Nations Security Council, Resolution 1270 (1999), 22 October 1999.
17
The UN mission in Sudan (UNMIS) completed its operations in July 2011; its successor
mission, the UN mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) also has a PoC mandate.

- 33 -
and it stressed the need for peacekeepers, once deployed, to carry out their
mandates “professionally and successfully”. Moreover, UN peacekeepers,
whether troops or police, who witness violence against civilians “should be
presumed to be authorised to stop it, within their means, in support of basic
UN principles”.
18
As PoC gained prominence within UN peacekeeping debates, in 2002 UN
OCHA submitted to the Security Council an Aide Memoire, intended as a
practical diagnostic tool for the Security Council’s consideration of PoC
issues during deliberations on peacekeeping mandates. The Aide Memoire
is regularly updated; its fourth edition, published in 2011, identifies seven
general areas of protection concern:
1. Parties’ responsibilities to protect and assist the conflict-affected
population;
2. The protection of refugees and internally displaced persons;
3. Humanitarian access and safety and security of humanitarian
workers;
4. The conduct of hostilities;
5. Small arms and light weapons, mines and explosive remnants of
war;
6. Compliance, accountability and the rule of law; and
7. Media and information, inc. protection of journalists, countering
occurrences of speech used to incite violence, and promoting and
supporting accurate management of information on the conflict.
19
The Aide Memoire also details protection concerns related to two specific
conflict-affected populations: women and children. Finally, it includes an
appendix of protection language used in Security Council resolutions to
address the spectrum of issues listed above.
Two cross-cutting protection themes have emerged in Security Council
debates over the past decade: the protection of women and children in
conflict. In 2000 the Security Council specifically linked women’s experience
of conflict to the maintenance of international peace and security.
20
In 2008,
18
United Nations, Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations, A/55/305—
S/2000/809, 21 August 2000.
19
UN OCHA, ‘Aide Memoire: For the Consideration of Issues Pertaining to the Protection of
Civilians in Armed Conflict’, Policy and Studies Series, vol. 1, no. 4 (2011). The Aide Memoires
have been adopted through Presidential Statements in the Security Council; the most recent
was adopted in S/PRST/2011/25.
20
United Nations Security Council, Resolution 1325 (2000), 31 October 2000.

Security Challenges Volume 7 Number 4 (Summer 2011)

Security Challenges Volume 7 Number 4 (Summer 2011)

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Security Challenges Volume 7 Number 4 (Summer 2011)