No More Empty Promises

Sally Belfield discusses the need for international rhetoric to be met with concrete action.

''There is too much killing, too much violence, too much fighting. I want my sisters to have normal lives. All of us here want peace, and we need the world's help to make it happen.'' Ahmed, 16, is living in a refugee camp in North Darfur Oxfam have been campaigning at the G8 summit in Japan

Since the end of the Cold War internal civil wars and horrific ethnic slaughter have tragically become common place in international news headlines. From Rwanda to Srebrenica, and now Darfur, gross human rights abuses and acts of genocide have taken place across the world. Sadly the international response to these atrocities has been pusillanimous and inconsistent.

This is despite promising developments in international law and increasing consensus over the need for international intervention in these extreme cases of human rights abuse.

This increased commitment to humanitarian intervention in theory is illustrated by the broad acceptance across states of the findings of the ‘International Commission for Intervention and State Sovereignty’. The ICISS report concluded that the international community held a “Responsibility to Protect”. Although responsibility for its citizens’ wellbeing primarily lies with the state, when this state fails or is unable to protect its citizens, responsibility falls to the international community.

The events in Sudan marked a clear test case for the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine, with the large scale slaughter of Darfurians by the Janjaweed militia being widely recognised as genocide. The failure to intervene therefore highlights the stark gap between international ‘talk’ and ‘action’.

More pressure and moral shame needs to be applied to governments so that they match their rhetoric with concrete policies. Otherwise the ideas behind ‘Responsibility to Protect’ will tragically remain aspirational rather than operational.