E te manukura, e te karea topuni o tenei Whare Pukapuka, tena koe; Ko te manu e kai ana I te miro, nona te ngahere; Ko te manu e kai ana I te matauranga, nona te ao.

I pay a tribute to President Harry S Truman, for whom this place is named; a tribute best conveyed in Mäori proverb, in the language of New Zealand’s indigenous people, which speaks of a great man’s legacy to the world: The bird which partakes of the fruits off the trees owns the forest; the bird which partakes of the fruits of knowledge owns the world.

It is part of the history of this area’s linkage with the United Nations that, in June 1950, President Truman was marking his 31st wedding anniversary at his nearby family home, when he was first told that North Korea had invaded the South; and, from there, acting in a “timely and decisive manner”, gave initial orders, and then moved quickly back to Washington DC to initiate the rapid UN response, including the historic “Uniting for Peace” resolution which authorised military action in Korea.

And, staying with history for a moment, I am mindful that, in March 1999, it was in this same auditorium that Secretary of State Madelaine Albright received from the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland their instruments of accession to NATO – an event symbolic of the great geopolitical shifts after the end of the Cold War (and the site no doubt chosen for its own, symbolic attachment to the Truman Doctrine).

I also acknowledge the presence of representatives of local Lions and Rotary clubs; and recall that, in the period before the establishment of the UN, Rotary and Lions actively promoted the concept of a global, multilateral organisation to preserve world peace; and that their representatives attended the 1945 San Francisco conference that agreed the UN Charter, and helped draft its provisions on the role of civil society.

Rwanda versus Libya; what a difference seventeen years makes

Seventeen years ago, between April and July 1994, Hutu extremists in Rwanda perpetrated one of the worst genocides of recent history.

If ever an atrocity required that the United Nations “reaffirm [its] faith in fundamental human rights”, and that it act to “maintain international peace and security”, as declared in its Charter, this was it.

And yet, despite attempts to push the UN Security Council to respond, the UN failed the test.

As a non-permanent Council member, New Zealand led a small group of countries which tried to strengthen the UN peacekeeping mission already in Rwanda, and declare the atrocity as genocide.

As the Council’s President in April 1994, we even threatened to hold a public debate to shame certain countries for their refusal to act.

In the end, mainly because of the unwillingness of some of the Council’s permanent members, those efforts were unsuccessful, and 800,000 innocent people were butchered – many with jungle knives.

This and other atrocities occurred in a post-Cold War context, when some regimes were struggling for legitimacy, and when the disintegration of states, even regions, was a negative aspect of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The moment when the machetes came out in Rwanda was the endpoint of, and a direct consequence of, the failure of the Rwandan state; and only the international community could have stopped it.

Likewise, today, only the international community can ensure such mistakes don’t happen again.

The UN failed Rwanda, just as it failed Srebrenica and others; it left undone those things that it ought to have done.

Cut to February 2011, seventeen years later: Faced with popular uprisings, Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Qaddafi attacks his own civilians – using live ammunition against peaceful protestors, targeting hospitals and medical personnel, launching full-scale attacks on cities with significant numbers of protestors, detaining and killing arbitrarily.

Qaddafi’s uses language previously heard in Rwanda: He vows to “fight until the last drop of blood”, he calls protestors “cockroaches” (the same word used of Tutsi by Hutu extremists), and calls on his supporters to “cleanse Libya, house by house” – ethnic cleansing

Faced with the very real possibility of large scale civilian casualties, the international community had a choice – intervene to save lives, or stand aside and leave Qaddafi’s bloody regime free to reign and rampage.

We know what happened next: The UN Security Council adopted two resolutions, the first sanctioning the Qaddafi regime; the second authorising the international community to use “all necessary measures” to protect civilians.

Those resolutions were historic, and led to a military intervention that saved the lives thousands of civilians.

I’ll come back to that later; but, to frame my address today, it is useful to compare Rwanda in 1994, when the international community stood aside as machetes decimated the Tutsi population, with Libya in 2011, where the international community intervened to stop the slaughter of civilians.

The differences between the two countries and situations are many and obvious, but they don’t explain the differing international responses.

But the fact that the international community not only felt responsible for the fate of civilians in a sovereign country, and that it then acted to protect them, is testament to the changing way we think about the world.

For over 350 years, nations have subscribed to the so-called Westphalian notion of nation-state sovereignty , based on two things – territoriality, and the absence of a role for external agents in domestic structures.

But we’re now coming to understand that this view of sovereignty doesn't create an unconditional sovereign right – it is a privilege that carries heavy responsibility.

It is certainly not an excuse for a regime to turn on its own people.

“What do we respect more?” asks Parag Khanna, Head of the Global Governance Initiative at the New America Foundation , “people or states”?

We are starting to evolve answers to that question; and, in the process, we are learning that the international community doesn’t have to stand aside in order to preserve sovereignty.

In this interconnected world, we all have a stake in ensuring people are safe and secure, and we all have a stake in strengthening the sovereignty of states by bolstering the capacity to protect those people.

One reason for this change in mindset is the emerging doctrine of “Responsibility to Protect” (or “R2P”, in the acronym-obsessed UN).

But to understand the extent to which R2P might represent a real and genuine change in international attitudes, we need to know something of its history – and of its application in Libya.

We also need to consider the wider context of UN peacekeeping as it relates to R2P, particularly the shift from traditional ceasefire monitoring to the complex, multidimensional and robust missions of today, as well as the wider prevention and capacity-building efforts of the UN and its organs.

All, whether in name or not, are part of the wider R2P concept; all part of the situation where the United Nations strives for international peace and security and to protect innocent civilians.

Sovereignty as responsibility – the debate on R2P

In 2005, the largest-ever gathering of Heads of State and Government, adopted a document known as the World Summit Outcome.

It addressed many issues; including, in response to past failures to prevent mass atrocity crimes, a statement in which leaders unequivocally agreed the scope and key elements a global doctrine of “Responsibility to Protect”.

That Outcome was subsequently endorsed by the UN’s General Assembly and its Security Council, and it outlines the three so-called “pillars” of R2P.

First: That every state has the responsibility to protect its populations — not just “citizens” but “populations” — from the four mass-atrocity crimes - genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

Leaders accepted that responsibility, and said they’d “act in accordance with it”.

The second pillar is that the international community should assist states to exercise that responsibility by helping them build their capacity to provide such protection; rather than just reacting to mass atrocity crimes, when they occur, the international community should develop the capacity of states, and regional and international organisations, to prevent them from occurring; and the United Nations plays a key role in that process.

The third and most problematic pillar of R2P is that, when a state is “manifestly failing” to protect its population, the international community should take collective action to do so in a “timely and decisive manner”.

Because it allows a range of international responses, this third pillar is often criticised by R2P’s detractors as a complicated way of saying “intervention”.

As well as peaceful means, under Chapter VI of the UN Charter, and coercive means, under Chapter VII, the international community could also decide to collaborate with regional institutions under Chapter VIII.

In fact, military intervention can only be used if peaceful measures fail to protect threatened populations.

R2P is narrow; it is not new; it’s a commonsense concept, firmly based on established practices, and on existing international law, including international human rights and humanitarian law.

It is focused solely on situations involving the four specific crimes.

It does not apply to natural disasters, epidemics or climate change.

R2P is not, as some claim, a Trojan horse for humanitarian intervention.

Instead, it’s a positive concept – based on the idea espoused by the Secretary-General’s current Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide, Francis Deng, that sovereignty entails responsibility.

It is a broad framework for mass-atrocity prevention that can help States, regional institutions and the UN itself in their response to mass atrocities.

Even so, support for R2P is not unanimous, and its clear, common sense expression in the World Summit Outcome is often lost in the din of heated political debate; indeed, some see it as the invention of developed, mostly Western, countries that’s being imposed on the developing world.

That’s simply not true.

Five years before the 2005 World Summit Outcome, the African Union had already asserted “the right of the Union to intervene” in cases of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity - which suggests R2P could even be caharcterised as an example of the developed world catching up with the developing world, rather than an imposition by the West.

Others see R2P as an excuse for powerful countries to intervene in the affairs of smaller countries, thereby breaching their sovereignty.

That, too, is a misperception.

In 1994 (when New Zealand led efforts to persuade the Security Council to act in respect of the Rwandan genocide), the problem was not one of powerful states eager to intervene - it was exactly the opposite. 


Those efforts failed because some permanent members – those with a veto – wouldn’t even recognise that genocide was occurring; and even the threat of a veto (the so-called “pocket veto”) was enough to block any action.

New Zealand has always opposed the Security Council veto; but we are, at the very least, entitled to expect that the five permanent Council members might show restraint in exercising or threatening that veto when responding to humanitarian crimes.

We should never let it be said that the veto prevented action to deal with genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity or war crimes.

Military intervention is only one small part of one of R2P’s three pillars.

The doctrine relies on all three pillars – each is as important as the other.

Military intervention can only occur when a state has manifestly failed to protect its populations, and when peaceful efforts to prevent atrocities have been exhausted.

And, when military intervention does occur, it must accord with the UN Charter and must, therefore, still be authorised by the UN Security Council.

R2P is sometimes confused with humanitarian intervention – where one state uses force against another to bring an end to human rights violations.

This, too, is incorrect.

Humanitarian intervention offers a black and white choice, of either allowing genocide or breaching sovereignty.

In a world where choices are rarely so clear-cut, both are unpalatable.

R2P, by contrast, is based on the positive notion of the responsibilities that accompany the privileges of sovereignty.

Indeed, given that much of the focus of R2P is on capacity building – helping states to protect their populations – R2P can even be seen as bolstering sovereignty rather than undermining it.

R2P in practice? Military intervention in Libya

But let me now depart from the theory.

It’s all very well to talk about the R2P in the abstract, as often happens in academic texts and in the so-called “debates” convened by the UN.

But when the international community, though the UN Security Council, is faced with the choice to intervene or not, the nuances and subtleties of theories, and the best intentions of academics and R2P-advocating civil society, tend to be overridden, rough-shod, by realpolitik.

Far better, then, that we examine R2P in practice.

To Libya then.

Inspired by uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere, protestors centred in Benghazi called for democratic change and the removal of Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, a despot who’d been in power over forty years.

However, unlike Tunisia and Egypt, where security forces largely prevented bloodshed, Qaddafi’s forces responded with unprecedented violence.

The protestors, in turn, cobbled together a leadership and established a transitional government, based in Benghazi.

As reports emerged of civilian deaths and, equally worryingly, Qaddafi and Sons began talking about massive retribution, the UN Security Council began to take notice.

On 22 February it issued a press statement (well short of a resolution, but still demonstrating Council unanimity) condemning the violence and calling on the Libyan Government to “meet its responsibility to protect its population” – the first time it had used those words.

That didn’t stop Qaddafi, whose forces (many of them mercenaries, hired from other countries) outgunned and outnumbered the untrained rebels.

So, faced with reports of even more civilian deaths, with Libyan diplomats in Geneva, New York and Washington defecting from the Qaddafi regime, and with the Arab League calling for international action, on 26 February, the Security Council adopted Resolution 1970.

That resolution was historic – it sanctioned key members of the Qaddafi regime and referred the situation in Libya to the International Criminal Court – the first time the Council had done so unanimously.

But still Qaddafi’s forces advanced, now within 100 miles of Benghazi, and continued to attack civilians – we now know that between 500-600 peaceful Libyan protesters were killed in February alone.

In a rare moment of what the UN Secretary General described as “swift, decisive action” - and again invoking "the Libyan authorities’ responsibility to protect its population” - on 17 March, the Council followed up with the extraordinary Resolution 1973, which imposed a no-fly zone on Libya and authorised UN Member States to use “all necessary measures”, including military action, to protect civilians.

Just two days later, American and European forces unleashed aircraft and missile-strikes against Qaddafi’s regime on a scale not seen in the Middle East since the Iraq war at the beginning of this millennium.

Both resolutions were, for many reasons, historic; a usually divided Council was unanimous in referring the situation to the ICC, a usually sluggish Council acted swiftly and strongly, and countries still deeply suspicious of the US and others following the invasion of Iraq came on board to support intervention in Libya.

They were also historic because, unlike previous occasions when the Security Council had, at most, referred only obliquely to the World Summit Outcome, the two resolutions explicitly recognised the Libyan authorities “responsibility to protect its population”, thereby directly invoking R2P.

The circumstances surrounding these resolutions also demonstrated that R2P, particularly its third pillar, is not an excuse for Western intervention.

A key reason the US, the UK and France supported intervention in Libya was that the Arab League, which includes most of Libya’s neighbours, called for such action ; and Russia and China did not veto the resolution because the League had called for Council action.

Nonetheless, there is now a very healthy debate about the real extent of Resolution 1973; particularly, what exactly did the Council mean when it authorised the use of “all necessary measures”?

Initially, allied forces simply enforced the no-fly zone; but, more recently, they’ve attacked command-and-control centres, and are now deploying military advisers.

Other questions are asked: If (as in Libya) we invoke the Responsibility to Protect against a regime that’s committing atrocities against its own people, does that imply support for the regime’s opponents (and, if so, who are those people)?

Does R2P go so far as to authorise regime change (and, if it doesn’t, how can you leave in place the regime responsible for the atrocities)?

Does protecting civilians extend to arming the rebels?; and what happens if R2P action leads to military stalemate (as may be so in Libya)?

All are valid questions - but beyond the scope of this address; suffice to reiterate that the presently enunciated focus of R2P is narrow – protecting populations from mass atrocity crimes.

Libya is a classic example of a government “manifestly failing” to protect its population, and of the international community acting in accordance with the UN Charter and taking action to protect that population (although whether Resolution 1970 was “decisive”, and whether Resolution 1973 was “timely”, as contemplated by the World Summit Outcome, are other questions entirely).

It is also important to remember that, as required by the R2P doctrine, military intervention only came after peaceful measures – first, statements, then sanctions, then the ICC referral – were all exhausted.

For my generation, Benghazi and Tobruk meant World War II battles, death and destruction; and, as one whose father fought at el Alamein (and whose uncle died there - now, in the words Rupert Brooke, lying in a “corner of a foreign field”), I get no satisfaction when those place-names are, again, forced into our consciousness; but I’m equally aware that the actions taken in Libya probably saved tens of thousands of civilians in Benghazi alone.

But, despite those life-saving outcomes, R2P’s success cannot be measured simply by successful military interventions.

Rather, we must also look at situations where R2P-related conflict prevention activity meant military intervention wasn’t then required.

Possible military action is only a small part of R2P’s third pillar; but the debate surrounding the idea that the international community has a responsibility to intervene means it gets disproportionate attention.

Pillar One, the responsibility to protect populations, is straight forward.

More interesting is Pillar Two – the responsibility of the international community to build the capacity of a state to protect those populations.

UN peacekeeping, peacebuilding and political efforts play a key role in supporting states and regional groups to boost that protection capacity.

Peacekeeping is the UN’s most difficult - and its most high profile – activity; often the one by which it is most critically judged.

That’s something of an anomaly, because nowhere does the UN Charter even use the word “peacekeeping”.

Nonetheless, the UN has developed a peacekeeping role out of its basic Charter responsibilities; a role that’s undergone massive change in the last two decades, during which the number of peacekeepers has also expanded.

Over 120,000 personnel now serve in 15 UN peacekeeping operations, worldwide.

Sadly, it’s post-conflict countries that are the most susceptible to new conflict, and are those where people are most vulnerable to mass atrocities; and it’s those countries where peacekeepers most regularly serve.

And so it is that several of those 15 peacekeeping missions have been specifically mandated by the Security Council to include civilian protection as the operational focus of their work.

As peacekeeping has evolved, we’ve learned that “protection” doesn’t just mean stopping bullets or interceding between warring factions - to protect effectively requires a focus on the causes of conflict.

Partly for these reasons, peacekeeping has become a complex and dynamic operation, and peacekeepers are expected to undertake a wide range of activities; including preventing conflict, disarming and reintegrating combatants, clearing mines, protecting against sexual and gender-based violence, promoting human rights, and maintaining the Rule of Law - sometimes even helping to build or rebuild countries.

Such a variety of skill-sets requires many different military, policing and civilian capabilities.

As well as making logistical sense, conflict prevention by peacekeeping makes financial sense; costing around $8 billion annually (just 0.5 percent of global military spending), it is much cheaper than unilateral military deployment.

United States Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, has said that, “for every dollar that the US would spend [deploying its own forces], the UN can accomplish the mission for twelve cents”.

Other UN organs also contribute to R2P-related activities.

The same World Summit that articulated R2P also established the UN’s Peacebuilding Commission (or, in UN lingo, the PBC), which has helped countries like Sierra Leone, Burundi and Liberia achieve sustainable peace and development, rather than descending, once again, into bloody conflict.

Those peacebuilding efforts have been complemented by the UN’s work elsewhere in preventative diplomacy field; in 2010, the UN supported 34 different mediation, facilitation and dialogue efforts – in situations as diverse as Kyrgyzstan and Guinea.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is represented in around 50 countries, helping countries meet their human rights obligations.

Similarly, the Secretary General’s Representatives for Children and Armed Conflict and Sexual Violence in Conflict have helped protect women and children from the vilest forms of abuse in places like Uganda, Eastern and Central Africa, Sudan, the DRC, Burma and elsewhere.

In 2008, mediation efforts prompted by the principle of R2P helped avert large-scale ethnic violence in Kenya.

Along with many other international actors, the UN is working with the evolving Government of South Sudan – to all intents and purposes, building a country from the ground up.

These are just a few examples of R2P in practice – activities that are well short of actual military intervention.

Some of these examples, of course, predate the 2005 World Summit; which only confirms that R2P is not new - it simply gives a name to what we have already done, and what we continue to do - or what we should be doing.

Likewise, those pre-2005 examples demonstrate , that R2P doesn’t require another layer of bureaucracy in an already crowded international system.

Rather, R2P is a “catch-all” a way of focussing on activities already undertaken, by the UN, Member States and others, to protect those at risk from mass atrocity crimes – activities that range much wider than just attacks by missiles and jets on repressive regimes, as newsworthy as those might be.

The Security Council’s actions on Libya and Cote d’Ivoire show that military intervention isn’t the same as R2P; and that, instead of equating the success of R2P with a successful military intervention, we should look to the international community’s wider conflict prevention and capacity-building efforts - taking, for example, UN peacekeepers, who, in post-conflict countries, often put themselves in harm’s way to prevent further bloodshed.

R2P – it’s not the concept that matters, it’s the action

I began this address with a comparison between Rwanda and Libya.

It is pleasing that, unlike Rwanda in 1994, when faced with the imminent slaughter of civilians in Libya (and in Cote d’Ivoire), the Security Council was ready, willing and able to authorise decisive action –demonstrating that our less-than-perfect United Nations (which mirrors a less-than-perfect international community) has come a long way in seventeen years.

It is also gratifying that, in the six years since R2P was articulated in the World Summit Outcome, the situations in Libya or Cote d’Ivoire were not just relegated to academic discussion.

After all, it’s not the concept of R2P that matters – it’s how it is implemented in practice.

We can study R2P all we want, but what we’re really talking about is protecting people - real people, whose real lives are blighted by the real threat of mass atrocity crime.

The debate on R2P will continue – and well it should, given that it’s a concept rather than a policy set in stone, an “aspiration, not yet a reality .

None of this was ever going to be easy.

As the UN Secretary-General said recently, “slowly but surely, sometimes by trial and error, we have learned to use the instruction available under the Charter in new ways, adapting to evolving circumstances” .

R2P will continue to evolve; and, like the UN itself, that evolution is unlikely to be wholly consistent, and views on it are unlikely to be homogenous.

But, above all, the debate about that evolution must be deeply respectful of the millions who’ve died as a result of genocide and other mass atrocities - in Rwanda, Srebrenica, Cambodia, the Holocaust, and so many others.

Those victims stand as silent witnesses to that ongoing debate.

As we recognised in 1945, the moral burden of those tragedies isn’t just that of individual states; it belongs with the entire international community.

In 1945, “We the Peoples of the United Nations”, mindful of the most destructive war in human history, and of its accompanying human rights abuses, solemnly agreed the collective responsibility of maintaining international peace and security, and of preventing genocide and mass atrocities.

The need for a doctrine that declares a Responsibility to Protect the innocent from the predations of the guilty is determined by history, and is clearly underpinned by the UN Charter and by international law.

Above all, it’s commitment that’s simply stated: To protect innocent people, whoever and wherever, from the great humanitarian crimes.

Looking back, it’s what we should have done in the late 1930s and early 1940s and again in the 1990s; but we didn’t.

However, in this, the 21st Century, we have a doctrine, consistent with existing international law and practice, but now declared in clear and unequivocal language, affirmed by world leaders, that tells us what we should do.

Liberal or conservative, left or right, isolationist or internationalist - who could disagree?

United Nations Peacekeeping and the Responsibility to Protect
Address by Hon Jim McLay
New Zealand Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations
The Harry S Truman Library and Museum
Independence, Missouri
Wednesday 18 May 2011