Norm Clusters and the Challenge of Atrocity Prevention: The European Union and the case of Myanmar

In this ECR2P Fresh Perspectives piece, Professor Jason Ralph writes on the European Union’s strategy of atrocity prevention in Myanmar.

In a paper to be published by the European Journal of International Relations, Eglantine Staunton and I draw on recent developments in norm research to analyse the European Union’s (EU) policy in the lead up to the 2017 Myanmar genocide.

In August 2017, Myanmar’s military and security forces, the Tatmadaw, began ‘clearance operations’ targeting the Muslim Rohingya population in Rakhine state. By December 2017 an estimated 720,000 people had fled, bringing the total number of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh to over 900,000 people (GCR2P 2019). According to the Fact Finding Mission, which had been established in March 2017 to investigate previous human rights abuses (OHCHR 2019), the treatment of the Rohingya amounted to four of the five prohibited acts defined in the Genocide Convention.

As shocking as these events were, they were not unexpected. Atrocity prevention organizations had consistently pointed to risk indicators for many years. These indicators included the denial of citizenship status to the Rohingya, the rise of Buddhist nationalism, and precursor attacks in 2012, 2015 and 2016.

The EU had developed significant relations with Myanmar’s government after a political reform process began in 2012. EU aid sought to promote peace, democracy and sustainable development. The EU therefore had some, if not decisive, leverage over the Myanmar government.

This distinction is important. Regional powers like China and Japan had much more leverage, and they were inclined to protect their interests.  In examining EU policy, therefore, we are not trying to attribute blame or responsibility for the failure to prevent genocide.  We are interested only in understanding how the EU interpreted the R2P norm in that situation and contributing to a learning process.

To do that we draw on two insights from International Relations norm theory.

The first centers on the concept of ‘localisation’ as explored by Acharya, Kenkal, Stefan and others. This explains how states and regional groups like the EU interpret and internalise global norms like R2P according to preconceived beliefs and practices.

The second centers on the ‘norm cluster’ concept, as explored by Lantis, Winston, Wunderlich and others.  This illustrates how aligned but distinct norms are bundled together in abstract theories or strategies.  Seen through a pragmatist lens (Ralph 2018), this concept alerts us to the possibility that norms aligned in theory may actually clash in practice, and this can lead to perverse outcomes.

Using these two concepts we illustrate how EU policy statements ‘grafted’ R2P on to prior commitments, especially in the areas of conflict prevention and democracy promotion. We argue that the bundling of agendas in this way actually diluted the political power of the atrocity prevention norm.

Clearly there is nothing wrong in theory with a strategy that aligns conflict prevention, democracy promotion and atrocity prevention.  There is a lot of evidence that atrocities are committed in the context of armed conflict. Likewise, the evidence suggests vulnerable populations are at less risk under democratic governments than authoritarian ones.

This norm cluster thus makes sense in theory. But in practice, and with respect to Myanmar, there are some significant anomalies.

Take the relationship between conflict prevention and atrocity prevention.  While the threat of atrocity was highest in Rakhine state, where the Rohingya were concentrated, international and EU conflict prevention aid was concentrated in the states of Kachin, Shan and Kayan, where situations of armed conflict were ongoing.

There are two reinforcing reasons for this. First, the distribution of international aid was subject to Myanmar’s approval. Second, the EU approach relied on existing conflict prevention practices, and because the Rohingya were unable to escalate the situation to the level of armed conflict, Rakhine state fell outside that particular focus.

We can also see how the commitment to democracy promotion led the EU to do things it would probably not have done had atrocity prevention been its only priority.

As well as the ceasefire agreements in Kachin, Shan and Kayan, 2015 saw the first openly contested general election, which brought Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy to power in November.

Together, these events created a sense of progress and in September 2016, the EU was able to stop its practice of sponsoring a resolution on Myanmar’s human rights abuses at the UN Third Committee. This was justified in terms of “the country’s progress to democratic transition [and] the reinvigoration of the peace process’ (EEAS 2018).

The following month the military attacked the Rohingya displacing 87,000 refugees.

The argument then is that by bundling atrocity prevention with conflict prevention and democracy promotion, the EU operated with a false sense of progress and underestimated the threat of genocide despite the clear warning signs.

But what in practice could have changed if the normative framing had been different?

After the 2017 attacks the EU imposed targeted sanctions in the form of travel bans and individual asset freezes. The reason given for those sanctions was that they could deter further attacks. Could sanctions have been imposed earlier? A mixture of reasons explains why they were not.

The interests of member states and the difficulty of getting consensus among the EU 28 undoubtedly played a role. Also, the decision to apply targeted rather than blanket sanctions, which given the record of the latter was reasonable one, required higher standards of evidence to prove individual responsibility.  This took time and, ultimately, the process that began after the 2016 attacks was overtaken by events.

But that too begs the question of why the process of considering sanctions only started in 2016 when the threat of genocide was clear before then.

We return at this point in our analysis to the importance of normative framing.  Sanctions could have been imposed in response to attacks against the Rohingya in 2015 (and even 2012!) but that was deemed inappropriate by the sense of progress that followed from the EU commitment to democracy promotion and conflict prevention.

The lesson is not to stop promoting democracy or preventing conflict. The evidence is still overwhelming that democracy and peace helps to prevent atrocity. The lesson instead is to be more sensitive to those cases where these norms are not aligned in practice. Atrocity prevention policy needs to be designed on a case-by-case basis knowing that in some cases it may demand difficult normative and political trade-offs.

For further reading see Staunton, E. and Ralph, J. 2019. The Responsibility to Protect norm cluster and the challenge of atrocity prevention: an analysis of the European Union’s strategy in Myanmar. European Journal of International Relations., pp. 1-27 - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1354066119883001

Professor Jason Ralph, University of Leeds, UK

 

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