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The Responsibility to Protect in Myanmar

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Fresh Perspectives
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In collaboration with aidXchange, ECR2P’s Dr Cristina Stefan and Professor Jason Ralph offer their thoughts on the applicability of the Responsibility to Protect to the ongoing situation in Myanmar.

 

These entries on the Applicability of R2P to the Myanmar crisis first appeared in Global Reconciliation’s Forum on Myanmar, aidXchange. Global Reconciliation is an Australian-initiated network of people and organisations around the world seeking to research and promote reconciliation.

(https://aidxchange.org/news-and-communication/)

(https://www.globalreconciliation.org/about/mission)

 

Dr Cristina G. Stefan, Associate Professor of International Relations at The University of Leeds, United Kingdom, and Co-Director of the European Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (ECR2P)

There is no doubt that the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) applies to the current crisis in Myanmar. The military, headed by General Min Aung Hlaing, seized power on February 1, overturned a democratic election, and established the ruling military junta called the State Administration Council (SAC). The junta's security forces have violently suppressed the anti-coup protests, with at least 300 deaths and thousands of cases of enforced disappearances and torture of political prisoners. Children have been amongst those killed, with the latest devastating story making the international news of security forces shooting a 7-year-old girl dead in her home in Mandalay during a military raid. The UN special rapporteur for human rights in Myanmar acknowledged that such a “brutal response” to peaceful protests is “likely meeting the legal threshold for crimes against humanity”.

We have seen protesters in Myanmar invoke R2P more than in any other recent crisis, with clear messages written in English requesting the international community to step in to provide protection, since the state has obviously failed in its primary responsibility to protect them. While such high expectations highlight the very relevance of R2P as an international framework of protection, they risk creating false hopes. The protesters invoking R2P seem to expect a UN intervention, when the reality of UN Security Council power dynamics makes external intervention - or using “any means necessary” to restore democracy, as Myanmar’s ambassador to the UN, Kyaw Moe Tun, so courageously called for - impossible. But, apart from this tool of last resort in the R2P toolbox, other tools from the R2P’s more coercive third pillar could be employed, including arms embargoes, targeted sanctions, and calls for international criminal prosecutions. So far, the UN Security Council has only issued a statement condemning the bloodshed and calling for “restraint, dialogue and full respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms”. What’s needed instead is a resolution calling for targeted sanctions, arms embargoes and referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Individual states and regional actors can, and should, call for more robust action to send stronger messages to the generals that this time around the world is watching, and reacting. The US, UK and Canada have imposed their own targeted sanctions. In addition to an existing arms embargo, the European Union (EU) imposed travel bans and asset freezes against 11 individuals, including General Min Aung Hlaing, and declared the bloc’s readiness to go further and stop generating any revenue for the military. Important regional players, such as Japan and Indonesia, and especially ASEAN, should do the same.

Let’s not forget how important regional calls for action are in influencing UN Security Council decision-making. If we look back at Libya in 2011, China and Russia found it impossible to veto the UN SC Resolution 1973, which authorized the NATO-led intervention, precisely because of regional voices asking the UN Security Council to act. These included the Arab League’s support for establishing a no-fly zone in Libya, regional actors stripping Libya of its membership, and regional powers such as South Africa involved in mediation efforts. Regional efforts matter, and could be the source of pressure needed if manifested through targeted sanctions and non-recognition of the military junta as the legitimate authority in Myanmar.

At this point, any pressure on the junta and their economic endeavours matters, ranging from individual states to regional blocs imposing sanctions, arms embargoes and threatening the pursuit of international criminal justice. Let’s also remember in this context how one small state, The Gambia, fulfilled its responsibility to protect by fighting impunity in Myanmar, for the genocide committed against the Rohingya, whose systematic persecution went ahead with impunity. The Gambia filed a lawsuit at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on November 11, 2019, accusing Myanmar of violating its obligations under the Genocide Convention. The threat of accountability, including the UN Security Council referring the case to the ICC, might send the strongest signal to the military junta that facing prosecutions could become a reality for them.

 

Jason Ralph, Professor of International Relations at The University of Leeds, United Kingdom, and Research Director of the European Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (ECR2P)

Following the 2008 coup in Guinea, the international community rallied to implement a series of measures that included arms embargoes, travel bans, asset freezes and the possibility of International Criminal Court involvement. An International Contact Group was created and chaired by regional organizations. It worked closely with other significant international actors outside the immediate region.

It is now argued that this form of concerted and coordinated diplomatic effort contributed to the prevention of violence and protected a population at risk of atrocity crimes. As Naomi Kikolar writes: ’Given the very serious risk of such crimes…it is arguable that the death toll would have been higher in the absence of the preventive efforts that focused on reigning in the security forces’.

The NATO-led military intervention in Libya may have exacerbated the mistrust of R2P, and that may have contributed to international society’s subsequent failures to protect vulnerable populations, but Kikolar’s example of what she called ‘the forgotten case of R2P’, is an important lesson. It is not merely a reminder that contested coups should put international society on alert. It demonstrates that international society has acted responsibly and collectively to prevent dangerous situations from escalating. The responsibility to protect does not necessarily mean military intervention. It can be properly discharged using diplomatic tools.

The parallels to the current situation in Myanmar are clear. The images of a frightened population invoking R2P is a reminder that the norm is for the vulnerable and that the responsibility rests with the powerful, especially those in the region.

Coordinated diplomacy that is regionally-led is more effective. It also immunizes humanitarian action against the charge that fulfilling a responsibility to protect is an act of western imperialism. The tragedy of the NATO-led intervention in Libya is that it was easily portrayed in such terms when in fact the R2P norm has a universal provenance.

Regional organizations should therefore lead, and as Marty Natalegawa recently notes, ASEAN ‘has options in its diplomatic toolbox’. ‘Whenever ASEAN interacts with the representatives of the junta’, he adds, ‘it must only be for the purpose of restoring the country along the democratic path. To speak on other “regular” ASEAN issues with the junta would make a mockery of the group’s standing’.

Yet it should not be forgotten that in an R2P frame, democracy is a means to the end of human protection. This important point it seems was forgotten by international society when it viewed Myanmar’s progress toward democracy before 2017.

As an inquiry by the UK Parliament put it there was ‘too much focus by the UK and others on supporting the “democratic transition” and not enough on atrocity prevention and delivering tough and unwelcome messages to the Burmese Government about the Rohingya.’ Likewise, Simon Adams of the Global Centre for R2P has often stated that ‘democracy in Myanmar cannot be built on the bones of the Rohingya.’

International society has a responsibility to protect pro-democracy protestors and ethnic minorities in Myanmar. It is the case, moreover, that this responsibility can be properly discharged in ways that balance commitments to other norms, including peace and security.

 

If you are interested in submitting a blog post for the ECR2P’s Fresh Perspectives series, then please contact Richard Illingworth by Email (r.illingworth@leeds.ac.uk) or Twitter (@RJI95).