Update: R2P in Australia under Labor

The Australian Labor Party has be a proponent of R2P from its earliest beginnings.  Chapter 14 of the ALP 2007 Platform includes the following paragraphs:

“33. Labor strongly supports the UN Security Council’s adoption of the doctrine of international humanitarian intervention known as ‘The Responsibility to Protect’ which was first developed in a 2001 report prepared by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS). The principle was adopted by the UN Security Council in Resolution 1674 which recognises the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and provides a firm basis in international law for the international community to step in to intervene to protect civilian populations on humanitarian grounds when, and if, their own governments are unwilling or unable to do so.

34. Consistent with our strong commitment to the peaceful resolution of disputes in accordance with international law and justice and the doctrine of the responsibility to protect, Labor considers Australia duty bound to assist with the resolution of disputes and conflicts and  subsequent rebuilding wherever we can play a positive role consistent with our national interests. Labor also supports the emphasis in the doctrine of the responsibility to protect on the prevention of conflict. Labor believes that Australia should engage vigorously with relevant governments, the UN Security Council, and other UN and regional bodies to ensure that the responsibility to protect doctrine moves from adoption to commitment and consistent implementation.

35. As a middle power with significant experience in peace keeping operations, most recently in East Timor, Australia must be prepared to accept peace keeping responsibilities consistent with our national, regional and global security interests.”

Watch this space!

On Operationalising the Responsibility to Protect Norm in Australia

Forward to CWS' submission to the Senate Inquiry on Peacekeeping, by

Nick Grono – Vice President, International Crisis Group

"In response to failure of the international community to respond to the tragic crises in Somalia, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia in the mid-1990s, a broad international debate was generated about the balance between the right of the outside actors to launch coercive military " humanitarian interventions"  against that of sovereign governments to have untrammelled freedom of internal action.  Born of this debate was the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) and its landmark report: "The Responsibility to Protect". The concept of responsibility to protect (R2P) proposed a change in the terms of the debate by focusing not on anyone's 'rights' but rather their responsibilities  - in the case of sovereign states to protect their own populations from genocide, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing; and in the case of other members of the international community to exercise that responsibility when a government is unable or unwilling to do so, acting through political, diplomatic, economic, legal, security or in the last resort military measures.

Since its birth, the endorsement by prominent Australians - and the Australian government - of this conceptual and moral shift has proved critical in nurturing R2P from an idea to an international norm, now adopted by the UN General Assembly in the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document and subsequent UN Security Council resolutions.

Australia early-on established its ownership in building the foundations of the R2P norm. Former foreign minister Gareth Evans co-chaired the ICISS, provided the intellectual and diplomatic firepower to develop this international norm, and continues to be one of its most active and effective proponents.  In 2005, acting through then Ambassador to the United Nations John Dauth, Australia played an instrumental role in shaping the World Summit Outcome document, including paragraphs 138 and 139 -- the birth of R2P as an internationally recognized norm.  Expanding that leadership across the Australian political spectrum at home will serve to build a permanent, deliverable, broad-based and politically potent public and political constituency for Australian engagement in the face of global atrocities.

Australia's international reputation will be significantly enhanced if we not only  maintain  our country's  principled general commitment to R2P,  but also recognize the strategic and moral benefits of ensuring that  its nature and implications are  more widely understood domestically, and play  a leadership role internationally in  preventing mass atrocities by making the  concept  not just rhetorically but operationally effective.

By pledging nearly $3 billion of official development assistance this year (up half a billion dollars from last year) to the Asia Pacific region and beyond, with plans to further enhance its foreign assistance by 2010, and as a major provider of humanitarian assistance, Australia has been doing to more to pull its weight in meeting its global responsibilities.

Through refugee resettlement and disaster relief -- such as its support for the United Nations' Central Emergency Response Fund -- and its response to conflict in East Timor, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere, Australia has played an important leadership role in responding to a number of humanitarian protection concerns around the globe. But the concept of R2P provides an opportunity to escape the trap of having to respond to each new crisis involving mass human rights atrocities by stressing as well the need to prevent these crises from occurring and the need to rebuild nations after conflict has subsided.

Partnering with the global community to improve global stability, to prevent and help nations recover from conflict, and to protect people from the worst atrocities is in the interest of Australian security in both regional, and global, contexts. As a mid-range international power, Australia has been a strong proponent for the creation of a rules-based system of international order -- rather than an ad hoc response to each new emerging crisis -- and R2P is a vital step in developing those norms. In addition, it is in Australia's interest to strengthen countries vulnerable to mass atrocities, since states that cannot or will not stop internal mass atrocity crimes are states that cannot or will not stop terrorism, weapons proliferation, trafficking in people and drugs, the spread of health pandemics and other risks to Australia's national security.

But ultimately, we must support R2P simply because it is the right thing to do: our common humanity demands that the world never again sees another Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda, or Bosnia.  This question cuts to the core of who we are as nations, and who we are as individuals."