[Senate Hearing 110-650]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 110-650
INTERNATIONAL DISASTER ASSISTANCE: POLICY OPTIONS
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND
FOREIGN ASSISTANCE, ECONOMIC AFFAIRS, AND
INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JUNE 17, 2008
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/
index.html
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana
JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska
RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota
BARBARA BOXER, California BOB CORKER, Tennessee
BILL NELSON, Florida GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio
BARACK OBAMA, Illinois LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey JIM DeMINT, South Carolina
BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia
ROBERT P. CASEY, Jr., Pennsylvania DAVID VITTER, Louisiana
JIM WEBB, Virginia JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming
Antony J. Blinken, Staff Director
Kenneth A. Myers, Jr., Republican Staff Director
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND FOREIGN ASSISTANCE,
ECONOMIC AFFAIRS, AND INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey, Chairman
JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska
BARBARA BOXER, California BOB CORKER, Tennessee
BARACK OBAMA, Illinois LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska
ROBERT P. CASEY, Jr., Pennsylvania JIM DeMINT, South Carolina
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hagel, Hon. Chuck, U.S. Senator from Nebraska, prepared statement 18
Kunder, James, Acting Deputy Administrator, U.S. Agency for
International Development, Washington, DC...................... 7
Prepared statement........................................... 9
Luck, Dr. Edward C., Special Adviser to the Secretary General,
United Nations, New York, NY................................... 28
Prepared statement........................................... 31
Menendez, Hon. Robert, U.S. Senator from New Jersey, opening
statement...................................................... 1
Patrick, Dr. Stewart, senior fellow and director, Program on
International Institutions and Global Governance, Council on
Foreign Relations, Washington, DC.............................. 42
Prepared statement........................................... 44
Schneider, Mark L., senior vice president, International Crisis
Group, Washington, DC.......................................... 34
Prepared statement........................................... 37
Warlick, James B., Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau
of International Organization Affairs, Department of State,
Washington, DC................................................. 3
Prepared statement........................................... 5
(iii)
INTERNATIONAL DISASTER ASSISTANCE: POLICY OPTIONS
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TUESDAY, JUNE 17, 2008
U.S. Senate, Subcommittee on International
Development, and Foreign Assistance, Economic
Affairs, and International Environmental
Protection, Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:41 p.m., in
room SD-419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Robert
Menendez (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Senators Menendez, Feingold, and Hagel.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT MENENDEZ,
U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW JERSEY
Senator Menendez. This hearing will now come to order.
Let me thank you all for coming and I apologize to our
witnesses and the audience. There is a vote going on as we
speak, and so we thought it better to make sure we have the
vote first and then come so we would be uninterrupted,
hopefully, for the duration of the hearing. And I know Senator
Hagel will be here shortly as he returns from the floor.
We are here today to discuss international disaster
assistance and, in particular, policy options when political
obstacles prevent the assistance from reaching those in need.
First, I want to say that my thoughts and prayers go out to
those who have lost loved ones to the cyclone in Burma, the
earthquake in China, and for that fact, here at home in the
floods in Iowa. These kinds of disasters, unfortunately, will
continue to take place, and therefore, there will always be a
need to respond quickly to alleviate human suffering and reduce
the loss of life.
I am proud to say that the United States Government is the
single largest donor of humanitarian assistance in the world.
The U.S. Agency for International Development, through the
Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance and the Office of Food
for Peace, works with other U.S. Government partners and
nongovernmental organizations to provide food, safe drinking
water, and shelter materials after hurricanes, earthquakes,
floods, and other natural disasters. These quick response teams
are staffed by professional experts and work with a purely
humanitarian agenda to save lives and ease suffering.
But history has taught us that this purely humanitarian
agenda often carries broader foreign policy implications, and
while each humanitarian crisis is unique, so are the
implications of our actions. It can bring nations closer and
foster a positive U.S. presence. For example, favorable
opinions of the United States spiked in Pakistan after our
response to their tragic earthquake in 2005. So as we focus on
humanitarian assistance, it is important that we recognize the
significant weight it carries.
So I say again that humanitarian assistance is much more
complex than dropping food and water out of an airplane. It
requires standing up and monitoring a distribution network.
Such a network requires access and access is controlled by
governments. In far too many cases, the government's priority
is not the well-being of their people, but instead the well-
being of their own narrow political or personal interests. And
there are instances, several of which we will discuss today,
when assistance is blocked, stalled, or otherwise held up by
governments that fear such assistance would somehow jeopardize
their control or violate their sovereignty.
A recent example of this is Burma where the military
junta's irrational and xenophobic posture still contributes to
a deep worsening of an already terrible tragedy. As a result of
Cyclone Nargis, the United Nations estimates that between
63,000 and 101,000 people have died. Over 55,000 are still
missing. Over 100,000 are displaced, and a total of 2.4 million
people are affected.
And in Zimbabwe, recent reports indicate that the Mugabe
regime is taking food out of the mouths of school children and
instead handing it out to buy boats.
When political leaders such as these neglect their people
in a time of grave need, how shall the international community
respond? How can the international community respond? What is
the role of the United Nations? What is our collective
responsibility, and how do we carry out this responsibility?
One framework that has been under discussion for several
years is called the ``responsibility to protect.'' This
concept, which grew out of the 2005 World Summit Outcome
Document focuses on the so-called ``right of humanitarian
intervention.'' It asks when, if ever, it is appropriate for
states to take coercive action and, in particular, military
action against another state for the purpose of protecting
people at risk. And I especially look forward to our second
panel of expert witnesses to explore this further.
This option becomes especially interesting as Secretary of
Defense Robert Gates recently characterized the Burmese junta's
response as ``criminal neglect.'' While this characterization
does not appear to rise to the responsibility to protect, it is
borderline of genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity,
and it seems to me that it merits an organized, collective, and
swift response.
Now, we are not here to get bogged down in semantics, but
instead to examine policy frameworks that may help us think
about these issues in a more systematic way and help our
collective response to be as effective as possible. Our goals
for today's hearing are to improve our understanding of these
options and I look toward building on our experience around the
world so that those in need receive critical assistance in a
timely way.
As I await Senator Hagel, let me move on to recognize and
introduce the first panel. Our first panel of witnesses, which
we welcome to the committee, is Mr. James Warlick. Mr. Warlick
is the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary at the Bureau of
International Organization Affairs of the Department of State,
and also Mr. James Kunder, who is Acting Deputy Administrator
at the U.S. Agency for International Development. They both
have some extensive experience in this regard.
And in the interest of time, I will turn to them to start
their testimonies. When Senator Hagel comes, if it is in
between testimonies, we will certainly let him have his
statement, and we will move on from there.
So we would ask you to keep your testimonies to about 7
minutes. We will include a full copy in the record, and Mr.
Warlick--I think I got that wrong the first time. Sorry--we
will start off with you.
STATEMENT OF JAMES B. WARLICK, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY ASSISTANT
SECRETARY, BUREAU OF INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION AFFAIRS,
DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Warlick. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I really do
appreciate the opportunity to address the subcommittee.
I also want to thank you and congratulate you for holding
this hearing. It is a very difficult and complicated issue. I
am not sure that the administration has had an opportunity to
really have this kind of a dialogue with the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee on issues of some importance, and I hope
this is the beginning of a dialogue between the executive and
legislative branches in that regard.
I submitted my full testimony for the record, but I would
like to make a few comments just to put my testimony in some
perspective.
For more than 150 years, those who would aid the victims of
disaster, whether natural or manmade, have recognized the
importance of neutrality. Only by keeping their efforts
separate from the political positions and alliances established
by governments could they obtain the consent of sovereign
governments. As a result, humanitarian assistance has generally
been provided on a nonpolitical basis, dedicated to relieving
the suffering of humanity without taking sides in a
disagreement or conflict, armed or otherwise. This approach has
saved millions of lives. It has also given humanity some of its
most decent and altruistic institutions, including the Red
Cross movement, and has earned Nobel peace prizes for two
United Nations agencies, the World Food Program and the High
Commissioner for Refugees.
It is, therefore, important to recognize that in examining
the way forward on disaster assistance policy options, we must
not interfere with the humanitarian community's ability to
offer its assistance wherever needed without political
conditionality. By maintaining this principled stance, the
assistance community may be able to save countless lives in the
future in circumstances where a regime bars representatives of
states they consider hostile or suspect.
I would add it is important to undertake a multitiered
approach to assistance, and this is important when we come back
to discuss policy options, bilateral assistance where the
American people, as you said, are extraordinarily generous and
well beyond our own borders; the role of nongovernmental
organizations, which are increasingly important and vital to
the delivery of assistance, and also important actors in the
political dimension of this side of the equation; regional
organizations. And I hope we'll have an opportunity to discuss
further the role, for example, of ASEAN in Burma. And then, of
course, the United Nations, for which I am responsible at the
Department of State. It is both those operational agencies that
deliver the assistance, but also the political side of the
United Nations, including the Security Council.
One of the best policy options available to the United
States is to turn to the U.N. operational agencies whose goals,
structure, and service providers closely parallel our own. The
Office of the Coordinator for Humanitarian Assistance focuses
precisely on the issue of disaster assistance. I would say in
the broadest sense, the multilateral framework for humanitarian
efforts is actually set out in the Charter of the United
Nations, which reflects the sovereign equality of all Member
States. Consistent with this, it is generally accepted that we
should look, in the first instance, to the state to address the
needs of its people.
When a state is unable to assist its people and unwilling
to accept foreign assistance, the international community,
through the United Nations, can use diplomatic and other
peaceful means to try to persuade the state to allow assistance
in. The question, What is our last resort if all else fails?
poses the greatest challenge in humanitarian efforts. In that
regard, I hope we will be able to come back to, as you
mentioned, Burma, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and maybe looking to the
future, a crisis in Somalia that we might help to avoid.
This is an issue that has both legal and practical
dimensions. On the legal side, for example, there is no
question that the international community can act, even without
the consent of a host government, when acting pursuant to the
decisions of the U.N. Security Council under chapter VII of the
U.N. Charter. The predicate for such action is a determination
by the U.N. Security Council that the situation presents a
threat to international peace and security.
And finally, the language on responsibility to protect that
was adopted by heads of state and governments in the World
Summit Document, as you mentioned, in September 2005 makes an
important contribution in this regard. It is based on the
recognition that certain situations that might in one sense be
viewed as presenting internal threats, such as war crimes,
genocide, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing, do, in
fact, present a threat to international peace and security.
They are, therefore, proper subjects of concern to the
international community as a whole and proper subjects of
action by the U.N. Security Council. While the summit document
was focused on these four particular categories of atrocities,
there is a broader principle, that seemingly internal actions
can threaten international peace and security.
Mr. Chairman, thank you very much and I would be happy to
take any questions. And thank you, Mr. Hagel.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Warlick follows:]
Prepared Statement of James B. Warlick, Principal Deputy Assistant
Secretary, Bureau of International Organization Affairs, Department of
State, Washington, DC
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Hagel, and members of the
subcommittee. I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you today about
international disaster assistance and policy options.
Since the earliest days of the modern humanitarian movement,
launched by Henri Dunant following the battle of Solforino in 1858,
those who would aid the victims of disaster, whether natural or man
made, have recognized the importance of neutrality. Only by keeping
their efforts separate from the political positions and alliances
established by governments could they obtain the consent of sovereign
governments. As a result, humanitarian assistance has generally been
provided on a nonpolitical basis, dedicated to relieving the suffering
of humanity without taking sides in a disagreement or conflict, armed
or otherwise. This approach has saved millions of lives. It has also
given humanity some of its most decent and altruistic institutions,
including the Red Cross Movement, and has earned Nobel peace prizes for
two United Nations (U.N.) agencies: The World Food Programme and the
High Commissioner for Refugees.
It is therefore important to recognize that, in examining the way
forward on disaster assistance policy options, we must not interfere
with the humanitarian community's ability to offer its assistance
wherever needed without political conditionality. By maintaining this
principled stance, the assistance community may be able to save
countless lives in the future in circumstances where a regime bars
representatives of states they consider hostile or suspect.
Perhaps the best policy option available to the U.S. when our
bilateral assistance is shunned is to turn to the U.N. Secretariat and
operational agencies, whose goals, structure, and service providers
closely parallel our own. Within the Secretariat, the U.N. Emergency
Response Coordinator (ERC) and Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) focus precisely on the issue of disaster
assistance. In addition, the ERC advocates strongly for humanitarian
action: Former ERC Jan Egeland was among the earliest and most
passionate advocates of humanitarian action in Darfur; his successor,
John Holmes, spent more than a week in Burma after cyclone Nargis
struck, pressing the regime to open up to outside help. He is now
actively engaged in efforts to persuade the Government of Zimbabwe to
rescind its decision to suspend all nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs) activity in that country.
There are also the U.N. operational agencies themselves. Like
USAID, they rely on and provide funds to field-based NGO implementing
partners whenever possible. Thus, even when a U.S. presence is not
welcome in a particular country, a U.N. presence can assure the
adherence to humanitarian policies, procedures and goals similar to our
own. Often, the U.N. presence also provides an umbrella through which
U.S. goods and services can reach those in need.
The ideal, of course, is for a state to welcome direct bilateral
assistance as well as the presence of multilateral agencies. Under such
circumstances the population will benefit, I would note in particular,
from the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA), our lead
U.S. Government (USG) agency for response to disasters. In many
instances, including the Bam Earthquake in Iran, and hurricanes in
Cuba, OFDA has provided vital, impartial assistance to populations in
need in countries that usually exclude our help. It is clearly
important that the USG maintain robust civilian organizations with
proven track records of impartiality that can link with the broader
humanitarian community to meet urgent needs in any part of the world.
Our close relations with other bilateral donor agencies, the Red Cross
Movement, and the United Nations humanitarian agencies give us numerous
policy options and are essential to effective impartial civilian-led
interventions.
The art of humanitarian response lies in finding the best
combination of responders for a specific crisis. At times, the civilian
agencies are supported by their colleagues at the Department of Defense
(DOD). DOD's logistical capacity to move materials, coupled with the
skills and compassion which our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines
bring to humanitarian emergencies, are proven and invaluable. For
instance, when the tsunami devastated the lives of millions of people
in the Indian Ocean states, the U.S. military was a key partner in
putting together a rapid and effective response. However, it is
important to note that in responding to the tsunami the U.S. military
was there by invitation, and that it operated in support of a civilian-
led USG and global effort.
As we have seen most recently in Burma, the international
willingness to respond may be rejected or impeded even more broadly by
local forces. In some cases, regional groupings of states have stepped
forward in an effort to broker some arrangement for providing
assistance. ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States)
performed such a role in Sierra Leone and Liberia; the AU (African
Union) has attempted to help in Darfur and Somalia; and ASEAN
(Association of South East Asian Nations) has stepped forward in Burma.
Such regional groupings often can carry more weight and exert more
influence on a neighboring state than large bilateral donors can, and
they can provide an acceptable platform through which the international
community can channel assistance.
In the broadest sense, the multilateral framework for humanitarian
intervention is set out in the Charter of the United Nations, which
reflects the ``sovereign equality'' of all Member States. Consistent
with this, it is generally accepted that we should look in the first
instance to the state involved to address the needs of its people.
Often, states can do this with little or no outside help, or make
voluntary arrangements with other states, international organizations
or volunteer groups to assist them.
When a state is unable to assist its people and unwilling to accept
foreign assistance, the international community, through the United
Nations, can use diplomatic and other peaceful means to try to persuade
the state to allow assistance in.
The question--what is our last resort if all else fails--poses the
greatest challenge in humanitarian intervention. What if the door is
barred to all: The Red Cross Movement, the U.N. operational agencies,
the NGOs, the bilateral donors (both civilian and military), and the
regional political groupings? Must the world stand by while people
suffer and die because they are denied access to assistance that is
waiting just over the horizon?
This is an issue that has both legal and practical dimensions. On
the legal side, for example, there is no question that the
international community can act, even without the consent of the host
government, when acting pursuant to decisions of the U.N. Security
Council under chapter VII of the U.N. Charter. The predicate for such
action is a determination by the U.N. Security Council that the
situation presents a threat to international peace and security.
The language on responsibility to protect that was adopted by heads
of state and government in the World Summit Document of September 2005
makes an important contribution in this regard. It is based on the
recognition that certain situations that might in one sense be viewed
as presenting internal threats--war crimes, genocide, crimes against
humanity, and ethnic cleansing--do, in fact, present a threat to
international peace and security. They are, therefore, proper subjects
of concern to the international community as a whole, and proper
subjects of action by the U.N. Security Council. While the Summit
Document was focused on these four particular categories of atrocities,
the broader principle--that seemingly internal actions can threaten
international peace and security--is an important one.
But there is a practical dimension as well. Forced intervention for
the purpose of delivering humanitarian aid may have unintended
consequences, putting more people at risk and cutting back on whatever
assistance might already be flowing in. Military intervention may well
involve interruption of commercial activity, including the delivery of
private aid, and displacement of previously unaffected portions of the
population. Hostilities could erupt, putting U.S. forces and local
civilians in harm's way. Even the use of civilian airdrops could draw
hostile fire and prompt a government to expel or restrict humanitarian
agencies already working on the ground. Thus, while humanitarian
intervention without the consent of the host government cannot be ruled
out as a policy option of last resort, its risks can be grave and its
impact uncertain.
In examining the recent events in Burma, our success has been
limited but has improved incrementally. First, the U.S. Embassy
immediately requested emergency financial assistance and channeled it
to U.N. agencies already operating in the country. Later, when the
Government of Burma agreed to allow U.S. military cargo planes to begin
delivering humanitarian supplies, Director for Foreign Assistance Fore
and Admiral Keating were on the first flight. In these contacts with
the Burmese authorities, our message has been clear: We are here to
help. However, the regime remained intransigent on two key offers of
bilateral assistance: The USAID DART team positioned in Bangkok, and
direct delivery of assistance by our military assets in the region.
As the USG pursued efforts to provide bilateral assistance, the
U.N. Secretary General also made a direct appeal to Burma's generals.
He first sent the U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator, Under Secretary
Holmes, to advocate for increased access by humanitarian workers, and
within a few days, boarded a plane to deliver the message in person.
Like us, the U.N. made clear that their sole motive was to assist the
Burmese people. In addition, ASEAN Member States undertook diplomatic
efforts to organize a regional response. Burmese authorities were more
amenable to this approach, which led to a joint U.N.-ASEAN donors
conference and a joint assessment, currently under way, to identify and
fill gaps in humanitarian assistance.
Throughout these diplomatic efforts, work was underway in Burma to
relieve the suffering. NGOs and U.N. agencies already operational in
the field, many with strong financial support from USAID and the
Department of State, began to assess humanitarian needs, coordinate
responses, and deliver relief. In some cases, the Burmese authorities
have allowed them to strengthen their staff and expand their roles.
Has the Burmese response to these efforts been acceptable? No. Have
the Burmese people suffered needlessly? Yes. We and our partners
therefore continue to work to deliver additional resources and skilled
personnel to resolve the substantial needs which remain 6 weeks after
the cyclone struck, and to examine humanitarian policy options to
determine how more can be done.
By contrast, following the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, host
governments welcomed nearly all offers of international assistance.
While some incidents of government rejection of aid from a specific
donor or efforts to restrict the movements of assistance workers and
journalists were reported, there were few given the scale and scope of
the disaster, which affected 12 countries, killed a quarter of a
million people, and left 10 million homeless.
Even in the Bam Earthquake in Iran, as noted, a hostile government
recognized and accepted the neutral and impartial offer of assistance
from OFDA and other Western donors. In Somalia, we are confronted not
by the actions of a hostile government, but by the challenges of
operating in a failed state where corruption, banditry, and piracy
hinder the movement of civilians and impede the provision of
humanitarian assistance. The crisis there remains primarily one of
security.
Darfur, however, is an example where both lack of security on the
ground and government interference impede humanitarian operations. The
U.S., as you know, has led the effort to rally worldwide condemnation
of the genocide there, and to support efforts to position AU and U.N.
peacekeepers with the physical capacity and legal authority to protect
civilians and project force. Like the earlier Operation Lifeline Sudan
in the south, the Darfur efforts are subject to constantly changing
conditions and new obstacles created by the Khartoum government. Rebel
forces also pose serious challenges and are responsible for some of the
numerous attacks on humanitarian workers in clear violation of
international law.
As each of these crises has shown, the U.S., in particular, and the
global community, in general, have a strong desire and capacity to
assist the victims of disaster. We do so in the best of the
humanitarian tradition. Our diplomatic efforts, like our policy
options, are designed to move the marker ever closer to the goal of
aiding the victims of humanitarian disasters. We stand ready to work
with any state in furtherance of that goal.
Senator Menendez. Thank you very much, Mr. Warlick.
Mr. Kunder.
STATEMENT OF JAMES KUNDER, ACTING DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR, U.S.
AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Kunder. Thank you. This set of issues is a set that we
grapple with regularly, and we very much appreciate the
opportunity to share some of our perspectives and get your
feedback.
I am joined today by Mr. Ky Luu, the Director of our Office
of Foreign Disaster Assistance. I very much appreciate your
mentioning them and our Food for Peace Office. They really are
a group of dedicated professionals who regularly put their
lives on the line to deliver humanitarian assistance. So thank
you very much for the compliment.
I will just summarize briefly my statement. What I tried to
do was put these questions into some kind of context, pointing
out that there are about 355 disasters that USAID has responded
to over the last 5 years. So a great bulk of these crises are
those that are handled behind the headlines, without a lot of
resistance from the host government. Most of them work quite
well.
I tried to disaggregate the reasons why governments
sometimes resist U.S. or other foreign assistance, and that
runs the gamut from chaos within the country to lack of the
government's own assessment capacity--they simply do not know
they cannot handle the problem--all the way to some good-news
stories that are buried in there. For example, one of the
things we have been trying to do is build disaster response
capability around the world. We have now trained more than
40,000 disaster responders in 26 countries of Latin America and
the Caribbean so that now there is some indigenous capacity,
and they frankly do not need our assistance as much as they
used to 20 or 30 years ago.
Then I tried to get at the question of what are some of the
tactics we can use when a government does resist, and I lay out
nine different strategies, everything from cross-border
operations to using the U.N. agencies, as Jim mentioned, and
some areas where I think there is further work that we could
all do, like developing the U.N. Guiding Principles on Internal
Displacement, which do not yet have the force of international
law but could be important tools to intervene in a country
where there is internal displacement and the government is not
taking care of its own people's needs.
But ultimately, there are an irreducible number of
countries where there is a mismatch between the ability of the
international community to respond and the resistance of the
host government. Burma is the most dramatic recent example. I
am prepared to go into any detail you want on how we responded.
Essentially we made the decision early on to try to deal with
the junta to open up some humanitarian space in Burma. We
believe that that strategy has been partially successful to the
tune that we have now been able to provide $38 million of U.S.
Government assistance to the people of Burma. We have had more
than 170 C-130 loads of relief supplies go in. And now those
supplies are being consigned, transferred over to the
international organizations or the NGOs. So we believe we have
been able to wedge open some humanitarian space, but clearly
not enough and clearly there are still people suffering in
Burma today.
And let me just close by saying, sir, I was contemplating
coming up here today, that 16 years ago, almost exactly this
month, I was preparing to make my first trip into Somalia
during the crisis back then before the U.S. troops went in. I
traveled in with then-Senator Nancy Kassebaum. We were the
first two senior U.S. Government officials to travel into
Somalia at that point after the fall of the Siad Barre regime.
And because of the horrific situation on the ground, I came
back an impassioned advocate for sending U.S. troops in, which
of course we did about 6 months later in December 1992. That
set in motion a series of events that culminated in the events
that we all know about, the killing of U.S. troops and so
forth.
In the interim, we did solve the humanitarian crisis. The
intervention under chapter VII of the U.N. Charter did, in
fact, solve the humanitarian crisis. It then, of course, opened
another set of issues related to the governance of Somalia,
which I think lays on the table the complex calculus that we
have to face in a Bosnia, in a Somalia, in a Burma. There is
undoubtedly benefit that can happen when outsiders force their
way in and take on the humanitarian challenges.
The more difficult question is what comes next. Do we then
take on the reasons why there was a crisis in the first place?
And what are the long-term implications for the people who are
going to stay there after we leave, and are we benefiting them
or hurting them in the long run? So I am more than glad to go
into any detail that you would like on those.
But, again, thank you for holding this hearing. We
appreciate the chance to testify.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Kunder follows:]
Prepared Statement of James Kunder, Acting Deputy Administrator, U.S.
Agency for International Development, Washington, DC
Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, thank you for
inviting me to testify today to discuss policy options when political
obstacles impede humanitarian assistance following a disaster.
In the vast majority of international disasters, emergency relief
from the U.S. Government (USG) arrives rapidly and efficiently to help
populations in distress. In the past 5 years alone, USAID has responded
to 355 declared disasters in all regions of the world. Most of these
natural and manmade disasters never make international headlines and
are addressed in a straightforward manner without political
interference in the affected country. Our assistance usually is eagerly
accepted by thankful foreign governments and by grateful citizens as
they struggle to overcome devastation and hardship.
Your hearing today is timely, however. As we speak, a difficult
humanitarian response in Burma is underway, with the full collaboration
of staff from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID),
the Department of State, the U.S. Military, international
organizations, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Our emergency
efforts in Burma have encountered numerous obstacles, as you know.
Meanwhile in Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwean Government on June 4 ordered the
suspension of all NGO operations in that country. In Sudan, authorities
last month slowed humanitarian operations by temporarily closing all
airports in Darfur to humanitarian traffic.
Recent events such as these underline the importance of having
policy options that can help overcome political obstructions to
humanitarian assistance. Led by USAID, the USG is second-to-none in its
ability to quickly mobilize resources to respond to disasters
throughout the world. In order for the USG to provide humanitarian
assistance, the host government of the recipient country must request--
or be willing to accept--our assistance. Unfortunately, in countries
where populations are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance,
this is not always the case.
normal framework for humanitarian assistance
In order to understand the policy options available to USAID when
political obstacles impede humanitarian help, it is important to
understand how the USG, through USAID, provides humanitarian
assistance. The USG declares an international disaster if an event
meets three criteria: The magnitude of the disaster is beyond the
capacity of the host country to respond; the host country requests or
is willing to accept assistance; and a response is in the interest of
the USG. It is recognized as a matter of principle and practice that it
is virtually always in the interest of the USG to provide humanitarian
assistance where post-disaster suffering is extensive and when lives
hang in the balance.
Within USAID, the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian
Assistance (DCHA) plays the primary role in responding to emergency
situations. Within USAID/DCHA, the office of U.S. Foreign Disaster
Assistance (OFDA) is designated as the lead USG office responsible for
providing humanitarian assistance in response to international
disasters. The legislated mandate of OFDA is to save lives, alleviate
human suffering, and reduce the social and economic impact of
humanitarian emergencies worldwide. In addition, USAID's Office of Food
for Peace (FFP) is deeply involved in providing life-saving emergency
food aid to international victims of disasters and other emergencies.
USAID provides emergency humanitarian assistance in accordance with
fundamental, widely recognized humanitarian principles. Our assistance
adheres to the ``humanitarian imperative''--the core principle that
human suffering should be addressed wherever it is found. USAID
provides humanitarian assistance that is politically neutral, socially
impartial, and is based on victims' needs rather than political
factors. This is one reason that assistance authorized under the
International Disaster Assistance account may be furnished
notwithstanding any other provision of law that otherwise might
prohibit assistance to a particular country for political or other
reasons unrelated to the need to respond to a disaster. USAID disaster
response programs strive to live up to the principle of ``do no harm''
and seek, to the extent possible, to provide protection to
beneficiaries and build local capacities. The life-saving assistance
rendered by USAID always aims to fulfill our responsibility of
accountability--both to the beneficiary community as well as to the
American people whose resources and goodwill are entrusted to us.
It is important to understand that USAID's consistent adherence to
these fundamental humanitarian principles compels us--and indeed,
enables us--to provide disaster relief even in countries that have
strained relations with the USG. Our adherence to these humanitarian
principles opens doors internationally. For example, USAID during the
past 5 years has responded with emergency humanitarian assistance to
three natural disasters in Cuba, three emergencies in North Korea, a
major earthquake in Iran, a natural catastrophe in Venezuela, six
declared emergencies in Zimbabwe, as well as an emergency in Burma
prior to last month's cyclone. The strictly humanitarian, nonpolitical
nature of USAID's international disaster assistance often is sufficient
to overcome tense diplomatic relationships. The people of these
countries are grateful for our help in their time of need.
In addition to the above principles, humanitarian efforts by the
international community, including USAID, are bolstered by
international humanitarian law that imposes on States certain
obligations with respect to humanitarian aid. The Fourth Geneva
Convention requires an Occupying State to the fullest extent of the
means available to it to ensure food and medical supplies for the
occupied civilian population. For States Parties to Additional Protocol
I, there is the added requirement of providing, to the extent feasible,
clothing, bedding, shelter, and other supplies essential to the
survival of the civilian population. And the Fourth Convention
recognizes the role of the International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC) in protecting civilians and providing relief, subject to the
consent of the Parties to the Conflict.
The U.N. Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, although
lacking the force of international law, are based on IHL and human
rights instruments and are widely recognized as a useful framework for
addressing the needs of populations displaced by natural or manmade
emergencies. The U.N. Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement state
that ``international humanitarian organizations and other appropriate
actors have the right to offer their services'' and that ``consent
thereto shall not be arbitrarily withheld, particularly when
authorities concerned are unable or unwilling to provide the required
humanitarian assistance.'' The U.N. guidelines further state that IDPs
should enjoy safe access to food, potable water, shelter, clothing, and
essential medical services and sanitation, and that authorities in
afflicted countries ``shall grant and facilitate the free passage of
humanitarian assistance and grant persons engaged in the provision of
such assistance rapid and unimpeded access . . .''.
Proper adherence to these principles and protocols would go a long
way toward eliminating restrictions on humanitarian access imposed by
some governments.
why obstacles occur
Instances occur where a foreign government does not request
emergency humanitarian assistance from the USG or where a foreign
government accepts USG help grudgingly and with numerous obstructions
that undermine our efforts. Based on our many years of experience in
hundreds of disaster responses, it appears that these obstacles occur
for at least five general reasons.
First, some governments do not request USG disaster assistance
because they already possess sufficient capacity to respond. This is
partly due to the relatively unheralded success story of USAID's long
investment in local disaster preparedness and local disaster mitigation
efforts in Latin America, the Caribbean, and South Asia. USAID/OFDA has
helped provide training to more than 40,000 disaster specialists in 26
Latin American and Caribbean countries during the past 18 years,
helping to build local response capacities. USAID is seeking to
replicate that capacity-building strategy in six of the most disaster-
prone countries of Asia.
For example, when flooding and landslides hit the second-largest
city in Bangladesh last year, the Government of Bangladesh and
organizations in that country possessed the capacity to conduct
emergency relief operations without a formal appeal for assistance from
USAID. Similarly, when tropical cyclone Sidr struck Bangladesh in
November 2007 and killed 3,300 persons, the tragic loss of life was
dramatically lower than the 125,000 death toll when a cyclone of
similar strength had hit Bangladesh in 1991. Disaster preparedness and
mitigation programs supported by USAID in Bangladesh over the years
played an important role in the reduced loss of life. Therefore, a
government's decision not to seek USG disaster assistance--or to seek
only limited help--can be a welcomed sign of local preparedness and
expertise that, in many cases, USAID helped to nurture over many years.
Second, some governments do not request USG humanitarian
assistance--or severely limit the assistance they will accept--due to a
sense of national pride, a poor understanding of the scale of disaster,
or an inflated sense of local emergency response capacities.
Third, some governments coping with a local disaster are wary of
USG help because they are slow to understand and trust that USG
humanitarian assistance is genuinely grounded in the principles of
neutrality and impartiality, as discussed above. The Burmese regime has
limited our ability to provide humanitarian assistance in the aftermath
of Cyclone Nargis, claiming that our assistance could not be trusted.
Fourth, some countries are slow to request USG assistance because
of their own political chaos. Somalia has been such an example for much
of the past two decades.
Fifth, in some instances a government does not want USG emergency
assistance--or raises constant obstacles to undermine effectiveness of
assistance that does arrive--because that government has chosen to
trigger or exploit the emergency to marginalize or punish a portion of
its own population. The Government of Sudan has a long history of
employing this tactic dating back to the 1980s. Zimbabwe has a more
recent track record in this regard.
These impediments can slow humanitarian assistance or, in worst-
case scenarios, block it altogether. As a result, large numbers of
innocent people die unnecessarily or are forced to endure additional
suffering because the food, plastic sheeting, blankets, medicines, and
other essential relief commodities are stacked up in warehouses or on
ships, blocked from timely distribution to populations in dire need.
However, it is important to point out that even in situations with
restricted humanitarian access, at least a portion of the desperately
needed emergency relief commodities usually manage to reach disaster
victims. In the current Burma cyclone emergency response, for example,
USAID has been able to overcome constraints imposed by Burmese
authorities to provide $28.3 million of assistance to 13 U.N. and
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) for shelter, food aid, emergency
health services, and water, sanitation, and hygiene programs targeted
at more than 1 million beneficiaries. We are distressed by the
unacceptable delays imposed on us and our humanitarian partners in the
field, and the scale of assistance allowed into Burma has not been
commensurate with the overwhelming humanitarian need on the ground, but
even in Burma our humanitarian efforts are no longer totally blocked.
strategies and tactics to overcome obstructions
It is worth examining the toolkit of strategies and tactics that
enable USAID to deliver disaster assistance despite obstacles erected
by the governments of affected countries.
Ensure Cooperation Between USAID and Department of State
Constraints on humanitarian access often can be alleviated through
discussions at the diplomatic level. International diplomatic pressure,
particularly when done in coordination with regional leaders or key
partners of the country in question, often is an effective tool for
gaining humanitarian access. The Organization of American States (OAS)
and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and their
constituent members are examples of key partners that can be helpful
allies in advocating for humanitarian access.
During a disaster response, USAID relief specialists work to keep
Department of State (DOS) colleagues fully informed about the scale of
needs on the ground, specific USAID relief actions being blocked by
local government authorities, specific concessions needed from the host
government, and whether local officials are implementing agreements
made at higher levels. Coordination between USAID and DOS works best
when there is a collective understanding of the core principles
underlying humanitarian assistance efforts.
Channel Assistance Through Nongovernmental Agencies and International
Organizations
Emergency relief funded by USAID is overwhelmingly channeled
through U.N. humanitarian agencies, international or local NGOs, or
other international organizations such as the ICRC. This accentuates
the neutral, impartial, independent nature of the USG's humanitarian
assistance. Even when host governments choose to limit the access of
USAID relief officials to disaster areas, USAID relief can still reach
beneficiaries via these institutional partners, many of whom have
ongoing programs in affected countries and, therefore, are well-
positioned to assess needs and ensure that USAID assistance is well-
targeted. To cite one example, USAID regularly channels funding to
national Red Cross/Red Crescent societies in stricken countries via the
International Federation of the Red Cross/Red Crescent, thereby
bypassing obstacles that might impede international agencies.
To be sure, U.N. agencies and NGOs also are vulnerable to
obstructions by host-country officials. This has occurred in Burma and
regularly occurs in Sudan. The Government of Zimbabwe ordered NGOs to
suspend their operations 2 weeks ago. In such situations, a combined
advocacy effort by USAID, the DOS, other donor countries, and by top
U.N. officials becomes necessary. Currently in Zimbabwe, for instance,
USAID is urging the U.N. to take a more active advocacy role on behalf
of NGOs struggling to operate there.
Maintain Civilian Lead on Emergency Response
The Department of Defense (DOD) possesses in some situations
unsurpassed logistical airlift capacity that has proven to be extremely
supportive in some particularly large or challenging humanitarian
interventions. When those situations arise, USAID, as the lead agency
for USG humanitarian assistance response, works hard to coordinate the
DOD efforts with our own to ensure that we are both addressing the most
pressing humanitarian priorities using the right methodologies.
USAID/DCHA has established an Office of Military Affairs to serve
as USAID's primary strategic point of contact with DOD. At an
operational level, USAID/OFDA provides training on humanitarian
principles and methodologies to DOD personnel and maintains ongoing
interaction with DOD staff on a range of humanitarian issues. At the
height of an emergency response in which military assets might be used,
USAID/OFDA humanitarian assistance advisors are deployed to DOD's
appropriate combat command headquarters to provide guidance on
humanitarian operations in accordance with humanitarian principles and
priorities. A new USAID Policy on Civilian-Military Cooperation lays
out key principles for cooperation when the post-emergency phase has
been completed and long-term reconstruction and development begin.
The U.N. has produced numerous policy documents that can serve as
references for humanitarian agencies worldwide, including ``Guidelines
on the Use of Military and Civil Defense Assets in Disaster Relief''
produced in 1994, ``Guiding and Operating Principles for the Use of
Military and Civil Defense Assets in Support of Humanitarian
Operations'' produced in 1995, ``Guidance on Use of Military Aircraft
for U.N. Humanitarian Operations During the Current Conflict in
Afghanistan'' produced in 2001, and ``Guidelines on the Use of Military
and Civil Defense Assets in Complex Emergencies'' in 2003.
As recent experience in Burma illustrates, some foreign governments
are reluctant to permit U.S. military personnel to participate directly
on the ground in emergency relief operations. For that reason, a clear
distinction between military personnel and USG civilian humanitarian
workers can be crucial in gaining permission to access disaster zones.
Use Low-Visibility Tactics
Our emergency relief efforts typically engender local and
international goodwill that results in helpful public diplomacy. While
this is welcomed, it is not the USG's main motivation for providing
humanitarian assistance. The main purpose is to act rapidly to save
lives and alleviate suffering. Because of political or cultural
sensitivities in particular countries, USAID sometimes eschews high-
profile steps such as deployment of USAID Disaster Assistance Response
Teams to disaster zones in favor of less visible steps that work
through U.N. humanitarian agencies or NGOs. Because of local
sensitivities or dangers, USAID in some disaster responses agrees to
suspend some or all of its requirement that all projects and
commodities funded by USAID bear the USAID logo. We utilize these
tactics so that life-saving aid will not be blocked or otherwise abused
by local politics.
Airdrop Humanitarian Commodities
When U.S. emergency relief encounters obstructions abroad, the
American public and journalists frequently ask, ``Why not deliver
relief supplies via airdrops?'' Humanitarian airdrops were temporarily
used in Bosnia during the 1990s and for many years in South Sudan.
In truth, airdropping relief commodities into disaster areas is
extremely problematic and is attempted only in special circumstances as
a last resort. Airdrops are potentially dangerous to people on the
ground. Relief supplies dropped from planes are susceptible to falling
into the wrong hands and often fail to reach the weakest and most
vulnerable victims in chaotic disaster situations. Airdrops are
extremely expensive and inevitably result in damage on impact to a
portion of the commodities being delivered. Without proper monitoring
and controls, airdropped supplies such as medicines can be misused in
dangerous ways. Airdrops have a chance to be of limited effectiveness
only when operational air space is safe, the ``drop zone'' is small and
well-defined, and when cooperative local authorities or trained
humanitarian workers are present on the ground to organize proper
distribution of airdropped supplies. Airdrops into the extensive
Irrawaddy Delta of Burma after the cyclone were not considered to be a
viable alternative.
Use Tactic of Cross-Border Relief
When violent conflict or national authorities claiming
``sovereignty'' block humanitarian assistance to populations in dire
need, USAID and other international humanitarian agencies have resorted
at times to cross-border relief efforts that use a neighboring country
as a base for relief operations.
Various international agencies used a cross-border strategy to
deliver assistance into northern Ethiopia (now Eritrea) from
humanitarian bases in Sudan during the 1980s, into Afghanistan from
humanitarian staging areas in Pakistan and Tajikistan during the 1980s
and 1990s, and into Southern Sudan from a humanitarian base of
operations in Kenya during the 1990s.
Cross-border humanitarian operations typically require permission
and cooperation from countries hosting humanitarian bases, adequate
local infrastructure to facilitate cross-border travel, as well as
confidence that humanitarian workers can travel across the border
safely.
Push for Formal Negotiated Access
Ideally, the existence of IHL and widely recognized humanitarian
principles should make negotiations for humanitarian access
unnecessary. Unfortunately, it is all too clear that in some
emergencies this is not the case.
The international humanitarian community gained access to millions
of war-
affected persons in desperate need of help in Southern Sudan in 1989
and throughout the 1990s through a negotiated process that came to be
known as Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS). Despite its many
imperfections, OLS was a groundbreaking achievement in the history of
international emergency relief. At a time of devastating civil war in
Southern Sudan, OLS was in essence the world's first formally
negotiated cross-border relief operation. The agreement created
designated ``corridors of tranquility'' and pledged all parties in the
conflict to permit safe and unhindered passage and delivery of relief
items to populations in need even as military operations continued
unabated. Although the Government of Sudan in particular frequently
violated its commitments under OLS, the agreement made possible a large
and long-term relief operation that saved countless lives during
Southern Sudan's long war.
Over the many years of conflict in Sudan, humanitarian actors have
also helped negotiate temporary cease-fires to undertake vaccination
campaigns and other humanitarian activities. In fact, experience in
Sudan has demonstrated that establishing a dialogue between warring
parties on humanitarian issues can gradually help to build the
relationships and trust that warring parties need in order to jump-
start the political dialogue and negotiations that can bring the
underlying conflict to an end.
Resort to U.N. Chapter VII Peace Enforcement
When situations warrant, the USG supports U.N. peace enforcement
measures under which the Security Council, acting under chapter VII of
the Charter of the United Nations, can authorize the use of force to
restore and maintain peace and security, and such measures can include
creating safe conditions for humanitarian operations. Countries and
areas with respect to which the U.N. Security Council has acted under
its chapter VII authority in recent years include Afghanistan, East
Timor, Haiti, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Albania, Sierra Leone,
and the Ethiopia-Eritrea border. USAID's monitoring of humanitarian
conditions is part of the analysis used by USG policymakers when
considering whether to support a U.N. chapter VII resolution.
Responsibility to Protect
Mr. Chairman, the subcommittee has posed the question of whether
the responsibility to protect concept, endorsed in 2005 at the U.N.
World Summit, should be the basis for the Security Council to authorize
the use of force in recent humanitarian situations such as the Burma
cyclone response. I will defer to the views of the Department of State
on this issue, but USAID offers two points that should be kept in mind:
First, from a strictly humanitarian perspective, it is conceivable
that in a situation involving genocide, war crimes, crimes against
humanity, or ethnic cleansing, USAID might be prompted to make an
internal recommendation that policymakers consider a forceful
intervention. The ultimate decision on whether to pursue Security
Council action in such a situation would be made at a higher level of
the USG, of course, but USAID recognizes that it does have an important
responsibility to ensure that facts and analyses about dire
humanitarian conditions are squarely on the table when important
decisions are made.
Second, as a practical matter, USAID wishes to point out that the
international humanitarian community should always take care that
disaster victims do not suffer retribution from their national
authorities for receiving or accepting our assistance; this concern is
consistent with the fundamental humanitarian principle of ``do no
harm.''
conclusion
Included as an appendix to this written testimony is a review of
USAID disaster responses in several case studies of interest to the
subcommittee. USAID would be pleased provide additional information on
these or other case studies should the subcommittee request.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, the encouraging news is that USAID's
emergency relief in most situations reaches disaster victims rapidly,
effectively, and efficiently, often without headline attention. Working
with partner agencies, we find a way to overcome most logistical,
political, and security impediments. When obstructions to assistance
grow particularly severe, USAID has developed a large and varied list
of strategies and tactics over the years that have proven useful in
getting relief to people in need.
The troubling news is that frustrations remain. Humanitarian access
in some emergencies is not as free and unhindered as it needs to be.
There can be no doubt that some disaster victims have suffered and died
needlessly when life-saving relief supplies were blocked or delayed,
despite our best efforts. Please be assured that USAID will continue
its tradition of seeking creative, forward-leaning strategies that will
enable us to fulfill our disaster response mission of saving lives and
reducing human suffering. It is a mission and responsibility we take
quite seriously.
Appendix: Summary of Selected Case Studies
zimbabwe complex emergency
Since 2000, conditions for most Zimbabweans have deteriorated due
to the country's collapsing economy, declining access to basic social
services and staple food items, the effects of HIV/AIDS, and increasing
political violence. Since the March 29, 2008, Presidential and
legislative elections in Zimbabwe, heightened political tension has led
to general insecurity and a growing incidence of targeted violence.
Forces loyal to the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union--Patriotic
Front (ZANU-PF) carry out attacks against perceived supporters and
members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party.
The violent instability has created new displacement and humanitarian
needs, compounding the complex emergency in the country.
USAID has provided more than $58.3 million in humanitarian
assistance thus far in FY 2008, focusing on agriculture and food
security, relief commodities, protection, humanitarian coordination and
information management, water, sanitation, and hygiene programs, as
well as emergency food assistance.
In addition to attacks on civilians, the post-election violence has
resulted in severely restricted humanitarian access and working space.
Since the elections, pro-Government of Zimbabwe (GOZ) groups have
intimidated and threatened NGOs working in some areas, affecting the
provision of emergency assistance and the implementation of regular
programs. More recently, NGOs in Zimbabwe have faced increasing GOZ
restrictions in the prelude to the second round of Presidential
elections scheduled for late June 2008. On June 4, the Minister of
Public Service, Labor, and Social Welfare ordered all NGOs working in
Zimbabwe to suspend operations until further notice. These restrictions
will affect aid programs that benefit more than 4 million Zimbabweans.
In response to increased constraints imposed by the GOZ, U.S.
Ambassador James D. McGee and USAID/Zimbabwe have requested that USAID
send more staff to the field in marked vehicles to stay in close touch
with our U.N. and NGO partners and demonstrate to the GOZ that the USG
maintains a presence to the extent we can do so safely. In conjunction
with other donors and NGOs, USAID has pushed the U.N. to take a more
active role in advocacy on behalf of the humanitarian community and
make a general statement about the lack of humanitarian access in
Zimbabwe.
sudan complex emergency
Sudan for decades has been one of the most difficult places in the
world to mount emergency relief programs because of the immense scale
of humanitarian need, the massive scope of population displacement, the
distinct lack of infrastructure in parts of the country, the existence
of ongoing conflict in some areas, and the regular cycle of
obstructions on humanitarian efforts created by the Government of Sudan
(GOS).
For these reasons, the international community pushed for and
achieved in 1989 a negotiated agreement, known as Operation Lifeline
Sudan (OLS), in which the warring parties agreed to allow humanitarian
assistance to reach conflict victims. OLS operated as a consortium of
two U.N. agencies--UNICEF and the World Food Program--and some 35 NGOs.
Although OLS was susceptible to consistent manipulation by all warring
parties, particularly by the GOS, the operation managed to deliver huge
amounts of food and nonfood relief commodities throughout the 1990s to
populations in dire need, including to some of the most remote areas of
Southern Sudan.
Sudan continues to cope with the effects of conflict, displacement,
and insecurity countrywide. Some of the same obstructions to assistance
experienced in Southern Sudan during the 1980s and 1990s are being
repeated in present-day Darfur. Since 2003, the complex emergency in
Darfur has affected 4.2 million people, including more than 2.4 million
IDPs. Fighting in Darfur among armed opposition factions, the Sudanese
Armed Forces, militias, and ethnic groups is ongoing. Since January
2008 alone, fighting has displaced more than 158,000 people within
Darfur and to eastern Chad.
The USG is the largest bilateral donor to Sudan and has contributed
more than $3 billion for humanitarian programs in Sudan and eastern
Chad since FY 2004. In FY 2008 alone, USAID/OFDA has provided
approximately $37 million to more than 40 implementing partners in
Sudan and eastern Chad. USAID coordinates humanitarian activities with
the U.S. Department of State as well as the Office of the U.S. Special
Envoy to Sudan. Despite current restrictions, USAID continues to
encourage the Sudanese Government to allow greater access and freedom
of movement within its borders.
Sudan remains a difficult operating environment. Bureaucratic
obstacles imposed by the Sudanese Government have impeded aid delivery
in Darfur since the beginning of the crisis. These obstacles include
extensive and cumbersome documentation of humanitarian activities,
mandatory provision of confidential personnel information, multiple
levels of required work agreements between various government entities
and NGOs, and multiple levels of travel notifications and
authorizations. In an important step to address these bureaucratic
impediments, the Sudanese Government and the United Nations signed the
Joint Communique on the Facilitation of Humanitarian Activities in
Darfur in March 2007. The Joint Communique resulted in some
improvements for humanitarian actors initially. However, the Sudanese
Government continues to disregard articles of the Joint Communique. The
Sudanese Government's actions violate both its commitment to respect
the independence of humanitarian actors and its promise to respect the
provision of assistance and freedom of access to all people in need.
In addition, the Sudanese Government has begun to create new
bureaucratic obstacles for humanitarian agencies, including requiring
travel permits, denying such permits, mandating that NGOs write
technical agreements in Arabic, repeatedly canceling meetings to
address issues related to the Joint Communique, and requesting
additional financial information from NGOs. For the past year, Sudan
has blocked the use of processed food aid containing genetically
modified organisms. This has restricted the USG from providing WFP with
corn-soya blend, which is used mainly to treat malnourished children.
The loss of this significant commodity contribution has stretched the
already tight resources of WFP. In May 2008, humanitarian operations
were further hindered after government officials temporarily closed all
airports in Darfur to humanitarian traffic and U.N. flights. Regional
road closures also deny humanitarian actors access to affected areas
and the ability to deliver emergency assistance.
Sudan continues to be a dangerous operating environment for USAID
staff and implementing partners. Three USAID staff have been shot in
Sudan since 2005, including the January 1 assassination of two USAID
colleagues, John Granville and Abdul Rahman Abbas, in Khartoum. Darfur
remains dangerous; since January 1, assailants have killed 6
humanitarian staff, abducted nearly 100 relief workers, and hijacked
125 NGO and U.N. vehicles in Darfur. In late May, the Sudanese
Government committed to increase police escorts for humanitarian
convoys to a frequency of every 24 or 48 hours. Although this move was
welcomed by humanitarian actors, as of June 5, the Sudanese Government
had not yet provided additional escorts, and food aid convoys continue
to travel infrequently and unprotected.
The absence of support and cooperation from the Sudanese Government
makes humanitarian operations in Sudan more dangerous, more difficult,
and more expensive for relief agencies to undertake. Despite increased
impediments, USAID remains committed to carrying out the full range of
humanitarian, recovery, reconstruction, and development activities that
are vital to supporting efforts to consolidate peace throughout Sudan.
We are proud of the courage and dedication of our staff and
implementing partners to fulfill our humanitarian mandate in
circumstances such as these. We look forward to the day when the people
of Sudan are not substantially reliant on humanitarian aid for their
very survival and we can work together with them to realize their
aspirations for development and democracy.
burma cyclone
Cyclone Nargis made landfall in Burma on May 2, 2008. The cyclone
caused grave humanitarian conditions for more than 2.4 million people
in Burma. It bears pointing out that the humanitarian crisis in Burma
did not begin with the cyclone; malnourishment and endemic diseases
affected many Burmese people long before the cyclone made landfall. The
cyclone has not only compounded these problems, but created new ones,
including urgent shelter assistance needs, lack of safe drinking water,
and loss of livelihoods.
The Burmese regime lacks the capacity to respond to the scale of
the disaster and provide aid for its people. The regime refused life-
saving assistance in the critical days and weeks after the cyclone
hit--the time period which can be the difference between life and
death. In fact, the international community cannot confirm the exact
number of deaths from the cyclone due to lack of access. Since May 16,
the regime has not changed the official number of dead or missing,
which remains at approximately 130,000 individuals. The regime has also
hindered humanitarian access to some of the worst-affected areas of the
Irrawaddy Delta. These obstructions have contributed to a situation in
which only approximately half of the 2.4 million affected individuals
have received humanitarian assistance and many of those who have been
reached have very limited and basic assistance.
Despite numerous challenges, the USG has provided life-saving
assistance to the Burmese people by airlifting relief commodities,
including more than $5 million worth of USAID items, to Rangoon, from
where our partners secure the items for transport to the affected
areas. The USG, through coordination between DOD and USAID's Disaster
Assistance Response Team (DART), has completed more than 150 C-130
sorties of emergency relief commodities from Bangkok, Thailand, to
Rangoon, Burma. Prior to May 16, several DOD flights carrying USAID
commodities were consigned to the Burmese regime in light of the urgent
need to deliver assistance to affected areas immediately following the
cyclone. Since that time, all USAID commodities are distributed by U.N.
and NGO partners.
In addition to providing relief commodities, USAID is continuing to
fund emergency assistance programs. In fact, on June 5, USAID announced
an additional $8.1 million in program funding for the relief effort in
Burma. With this money, USAID has funded 13 U.N. and NGO partners
working in the affected areas to implement programs in 10 sectors,
including emergency health, shelter, food aid, and water, sanitation,
and hygiene programs. These programs target more than 1 million
beneficiaries throughout affected areas of Burma. USAID is confident
the assistance will reach targeted beneficiaries because we provide
direct funding only to NGO and U.N. implementing partners that have
established relief operations in Burma, accountable monitoring
mechanisms in place, knowledge of the operating environment and
infrastructure, and memorandums of understanding with government
authorities. As of June 12, the USG had provided more than $37.7
million in humanitarian assistance to Burma, including $28.3 million
from USAID and $9.5 million from DOD.
At present, ongoing access problems pose the most serious obstacle
to relief efforts. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs (OCHA) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red
Crescent Societies (IFRC) have repeatedly called for a detailed needs
analysis in affected areas. A joint U.N.-ASEAN-Burmese assessment
finally began June 10 and is expected to conclude June 19. The lack of
information collection and sharing about the type and number of
humanitarian needs, a direct result of limited access, hampers the
relief operations of humanitarian organizations currently active in
affected areas. These organizations have a long history of providing
effective and comprehensive emergency assistance under different
circumstances. Insufficient knowledge of the amount of assistance
provided directly through the government and private sector within
Burma, and where and to whom the relief aid has been distributed,
further complicates efforts to adequately address assistance gaps.
The most effective way for the U.N., NGOs, and donors to monitor
the delivery of relief supplies and coordinate relief programs is to
gain unhindered access to affected areas, particularly the delta.
Additional obstacles preventing targeted assistance to those who need
it most include the constant movement of affected populations and the
regime's closing of some unofficial camps for persons displaced by the
storm. Reports that the regime has forced some cyclone victims to
return to their devastated communities are deeply troubling.
Some progress has been made on the access front. As of June 9, the
GOB had issued 179 visas to international U.N. staff, according to
OCHA. The U.N. has not reported obstacles to visa procurement for U.N.
staff, and as a result, the number of U.N. personnel arriving in Burma
each week has remained static since mid-May. Even as the GOB has begun
to open up to aid from international sources such as the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the U.N., the visa process for
international NGO staff continues to move slowly, with some
applications pending for up to 3 weeks. The GOB still has not
communicated clear criteria for obtaining visas. NGOs also continue to
report that GOB officials are prohibiting most international aid
workers who enter the country from traveling beyond Rangoon to the
affected areas. The process for obtaining a permit to travel to
cyclone-affected areas takes at least 48 hours, often much longer.
The USG continues to urge the Burmese regime to provide visas for
international disaster experts and to allow those experts to access
cyclone-affected areas. As you know, USAID deployed a Disaster
Assistance Response Team to the area to assess the damage and
coordinate the response, but the full team has not officially been
given access. Nonetheless, USAID has been able to send in five
technical specialists in shelter, logistics, water and sanitation,
donor coordination, and a liaison with U.N., NGOs, and international
organizations. These specialists are working with the U.N. and our NGO
partners to oversee the USAID contribution to the Cyclone Nargis relief
effort. The DART remains in Thailand working with DOD to coordinate USG
assistance and participate in the U.N. Cluster system, which provides
structure and lead organizations for each humanitarian sector. Without
our full team on the ground in Burma, however, we have to work hard to
identify gaps in assistance through third parties and rely on our years
of expertise to make sense of what we are hearing. It is difficult to
adequately assess needs and coordinate efforts with our international
counterparts and local officials.
Looking ahead, USAID intends to coordinate our assistance with the
international humanitarian community and work with trusted NGOs with
established relief operations in the affected areas. Despite the best
efforts of the international community, however, the people of Burma
urgently require additional humanitarian assistance. USAID stands
prepared to provide our disaster expertise through deployment of our
disaster specialists. This expertise, along with the humanitarian
assistance so ably provided by our partners, can save more lives and
alleviate the immense suffering of the Burmese people. To this end,
USAID is working diligently to surmount the challenges posed by the
GOB's unwillingness to permit our staff to enter the country. We look
forward to the day when political considerations no longer affect or
prevent the provision of humanitarian, life-saving assistance in Burma
and elsewhere.
iran earthquake
On December 26, 2003, a magnitude 6.6 earthquake struck
southeastern Iran near the city of Bam. The quake killed more than
26,000 people, injured 30,000 others, left 100,000 people homeless, and
damaged and destroyed buildings and infrastructure. The Government of
Iran (GOI) and IFRC affiliates possessed large disaster-response
capacity. However, the magnitude of the event, aggravated by its
occurrence near an urban area with extremely low earthquake resistance,
overwhelmed local disaster response capacities.
Following the earthquake, the USG offered humanitarian assistance
to the GOI, and Iranian President Mohammad Khatami accepted. USAID
deployed a Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) comprising 7
individuals from USAID; 11 people from Fairfax County's Urban Search
and Rescue Task Force; and a 63-person USG international medical and
surgical response team. The DART arrived in Iran on December 30 and
conducted needs and structural assessments and coordinated assistance
with the GOI, U.N. agencies, and NGOs. In total, the USG provided the
people of Iran with five airlifts of relief commodities and other
humanitarian assistance worth more than $10.4 million.
The successful provision of U.S humanitarian assistance to Iran
resulted from the combination of a number of factors, both political
and opportunistic. The offer and acceptance of U.S. assistance occurred
through the involvement of the U.S. and Iranian Ambassadors at the
United Nations in New York, which recognized the need for humanitarian
assistance transcended antagonism between the two countries. The
emphasis on the humanitarian nature of the mission allayed fears that
the interaction would be seen as politically motivated. In the field,
the U.S. team avoided any activities or statements that might be
misconstrued as political and instead only addressed technical aspects
of the work.
The ability of USAID/DART staff to travel locally on Iranian
Revolutionary Guard aircraft and be hosted by Iranian authorities
greatly eased the burdens on the DART.
In short, USAID regards the humanitarian response to the Iran
earthquake, which utilized all avenues of U.S. diplomacy to ensure that
lives were saved and suffering was reduced, as an overall success.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my statement before you today. I
welcome your questions.
Senator Menendez. Thank you, both.
Senator Hagel, the distinguished ranking member of the
committee, do you have any comments you want to make?
Senator Hagel. Mr. Chairman, thank you. I too welcome our
witnesses and appreciate you holding the hearing. I will
withhold any further comments until my opportunity presents
itself to question. I do have a statement that I would ask to
be included in the record.
Senator Menendez. Without objection.
Senator Hagel. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Senator Hagel follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Chuck Hagel, U.S. Senator From Nebraska
Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for holding this hearing today
and welcome our distinguished witnesses.
This hearing is an effort to explore the long-term consequences of
international disaster assistance decisions and their impact on the
sovereignty of nations.
Recent discussions on these issues have revolved around the concept
of the ``responsibility to protect'' . . . a doctrine that suggests if
a host government fails to adequately protect its people, the
international community has a responsibility to assist with the welfare
of that country's people.
The situation in Burma is a terrible travesty. With tens of
thousands of people in Burma dead, up to 100,000 missing, and millions
displaced, the refusal of the Burmese Government to accept foreign aid
is shameful and a derogation of its responsibilities to protect its
citizens. These events have brought into sharp relief this debate of
sovereignty, intervention, and the welfare of victims. Many diplomats
have called on the international community to invoke the
``responsibility to protect'' doctrine to use force to compel the
military junta there to accept aid for the hundreds of thousands of
people in need.
This however, is not a new debate. Since the modern nation-state
system first emerged in the 17th century, these issues have often been
at the center of international foreign policy. We only need to consider
the events that have unfolded since 2003 in Iraq to understand that the
decision to intervene militarily in a country carries broad, far-
reaching and unforeseen consequences.
As the United States and the world community grapple with 21st
century challenges, we must use all tools at our disposal. Humanitarian
disasters, pandemic health crises and other challenges of a regional or
global magnitude will require that the United States help build a
consensus of common interests working toward common objectives.
Today's hearing will continue consideration of these fundamental
issues.
Senator Menendez. Thank you, Senator Hagel.
Let us do 7-minute rounds, and we will go from there.
Thank you both for your testimony.
This is a difficult topic and clearly I tried to frame it
in the opening statement that, in fact, we understand it is a
difficult topic, but it is one that I think we are destined to
relive several times, unfortunately, moving in the future.
And I appreciate, Mr. Warlick, the way you addressed it,
but maybe because it is a difficult topic, somewhat gingerly
addressed along the way. So let me try to pursue some--this is
for the purpose truly of having a dialogue in which we move the
ball forward. We are not going to have all the solutions today.
But the purpose of the hearing is to put our arms around this
and try to figure out where we are headed.
You know, I heard what you said, but let me ask you. What
is the State Department's view, for example, on the
responsibility to protect? How far do we think that goes? What
do we tell the U.N. from our perspective as to how far it
should go? What are the confines? We know the three categories
that I mentioned are there, but some of these incidents that we
talked about most recently in these tragedies do not
necessarily rise to those, although the intentionality of their
governments' actions--some might argue--could lead to the
description of crimes against individuals, if it is
intentionally done and lives could have been saved. Give me a
sense of what's your debate that is going on. What do you all
say?
Mr. Warlick. The responsibility to protect is an important
emerging concept in the international community and one that we
welcome. We accept it as a guiding principle.
You have to recognize how this emerged. It came from a set
of recommendations initially that were put forward to the
Secretary General of the United Nations, then Kofi Annan, by an
Eminent Person's Panel, and then came before a group of 191
nations at that point in the World Summit Document in 2005.
This is truly emerging and will be tested over time.
I think it provides a framework for action but does not
create in and of itself a legal obligation for the
international community to act at all times and in all places.
Those will have to be considered on an individual basis.
I would like to just frame this a little bit more for you
because I think the concept itself--there has really not been
much said or written about it. Perhaps some of your private
sector witnesses can go even further.
I think what it highlights for the international community
is really threefold.
First, it underscores that in the first instance it is the
responsibility of each individual state to protect its
population from these atrocities and, in particular, the
atrocities that were actually named in the World Summit Outcome
Document.
Second, the international community, through the United
Nations, should be ready to use appropriate diplomatic,
humanitarian, and other peaceful means to help protect affected
populations from these atrocities. I think the fact that there
is such a responsibility to protect does put a responsibility
on the United Nations, as well as individual states in working
through the United Nations in that regard.
And finally, this is one of the most difficult parts of
responsibility to protect. The international community must
stand ready to take collective action through the U.N. Security
Council acting under chapter VII of the U.N. Charter. And that
is what I think we will need to work through as we confront
problems in the future.
We have worked successfully through the United Nations
Security Council under chapter VI, which provides for the
pacific settlement of disputes. And as I just noted, working
through the international community on a cooperative basis is
the preferred route, but there may be times when we will need
to turn to chapter VII of the United Nations Charter and we
will need to stand ready to compel states through the
collective action of the international community through the
Security Council.
Senator Menendez. Clearly, there can be the recognition
that a state is responsible for its citizens and there can be
all of the diplomatic efforts, and those two can fail. The
state may not choose to recognize or may not act upon its
responsibility and all of those efforts fail. And then the
question is when people are still dying, and at what point is
there some collective responsibility that is acted upon?
Mr. Warlick. Right. Unfortunately, Mr. Chairman, that puts
us smack up against another aspect of the U.N. Charter, and
that is respect for national sovereignty. We look at this as a
very practical matter on a daily basis in the Security Council.
There are many actions that we would like to take collectively
and that we would like to move forward within the Security
Council, but not all 15 members of the Security Council are
agreed to move forward. And I think that we made extraordinary
progress in a number of areas in that regard, but there is not
one view on when collective action through chapter VII is
necessary.
Senator Menendez. Let me ask you in the case of Burma.
Regional actors--you mentioned ASEAN. What is our view about
when we, for some reason, cannot get entrance to provide
humanitarian assistance because of some bilateral conflict or
impediment? What is our view about using others who may be
regional actors who have the ability to do so because they do
not have the same impediments?
Mr. Warlick. Let me cover the political side of that
question. I think that is a very good example of where the
international community has used a multitiered approach. We are
making currently a concerted effort to deliver bilateral
assistance. There are NGOs that are working through Thailand
and in other ways to provide assistance to the people of Burma.
We have a new mechanism that includes the United Nations
cooperating with ASEAN to ensure that aid gets to the most
number of people. Now, I will leave it to Jim to comment on how
effective that has been, but I think that when we are looking
at how to deliver assistance, as a political issue, we ought to
be looking at this kind of multitiered approach and I think
increasingly looking at regional organizations such as ASEAN.
Senator Menendez. Jim, has it worked in this particular
case?
Mr. Kunder. Pardon me, sir?
Senator Menendez. Is the use of ASEAN a good example of
something that has worked?
Mr. Kunder. I think there are much better examples where we
have used--for example, in Sudan, as difficult as that
situation has been, over the years, I think U.S. assistance has
saved millions of lives in the context of what was negotiated
in the 1990s, so-called Operation Lifeline Sudan, which was
negotiated through the U.N. agencies with the other bilateral
donors. And it is something between just standing off and doing
nothing and sending military forces into Sudan. It certainly
infringed, to some degree, on Sudanese sovereignty. It has not
been without its warts, but it has been a kind of collective
response that drew both the rebels in the south and the
Sudanese Government into an arrangement that allowed us to
deliver assistance. In Burma, we have been willing to work
through ASEAN or any of the other bilaterals, the Indians, the
Thais, working in the area.
So we are willing to try anything, but that is what I tried
to point out in my testimony. I think there are some of these
intermediate structures that try to bridge the gap between
forcing your way in under chapter VII and just standing off and
watching people die.
Senator Menendez. Senator Hagel.
Senator Hagel. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
Mr. Kunder, you noted toward the end of your testimony
that, as you said, what comes next, consequences that you would
be happy to go into some detail to discuss those specifics. Let
me take my time for questioning, at least in this round, to ask
you to define that and go a little deeper into that detail
because I think you have framed and centralized the real issue
here as to how far you do go and where do you reach a point of
diminishing returns and what are consequences and what are
long-term effects.
Mr. Kunder. Specifically with regard to Somalia, sir?
Senator Hagel. Well, no; not specific to Somalia. In this
same frame of reference that you offered it in your testimony,
I think the larger context of what we are talking about, what
the hearing is about.
Mr. Kunder. Yes, sir.
Senator Hagel. Thank you. If you care to use Somalia as an
example, that is fine. Thank you.
Mr. Kunder. Yes, sir.
In general, we are able--as I mentioned, 355 disaster
responses, every one of them declared by a United States
Ambassador over the last 5 years. And in most of those we send
in a shipment of relief supplies from the Office of Foreign
Disaster Assistance. They were gratefully received.
Then you get into the gradations where people are hesitant
to accept U.S. assistance and we turn to our State Department
colleagues, the ambassador on the ground, to negotiate
something.
And then you move up the scale to those where they do not
want U.S. assistance, branded American flags or hand-clasp
symbols on the bags of grain. So we are willing to work through
UNICEF, the World Food Program, CARE, Save the Children, World
Vision, intermediate organizations, including something like
ASEAN.
And then you move your way up to looking at cross-border
operations or the kind of thing I mentioned in Sudan, Operation
Lifeline Sudan, a diplomatic agreement that has to be
negotiated with the host government in order to get relief
supplies in, and then finally up to things that potentially
violate sovereignty. They are not particularly effective, like
air drops which we used in Bosnia. We have analyzed the air
drops in Bosnia into Srebenica and the various enclaves very
carefully. A lot of them fell into the Serb lines. A couple of
them killed people coming down. It is a notoriously
ineffective, cost ineffective way to do it.
And then all the way up to something like Somalia. I mean,
we made the calculus at USAID in those days that the situation
was so horrible there was no effective government with which to
negotiate in Somalia. We had the capability to respond, and so
we recommended to our State Department colleagues at that time
support of a chapter VII intervention.
Now, when I say what happens next, having literally been on
the ground at that time, within weeks of U.S. troops securing
Somalia, we were able to set up the humanitarian supply lines
and essentially return death rates to normal in Somalia. So I
do not think there is any question at that point that you can
solve the immediate humanitarian crisis.
But if you then contemplate what happens next, if you
simply pull out, the chances are excellent that whatever caused
the problem initially will simply take over, whether it is
political instability or warlordism, a government that does not
care about its people. So I think you are tempted then to take
on the transitional issues that come next, which is what we
were tempted to do in Somalia, to address the underlying chaos
that caused the famine in the first place. And I am just saying
once you get into that stage, then you run into the full series
of political, security, and diplomatic questions that you run
into in those kind of circumstances. How long are we going to
stay? Are we going to rebuild the government? Are we going to
do nation-building and all the rest of them? And those, I do
not have to tell the committee, are a very complex, long-term
series of solutions.
So that's how I see the progression between a simple
humanitarian operation and to a long-term political
intervention that tries to address the underlying causes of the
crisis in the first place. Burma is a clear-cut example of
that. I mean, there were no physical or logistical impediments
to us meeting the problem. It was the government. So if we
forced ourselves into Rangoon airport, then what comes next? We
could have clearly set up convoys. We could have set up
distribution systems. We could have solved that immediate
problem.
Then we would have driven past Aung San Sui Kyi's house. Do
we then do something about that, or do we just pull up at the
end of it and leave?
And you certainly raise the question in those kind of
situations whether you are setting up the recipients of aid for
some kind of retribution by their government afterward. I mean,
it is a very complex calculus, as the chairman said earlier.
Senator Hagel. Thank you.
Mr. Warlick, would you like to add anything to this
discussion?
Mr. Warlick. I would like to come back to Somalia because
this is a very interesting case historically and prospectively.
Here we have a real challenge for the international community
ahead of us. It is not a humanitarian disaster today, but it
could be in the future. The transitional federal government is
weak by anyone's standards and struggling to gain breathing
space in a country that has been chaotic. The United States
Government is not represented in Somalia today with an embassy
presence. Only a few nongovernmental organizations are
operating there. There is a U.N. mission, but it cannot operate
on Somali soil.
What tools do we have available for us? And we are working
this through right now. I would say from the United Nations'
perspective, in order to avoid what could be a humanitarian
disaster in the future, we are looking at a number of options.
One, for example, the Security Council was just able to
pass a resolution on piracy in the waters off of Somalia. It
allows foreign ships to enter Somalia's territorial waters to
protect shipping lanes. That provides the ability of the World
Food Program to provide humanitarian assistance, but also
normal commerce.
We are looking at peacekeeping operations. There has not
yet been a determination either in the U.S. Government or in
the Security Council to deploy a peacekeeping operation through
the United Nations in Somalia. We are studying what options are
available and are working with the United Nations today. We
believe that that kind of presence will be necessary in order
to provide the stability that could guard against a
humanitarian disaster in the future.
I mention these because the situation in Somalia is
particularly complex and we need to come at it from a number of
different respects. And there is not going to be one silver
bullet in this regard that is going to work. Also, success is
going to come incrementally. This resolution on piracy is not
going to solve the difficulties that the transitional federal
government faces, but it will be one element of the actions
taken by the international community bring about some measure
of stability. And I think we are going to have to look at
humanitarian situations in the future in that regard and come
at them from a number of different perspectives.
Senator Hagel. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Menendez. Thank you, Senator Hagel.
Senator Feingold.
Senator Feingold. Thanks, Mr. Chairman, for holding this
important hearing.
And I would like to turn, for a few minutes, to sub-Saharan
African questions. The Horn of Africa. We are already getting
into that a bit where instability looms large and relief is,
unfortunately, too little and in many cases too late. As you
both know, the Ogaden--also known as the Somali region of
Ethiopia--has been a low intensity battleground between the
Ethiopian Government and insurgents for more than a year now.
As a result of the conflict, food prices have shot up and
livestock trade has all but collapsed, bringing an already
embattled population to the brink of famine.
Given the situation in the Ogaden, Mr. Kunder, I would like
to ask you to address allegations that have surfaced recently
regarding the Ethiopian Government's manipulation of food
distribution in the Ogaden. First, can you confirm these
allegations and, second, what needs to happen to improve the
situation?
Mr. Kunder. Just to correct one thing, if I could, Mr.
Feingold. We technically do have a disaster in Somalia right
now. We are, in fact, providing about $30 million worth of
assistance to Somalia.
We are providing humanitarian assistance in the Ogaden as
well. It is clearly a chaotic situation. Clearly, there are
military operations taking place in there right now, and a
number of the NGOs have pointed out to us the difficulty of
working in an environment where there are ongoing military
operations. I will have to defer to Jim on this. I do not know
that our Government has confirmed what you alleged, you know,
interference by the Ethiopian military forces. But clearly, it
is a chaotic situation. Clearly, it is very difficult to
provide humanitarian assistance there, and we are trying to
support the NGOs who are on the ground.
Senator Feingold. Do you want to talk about that for a
minute, Mr. Warlick?
Mr. Warlick. I can speak to the issue between Ethiopia and
Eritrea, which is one of concern to the----
Senator Feingold. Well, I have asked about the Ethiopian
Government's manipulation of food distribution in the Ogaden.
That is what I asked you to respond to.
Mr. Warlick. I am not in a position to respond to that
question.
Senator Feingold. All right. Well, I think you would agree,
Mr. Kunder, that the humanitarian situation in the Ogaden
continues to be extremely severe.
Mr. Kunder. Yes, sir.
Senator Feingold. Is the U.S. Government satisfied that the
Government of Ethiopia is doing what needs to be done to ensure
that assistance is provided to civilian populations instead of
being used as a tool to further a political agenda?
Mr. Kunder. We continue directly and through our diplomatic
team in Adis Ababa to try to continue to pressure the Ethiopian
Government to cooperate in the humanitarian operations. I would
like to see it even better than it is now.
Senator Feingold. When a government fails to provide for
its people, as is the case in the Ogaden, what bilateral and
multilateral tools do we have at our disposal to address this
problem--both short term and long term?
Mr. Kunder. I tried to list in my testimony nine different
approaches. Certainly we are doing the basic ones in the
Ogaden. We are diplomatically discussing the situation with the
Ethiopian Government. We are using the NGOs that are on the
ground. We have had some particular issues lately that have
been reported in the media where the Ethiopian Government is
suggesting placing some additional taxes on NGOs operating
throughout Ethiopia. We have assiduously over the years
resisted the notion that U.S. taxpayer dollars should be taxed
when they're trying to save people's lives. So our Ambassador
on the ground is working with the Ethiopian Government to see
if we cannot eliminate that counterproductive proposal.
We are willing to support the U.N. agencies on the ground,
and we are trying to decentralize the distribution system so
that we can get more supplies out to those who are in desperate
need.
But I do not want to pretend to put a smiley face on the
thing, Senator Feingold. It is really one of the more
difficult. As you probably know, I mean, the Ogaden is an
extraordinarily inaccessible region. It has been the source of
ethnic conflict for decades. We are providing substantial
humanitarian relief, but it is tough going and we need to do a
better job there.
Senator Feingold. Across the border from Ethiopia, in
neighboring Somalia, the situation is even worse, as has been
alluded to. Decades of conflict have left the country with a
barely functioning central government and brought much of the
population close to the brink of famine. These problems are
compounded by the fact that Somalia continues to be a
permissive environment and safe haven for both Somali and
foreign terrorists.
Mr. Kunder and Mr. Warlick, how do these serious national
security concerns factor into our decisionmaking when it comes
to providing both bilateral and multilateral disaster
assistance, and how is the current disaster assistance
framework set up to handle these critical issues in some kind
of tandem?
Mr. Kunder. I mentioned earlier, sir, that we have tried a
number of different frameworks. I mentioned the Operation
Lifeline Sudan also in the Horn where we have done a multisided
negotiation with the Government of Sudan and with the former
rebels in order to try to get relief supplies in. So there are
a number of these kinds of intermediate steps. We have tried
so-called corridors of tranquility, days of tranquility for
immunization activities. There are a number of pretty well-
honed international techniques to try to operate in war zones
like we found in the Horn of Africa, certainly cross-border
operations from Kenya into Southern Sudan and into Somalia.
I think of this set of issues, probably the single most
difficult is the one that we encounter in Somalia where you do
not have an effective government with which to negotiate these
kinds of arrangements. I mentioned, I think right before you
came in, that in 1992 I had Mr. Ky Luu's job at that time as
Director of the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, and we
strongly advocated a military intervention in Somalia at that
time. But when you do not have a functioning government, it
makes it particularly complex.
There are a number of courageous U.N. agencies, as Jim
said, and NGOs that are working on the ground in Somalia. We
have supported them to the tune of $30 million. We have saved
some lives, but that is probably the single most complex
situation we face right now because of the lack of a
government.
Senator Feingold. Mr. Warlick.
Mr. Warlick. Failed states, there is no question, are a
threat not only to the people of that country in terms of being
able to deliver humanitarian assistance, but also a threat to
international peace and security and, by that definition, an
issue that could be taken up in the Security Council.
In the case of Somalia, that is precisely the case. It is
an issue with which the Security Council is seized. It is one
that we will be coming back to and working on diligently not
just with Member States of the Security Council, but also with
the U.N. Secretariat and operational agencies. For the
operational agencies, it is the delivery of humanitarian
assistance. But on the political side, through the Secretary
General and his staff, ensuring that there are conditions to
provide for an international presence, including the
possibility of an international peacekeeping presence, which we
believe could address some of those issues of stability and
potentially prosperity.
Senator Feingold. Thank you both. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Menendez. Thank you, Senator Feingold.
Let me go through another round here if members have other
questions. I know I have a couple that I want to pursue.
Mr. Warlick, you said, and rightly so, that the predicate
for a chapter VII action is a determination by the U.N. that
the situation presents a threat to international peace and
security. But it is possible to envision a humanitarian
catastrophe in which not necessarily the international peace or
security are challenged. You could have a regime that is in
full control of a country for which there is no spillover of,
let's say, refugees into a neighboring country. And so,
therefore, international peace and security, at least as I
think those are defined, would certainly not even be subject to
a debate of a chapter VII action. How do we envision dealing
with those sets of circumstances?
Mr. Warlick. This is an issue for discussion within the
Security Council. It is very difficult to make a case in this
modern world that the decisions of a sovereign government do
not have an impact outside that country's borders. We can make
a case, and we have in the case of Burma, that the actions of a
military regime within its borders has an effect on
international peace and security in the region.
The trick is, though--and it is difficult. Within the
Security Council, we do need to persuade other members of the
Council that in fact this is a legitimate subject for the
Security Council to take up. In the case of Burma, it was a
difficult discussion, but in fact, Burma is on the formal
agenda.
In the case of Zimbabwe, we are today making that case that
what is happening within the borders of Zimbabwe today does
pose a threat to the region. In fact, the Secretary of State
will be in New York this Thursday and will be hosting, together
with the Foreign Minister of Burkina Faso, a roundtable that
includes members of the Security Council and African states, as
well as regional organizations, specifically on the issue of
Zimbabwe to send the message that the actions taken by the
government and, in particular, President Mugabe have an effect
well beyond the formal borders of that state.
Senator Menendez. Well, let me ask you, since you are
talking about Zimbabwe. I do have a specific question in that
respect. Recently the U.S. Ambassador in Zimbabwe said that
authorities confiscated a truck loaded with 20 tons of American
food assistance for school children and ordered that the food
be handed out to supporters of President Mugabe at a political
rally. Is that the facts as we know them?
Mr. Warlick. I defer to Jim on this.
Mr. Kunder. To the best of my knowledge, that event
occurred, yes, sir.
Senator Menendez. Is that part of what we are addressing,
not the specific incident, but the broader access to food and
supplies to people in Zimbabwe as part of what you describe as
being pursued at the U.N.?
Mr. Warlick. We will be addressing in that roundtable a
number of issues beginning with the call for free and fair
elections in Zimbabwe for the runoff on June 27. But the larger
issue is one of good governance which does, in fact, have an
impact on our ability to provide humanitarian assistance.
Senator Menendez. Mr. Kunder, is there any doubt that
people died in Burma because of the government's delay?
Mr. Kunder. I think there is very little--we have grappled
with our best models on how many people might have died, but I
think the way you asked the question, sir, there is very little
doubt that some people died whose lives could have been saved
because of the Government of Burma's actions.
Senator Menendez. And quantifying that is our challenge?
Mr. Kunder. Well, there are, as you said, over 2 million
affected people.
Senator Menendez. There are people who died simply because
of the disaster in and of itself, but the government's delay is
what I'm trying to----
Mr. Kunder. Yes, sir. That is what I am trying to say. We
have analytical models to try to look at this kind of thing,
and it is very difficult because for the very reason that we
have not had the full access to all parts of the Irrawaddy
Delta. But I think I would feel comfortable in saying that the
number would have run into the thousands.
Senator Menendez. Of people who died because of the
government's lack of----
Mr. Kunder. Well, I mean, people were in fragile
conditions--we don't know that precisely because we were not
able to get on the ground. But in normal circumstances, people
who have been through the kind of trauma that occurred when
there is that kind of cyclone and then exposed to the elements
and unsafe drinking water, you would expect that a certain
percentage of the population, especially children, would die
under those circumstances. And I would expect that number--I
cannot give you a hard number, but I would guess that number
would be in the thousands.
Senator Menendez. I appreciate that. My goal here is to try
to simply suggest that as we think about this, when does a
certain number reach a threshold? For me, every life is sacred.
But at the end of the day, is it 100? Is it 1,000? Is it 5,000?
Is it 10,000? Where is the threshold in which we say, not only
the United States but the world says, well, now this government
is acting in a way that far supersedes what--for which action
dictates? It is like when we say, never again, and then we sit
back and see people slaughtered. So I am just wondering where
are our lines here of determination as to what will invoke.
One last question: I understand that the Burmese Government
briefed you and humanitarian organizations on guidelines to
follow to provide assistance. Can you characterize those
briefings and what guidelines did the Burmese Government lay
out in order for the assistance to be delivered?
Mr. Kunder. Those guidelines had to do with international
staff being restricted initially at least to the greater
Rangoon area, use of Burmese Government agents to actually hand
out supplies and so forth.
And by the way, sir, that is one of the questions in the
larger philosophical question you asked. It is one of the
questions we always grapple with. If the question is getting
necessary lifesaving supplies into the hands of the people,
what degree of cooperation are you willing to accept with a
regime that you would not otherwise want to be dealing with?
The question came up very early on in terms of who would be
the consignee of the relief supplies. When we are entrusted
with taxpayers' dollars, we make somebody sign for whatever
plastic sheeting or other supplies we deliver, and initially
our preference would always be to turn it over to a reputable
international organization or NGO. And the first flights that
went in were consigned to the Burmese Government with the
expectation that once we got the dialogue going, we would be
able to wedge open humanitarian space. And that is why I
reported that today 100 percent of what USAID is sending in is
being consigned to well known international NGOs or U.N.
agencies. But those were the nature of the guidelines early on,
and we made the conscious decision to accept those guidelines
early on with the hope that we would then wedge open
humanitarian space and do it right. And as I reported, we have
been partially successful in that.
Senator Menendez. Thank you both for the testimony. We
broke a little ice here. We will continue to pursue this in the
future. We appreciate your testimony before the committee.
There may be questions submitted in writing to you by other
members, and we would appreciate your prompt response to those.
And as we thank you, let me ask the second panel to join
us. We have a distinguished second panel of witnesses joining
us today: Dr. Edward Luck, who is the Special Adviser to the
Secretary General at the United Nations; Mr. Mark Schneider,
who is the senior vice president at the International Crisis
Group; and last, Dr. Stewart Patrick, the senior fellow and
director of the Program on International Institutions and
Global Governance at the Council on Foreign Relations.
We welcome you all. We ask, in the interest of being able
to pursue a dialogue, that you keep your testimonies to 7
minutes. Your entire written testimony will be included for the
record, and let me start off with Dr. Luck and move down the
panel.
Dr. Luck.
STATEMENT OF DR. EDWARD C. LUCK, SPECIAL ADVISER TO THE
SECRETARY GENERAL, UNITED NATIONS, NEW YORK, NY
Dr. Luck. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to
brief this distinguished subcommittee on the concepts,
principles, norms, and practices that have guided the response
of the United Nations to the immense human tragedy that has
unfolded since Cyclone Nargis struck Myanmar on the 2nd and 3rd
of May.
At the outset, let me express the standard caveat of an
international civil servant briefing a Member State Parliament.
In accordance with past practice, my attendance today before
the subcommittee is on a purely informal basis, and nothing in
my oral remarks or written briefing statement should be
understood to be a waiver, express or implied, of the
privileges and immunities of the United Nations or its
subsidiary organs under the 1946 Convention on the Privileges
and Immunities of the United Nations.
That said, today I will address three issues that have
generated widespread public interest and media commentary,
along with no little confusion and misunderstanding: One, the
evolving notion of the responsibility to protect and why it
does not appear to apply to this particular situation; two,
other principles, practices, and norms that do seem to be
highly relevant to this case; and three, why the U.N. was able
to respond vigorously and decisively to these events without
explicit action by the Security Council. In the interest of
time, I will abbreviate my oral statement, particularly on the
second point.
As adopted unanimously by the 2005 World Summit and by
subsequent resolutions of the General Assembly and the Security
Council, the responsibility to protect, R2P, rests on three
pillars: First, an affirmation of the primary and continuing
legal obligations of states to protect their populations from
genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against
humanity and from their incitement; second, a commitment by the
international community to assist states in meeting these
obligations; and third, an acceptance by Member States of their
responsibility to respond in a timely and decisive manner, in
accordance with the U.N. Charter, to help protect populations
from the four listed crimes and violations. ``Populations''
includes all persons on a state's territory.
The emphasis, therefore, is on state responsibility, to be
bolstered by international assistance. The concept of R2P,
moreover, is not intended to detract in any way from the much
broader range of obligations under existing international
humanitarian and human rights law, refugee law, and
international criminal law.
As defined by the summit--and the U.N. must be guided by
the collective decisions of its Member States, not by the
pronouncements of independent commissions or commentators or
the views of individual Member States--R2P does not encompass
other dire threats to populations, such as climate change, HIV/
AIDS, or the effects of natural disasters. These need to be and
are being addressed in other ways.
To be conceptually coherent, operationally sound, and
politically sustainable, the scope of R2P should remain narrow
and closely tied to the four listed crimes and violations
unless and until the Member States decide otherwise. To help
prevent such mass atrocities would be a cardinal achievement in
the evolution of human rights. We should take care not to
undermine the historic but fragile international consensus
behind the responsibility to protect by succumbing to the
temptation to stretch it beyond what was intended by the heads
of state and government assembled at the U.N. almost 3 years
ago.
While the scope of R2P should remain narrow, the range of
tools for implementing it, whether by the U.N., its regional,
subregional, and civil society partners, or Member States, runs
deep. Its programmatic dimensions include: One, capacity-
building and rebuilding; two, early warning and assessment;
three, timely and decisive response; and four, collaboration
with regional and subregional arrangements. The stress is on
prevention and building the capacity of states to resist
turning to the path of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing,
and crimes against humanity.
R2P's conceptual foundation is ``sovereignty as
responsibility,'' not humanitarian intervention. This is a far
broader, richer, and more pragmatic notion than coercive
humanitarian intervention. R2P seeks to help states to succeed,
not just to react when they fail. It makes no sense, either
morally or politically, to limit one's policy options to
standing by or sending the Marines. The first is unacceptable
and the second unlikely.
As the summit's Outcome Document acknowledged, there may be
times when the only way to protect hundreds of thousands of
people at risk is through enforcement measures, whether
economic, military, or political, under chapter VII of the U.N.
Charter. In such cases, R2P does not alter, indeed it
reinforces, the legal obligation of Member States not to use
force except in conformity with the charter. Absent agreement
on the use of coercive measures, there are a range of
noncoercive instruments available to the U.N. under chapters VI
and VIII of the charter to advance prevention and protection
goals, as stressed in the summit's Outcome Document.
In my view, a government's unwillingness to facilitate the
delivery of international humanitarian assistance to its people
in the aftermath of a major natural calamity may be
reprehensible, morally repugnant, and contrary to a number of
well-established international principles, standards, and
norms. How to respond to such a situation deserves further
discussion.
However, a state's recalcitrance is unlikely to constitute
one of the four crimes and violations agreed at the 2005 summit
to fall under the responsibility to protect umbrella. There has
been some speculation in the press about whether such action or
inaction could be considered to be a crime against humanity.
That would require, however, crimes such as murder or
extermination committed as part of ``a widespread or systematic
attack'' against the civilian population.
The international community, it should be underscored, need
not invoke R2P to justify a vigorous response to such a large-
scale loss of life due to a state's indifference or incapacity.
There are other sets of relevant principles, practices, and
norms, including those concerning humanitarian assistance,
internally displaced persons, and human rights. While I address
these at some length in my written statement, I will delete the
details now in the interest of time.
Now, in terms of the U.N. response, some commentators have
suggested that the U.N. is powerless when facing such
obstruction unless the Security Council, including its veto-
bearing five permanent members, can agree on forceful action.
The response to Cyclone Nargis, however, suggests otherwise.
The world body responded rapidly to the crisis on several
levels and in several ways. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon
employed his bully pulpit, his good offices, and, finally, his
personal diplomacy to help persuade the authorities in Myanmar
to take a more open approach to international efforts to aid
the cyclone victims.
Sir John Holmes, the U.N.'s Emergency Relief Coordinator,
was on the ground in the region early and for an extended
period, pressing the authorities to change their attitudes,
helping to organize the international aid effort at both the
field and headquarters levels, and keeping the world informed
and the regime under global public scrutiny.
A range of U.N. agencies and their national and civil
society partners marshalled and delivered aid and technical
assistance to the extent that the Myanmar authorities would
permit. While much, much more needs to be done and the pressure
needs to be sustained, it is estimated that 1.3 million victims
have now been reached by the international aid effort and the
Red Cross/Red Crescent movement, in addition to those reached
by national efforts. Notably, some reports suggest that U.N.
assistance has been more readily accepted than that from most
other sources, perhaps because of the world body's political
impartiality and reputation for technical expertise in disaster
relief. As the Secretary General stressed on the 12th of May,
``This is not about politics. It is about saving people's
lives. There is absolutely no time to lose.''
The United Nations was able, in addition, to partner with
ASEAN in organizing the pledging conference in Yangon on 25 May
for international cyclone relief and with the government and
ASEAN to conduct a major new assessment. The latter, which is
underway as I speak, matters given the lack of reliable
statistics to guide the relief effort.
Despite all of these efforts, this remains a tragic
situation in which the enormous human costs of a natural
calamity have been compounded by human error and intense
political suspicion. As Secretary General Ban Ki-moon commented
in Yangon on 25 May, ``We have a chance for a new beginning
today. I ask all of us to keep our eye firmly on the immediate
objectives--saving lives--guided by the principles of
neutrality, impartiality and our common humanity.''
Some day, historians and policy analysts will ask whether
armed intervention would have been a better course. My guess is
that they will note that the application of coercive measures
by definition is not impartial, that turning a humanitarian
disaster into a military confrontation does nothing to save
lives, and that, despite some tough talk, none of the military
powers was prepared this time to use its forces for such a
mission in any case. As an academic, I must say it was only an
academic discussion. In the end, however, they may well
acknowledge that, in its quiet ways, the U.N. did indeed make a
positive difference in Myanmar, as it has in so many other
places over so many years.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Luck follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Edward Luck, Special Adviser to the U.N.
Secretary General, United Nations, New York, NY
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to brief this
distinguished subcommittee on the concepts, principles, norms, and
practices that have guided the response of the United Nations to the
immense human tragedy that has unfolded since Cyclone Nargis struck
Myanmar on the 2nd and 3rd of May. At the outset, let me express the
standard caveat of an international civil servant briefing a Member
State Parliament. In accordance with past practice, my attendance today
before the subcommittee is on a purely informal basis, and nothing in
my oral remarks and written briefing statement should be understood to
be a waiver, express or implied, of the privileges and immunities of
the United Nations or its subsidiary organs under the 1946 Convention
on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations.
Today I will address three issues that have generated widespread
public interest and media commentary along with no little confusion and
misunderstanding: One, the evolving notion of the responsibility to
protect and why it does not appear to apply to this particular
situation; two, other principles, practices, and norms that do seem to
be highly relevant to this case; and three, why the U.N. was able to
respond vigorously and decisively to these events without explicit
action by the Security Council.
responsibility to protect
As adopted unanimously by the 2005 World Summit and by subsequent
resolutions of the General Assembly and the Security Council, the
responsibility to protect (R2P) rests on three pillars:
--First, an affirmation of the primary and continuing legal obligations
of states to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes,
ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, and from their
incitement;
--Second, a commitment by the international community to assist states
in meeting these obligations; and
--Third, an acceptance by Member States of their responsibility to
respond in a timely and decisive manner, in accordance with the
U.N. Charter, to help protect populations from the four listed
crimes and violations. ``Populations'' includes all persons on a
state's territory.
The emphasis, therefore, is on state responsibility, to be bolstered by
international assistance. The concept of R2P, moreover, is not intended
to detract in any way from the much broader range of obligations
existing under existing international humanitarian and human rights
law, refugee law, and international criminal law.
As defined by the summit--and the U.N. must be guided by the
collective decisions of its Member States, not by the pronouncements of
independent commissions or commentators or the views of individual
Member States--R2P does not encompass other dire threats to
populations, such as climate change, HIV/AIDs, or the effects of
natural disasters. These need to be, and are being, addressed in other
ways. To be conceptually coherent, operationally sound, and politically
sustainable, the scope of R2P should remain narrow and closely tied to
the four listed crimes and violations unless and until the Member
States decide otherwise. To help prevent such mass atrocities would be
a cardinal achievement in the evolution of human rights. We should take
care not to undermine the historic but fragile international consensus
behind the responsibility to protect by succumbing to the temptation to
stretch it beyond what was intended by the heads of state and
government assembled at the U.N. almost 3 years ago.
While the scope of R2P should remain narrow, the range of tools for
implementing it--whether by the U.N., its regional, subregional, and
civil society partners, or Member States--runs deep. Its programmatic
dimensions include (1) capacity-building and rebuilding, (2) early
warning and assessment, (3) timely and decisive response, and (4)
collaboration with regional and subregional arrangements. The stress is
on prevention and building the capacity of states to resist turning to
the path of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against
humanity.
R2P's conceptual foundation is ``sovereignty as responsibility,'' a
far broader, richer, and more pragmatic notion than coercive
humanitarian intervention. R2P seeks to help states succeed, not just
to react when they fail. It makes no sense, either morally or
politically, to limit one's policy options to standing by or sending
the Marines. The first is unacceptable and the second unlikely. As the
Summit's Outcome Document acknowledged, there may be times when the
only way to protect hundreds of thousands of people at risk is through
enforcement measures--whether economic, military, or political--under
chapter VII of the U.N. Charter. In such cases, R2P does not alter,
indeed it reinforces, the legal obligation of Member States not to use
force except in conformity with the charter. Absent agreement on the
use of coercive measures, there are a range of noncoercive instruments
available to the U.N. under chapters VI and VIII of the charter to
advance prevention and protection goals, as stressed in the Summit's
Outcome Document.
In my view, a government's unwillingness to facilitate the delivery
of international humanitarian assistance to its people in the aftermath
of a major natural calamity may be reprehensible, morally repugnant,
and contrary to a number of well-established international principles,
standards, and norms. How to respond to such a situation deserves
further discussion. However, a state's recalcitrance is unlikely to
constitute one of the four crimes and violations agreed at the 2005
summit to fall under the responsibility to protect umbrella. There has
been some speculation in the press about whether such action or
inaction could be considered to be a crime against humanity. That would
require, however, crimes such as murder or extermination committed as
part of ``a widespread or systematic attack'' against the civilian
population.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ See, for example, article 7 of the Rome Statute of the
International Criminal Court.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
other principles, practices, and norms
The international community, it should be underscored, need not
invoke R2P to justify a vigorous response to such a large-scale loss of
life due to a state's indifference or incapacity. There are other sets
of relevant principles, practices, and norms, including those
concerning humanitarian assistance, internally displaced persons, and
human rights. The Guiding Principles for humanitarian assistance were
laid out in an annex to a 1991 General Assembly resolution (46/182).
Under them, the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and national unity
of states are to be fully respected and assistance is to be provided
with the consent of the affected country. The importance of
international cooperation to address emergency situations, however, is
stressed and affected states are ``to facilitate the work of these
organizations in implementing humanitarian assistance, in particular
the supply of food, medicines, shelter and health care, for which
access to victims is essential.''
More recently, the 2005 summit called for ``upholding and
respecting the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality,
impartiality, and independence and ensuring that humanitarian actors
have safe and unhindered access to populations in need in conformity
with the relevant provisions of international law and national laws.''
\2\ In December 2006, the General Assembly called upon states ``to
cooperate fully with the United Nations and other humanitarian agencies
and organizations and to ensure the safe and unhindered access of
humanitarian personnel as well as delivery of supplies and equipment in
order to allow them to perform efficiently their task of assisting the
affected civilian population'' (A/RES/61/134). And most recently, a
December 2007 Assembly resolution reaffirmed the 1991 Guiding
Principles for humanitarian assistance, emphasizing the responsibility
of the state in facilitating ``the work of humanitarian organizations
in mitigating the consequences of natural disasters'' (A/RES/62/93).
While resolutions of the Summit and Assembly do not constitute binding
international norms, they do reflect generally accepted standards and
expectations.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Paragraph 169, of the Outcome Document, U.N. Doc. A/RES/60/1.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
According to the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs (OCHA), an estimated 2.4 million people have been affected by
Cyclone Nargis and many of them have been uprooted from their homes and
villages.\3\ The Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, first
articulated in 1998, are thus particularly relevant. Principle 24(2)
stipulates that ``humanitarian assistance to internally displaced
persons shall not be diverted, in particular for political or military
purposes.'' Under Principle 25, international humanitarian
organizations ``have the right to offer their services in support of
the internally displaced'' and ``consent thereto shall not be
arbitrarily withheld, particularly when authorities concerned are
unable or unwilling to provide the required humanitarian assistance.''
Moreover, ``all authorities concerned shall grant and facilitate the
free passage of humanitarian assistance and grant persons engaged in
the provision of such assistance rapid and unimpeded access to the
internally displaced.'' These principles have been reaffirmed in a
number of General Assembly resolutions and in December 2007 the
Assembly called upon governments to further improve access to
internally displaced persons (A/RES/62/153).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ The estimate of affected comes from OCHA Situation Report No.
29, 9 June 2008.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ultimately, it is the fundamental human rights of the disaster
victims that are at stake. These derive from a number of instruments,
including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. As U.N. High
Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, put it, referring to
international aid following such devastating natural disasters, ``it is
the right of victims to expect such assistance and it is the duty of
governments and the international community to do everything in their
power to facilitate it. In the case of Myanmar, the obstruction of the
deployment of such assistance illustrates the invidious effects of
longstanding international tolerance for human rights violations that
made such obstruction possible.'' \4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Address to the 8th Session of the Human Rights Council, 2 June
2008.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
the u.n. response
Some commentators have suggested that the U.N. is powerless when
facing such obstruction unless the Security Council, including its
veto-bearing five permanent members, can agree on forceful action. The
response to Cyclone Nargis, however, suggests otherwise. The world body
responded rapidly to the crisis on several levels and in several ways.
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon employed his bully pulpit, his good
offices, and, finally, his personal diplomacy to help persuade the
authorities in Myanmar to take a more open approach to international
efforts to aid the cyclone victims. Sir John Holmes, the U.N.'s
Emergency Relief Coordinator, was on the ground in the region early and
for an extended period, pressing the authorities to change their
attitudes, helping to organize the international aid effort at both the
field and headquarters levels, and keeping the world informed and the
regime under global public scrutiny. A range of U.N. agencies and their
national and civil society partners marshalled and delivered aid and
technical assistance to the extent that the Myanmar authorities would
permit. While much, much more needs to be done and the pressure needs
to be sustained, it is estimated that 1.3 million victims have now been
reached by the international aid effort and the Red Cross/Red Crescent
movement, in addition to those reached by national efforts. Notably,
some reports suggest that U.N. assistance has been more readily
accepted than that from most other sources, perhaps because of the
world body's political impartiality and reputation for technical
expertise in disaster relief. As the Secretary General stressed on 12
May, ``this is not about politics. It is about saving people's lives.
There is absolutely no time to lose.'' \5\ The United Nations was able,
in addition, to partner with ASEAN in organizing the pledging
conference in Yangon on 25 May for international cyclone relief and
with the government and ASEAN to conduct a major new assessment. The
latter, which is underway as I speak, matters given the lack of
reliable statistics to guide the relief effort.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ United Nations, Secretary General's Opening Remarks at His
Press Conference on Myanmar, 12 May 2008.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Despite all these efforts, this remains a tragic situation in which
the enormous human costs of a natural calamity have been compounded by
human error and intense political suspicion. As Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon commented in Yangon on 25 May, ``we have a chance for a new
beginning, today. I ask all of us to keep our eye firmly on the
immediate objective--saving lives--guided by the principles of
neutrality, impartiality, and our common humanity.'' \6\ Some day,
historians and policy analysts will ask whether armed intervention
would have been a better course. My guess is that they will note that
the application of coercive measures by definition is not impartial,
that turning a humanitarian disaster into a military confrontation does
nothing to save lives, and, that, despite some tough talk, none of the
military powers was prepared this time to use its forces for such a
mission in any case. In the end, however, they may well acknowledge
that, in its quiet ways, the U.N. did indeed make a positive difference
in Myanmar, as it has in so many other places over so many years.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ U.N. Doc. SG/SM/11597, 27 May 2008.
Senator Menendez. Mr. Schneider.
STATEMENT OF MARK L. SCHNEIDER, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT,
INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Schneider. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Senator
Menendez, Senator Hagel, for the opportunity to appear today
before the subcommittee on this issue.
It is clearly an extremely important issue at this time.
From the testimony you have heard from the previous panel and I
think that you will hear from us, this is clearly an issue on
which the international community is still grappling with how
to impact effectively to save people's lives.
Cyclone Nargis has raised the question of the policy
options available to the international community when
governments--either as the result of acts of commission or
omission--pose the risk of large-scale loss of human life to
their own people. Darfur and most recently Zimbabwe raise the
same complex questions of what recourse exists when a
government's actions, its failure to act, or its inability to
act, produce massive humanitarian crises.
What is the responsibility of the international community
when the magnitude of the loss of life appears likely to reach
or crosses the line of mass atrocities, genocide, war crimes,
ethnic cleansing, or crimes against humanity?
Just simply let me note that in Professor Luck's comments--
I do want to raise an issue about the question of the
definition of crimes against humanity in this particular
instance.
The International Crisis Group came into being in the
aftermath of Rwanda and Srebenica more than a decade ago. We
bring analysis of conflict situations, hopefully, to the desks
of decisionmakers in an effort to help find policy options to
prevent massive loss of human life or to bring deadly violence
to an end.
The President of the International Crisis Group, Gareth
Evans, really championed the concept of responsibility to
protect when he was cochair of the Canadian-sponsored
International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty.
The purpose really was to find a middle ground in the
debate during the 1990s between those who essentially argued
for an almost open-ended right to intervene in the case of
catastrophic human rights disasters and those who argued at the
other extreme that state sovereignty meant that there could be
no such intervention without the consent of the state involved.
We would argue that in the past 50 years, the international
community has come to recognize that a Rwanda, Darfur,
Cambodia, or Sarajevo cannot be veiled from international
responsibility by the curtain of national sovereignty.
And as somebody who has served in the first Bureau of Human
Rights in the State Department, now I guess almost 30 years
ago, one has to be optimistic that we have come far enough that
the General Assembly unanimously adopted the concept of a
collective responsibility to protect individuals against mass
atrocities. That simply was not thinkable 30 years ago.
In response to the committee's questions, yes; the
responsibility to protect is a fundamental element of a
multilateral framework to prevent and respond to mass
atrocities, and as stated by my colleague, one begins with the
assumption that it's the state's responsibility first to
protect, and it is the responsibility of the international
community to assist that state in developing the capacity to
protect. But the breakthrough in paragraph 139 was to say that
there is a collective responsibility when states fail, through
incapacity or intent, working through the United Nations, to
react, when conditions reach the point of those specific mass
atrocities: Genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes
against humanity.
And then the question is, How do we react? And it is not
just military action. It is the full range of diplomatic tools
of special rapporteurs, commissions of inquiry, arms embargoes,
targeted sanctions, economic and financial sanctions, even
preventive deployment of military force.
Now, the question seems to me--one really does have to
focus--is that this is not between military force or no action
at all. There is a range of other actions that can be taken.
And to some degree, when one looks at Burma and Zimbabwe and
Darfur, it is specifically about all of the range of actions
that could be taken when a government, in fact, fails to act in
a way to protect human life.
Let us take Burma and Myanmar. The starting point,
obviously, is to protect people from the impact of national
disasters and the humanitarian obligation, as an international
community, is to do everything possible that we can. However,
the R2P principle does not apply to every natural disaster. It
applies solely when there is an indication that governments
are, in fact, committing crimes against humanity. And the
definition there is important. If one looks at the Rome
statute, the definition of crimes against humanity involves not
merely the widespread or systematic attack directed against any
civilian population with knowledge of the attack, but it
includes other inhumane acts of a similar character
intentionally causing great suffering or serious injury to body
or to mental or physical health.
Now, at the very least, one has to get to the question of
what is the difference if a government sends its military to
destroy villages resulting in the killing of thousands of
people and then sends its military to deny relief to those same
villages and, as a result, the same number of people die. If
one were able to say that had occurred, it seems to me that one
comes very close to the definition of crimes against humanity.
Now, 2 weeks after Nargis occurred, there was an estimate
that two-thirds of the victims had not yet received aid.
Surely, had all Western ships in the area been allowed to bring
relief to bear, some of those victims would have received water
and food and lifesaving help. You just heard that 1.3 million
victims have received assistance, and that is obviously
positive. But the estimates still are that approximately a
million have not. So the question is, What more needs to be
done? What more can be done, and what would have been the
definition and the reaction by the Security Council if today we
were looking at a situation where 2.4 million had not received
assistance? And you heard from Jim Kunder that probably
thousands have died in the process. It seems to me that that is
a question that the Security Council should be examining when
the situation arises.
Now, the question is, Then what? If you do reach the
decision that there have been mass atrocities, does that
automatically mean the application of military force? Here we
would argue no. There are criteria that you have to take into
account, and unfortunately, those criteria were not included in
the adoption of paragraphs 138 and 139 in the summit document.
But at least we believe that one should think whether this is
the last resort. Is the intention of the action specifically
designed to halt the atrocity? Is it proportional? Is it just
the minimum necessary in order to achieve that end? And are
there reasonable prospects that the intervention will either
prevent the crime or bring the atrocities to a halt? There are
no easy answers, but at the very least, that is a process that
should be examined.
Professor Luck indicated that he doubted very much that in
this case there would have been that kind of response. But that
is the kind of examination that is needed. One definitely, I
think, can say that the existence of the responsibility to
protect doctrine did have an impact in this situation perhaps
of opening up some of that humanitarian space, whether it was
the declaration of the French Foreign Minister or whether it
was the more quiet comments by other Foreign Ministers, that
the issue of whether or not crimes against humanity had been
committed by denying relief--that that subject was under
discussion. And it probably helped the arguments of ASEAN and
China and India as they privately communicated with the
Government in Burma.
Zimbabwe. You asked the question of whether the hijacking
of food relief reached the point where responsibility to
protect would be brought into play. It seems to me again one
has to say the potential is there clearly if, over time, there
is a massive denial of food such that there are thousands of
people who die in that process. And at the very least, a
variety of tools, diplomatic and otherwise, should be brought
to bear.
Darfur is a much easier question. The United Nations
already has said that responsibility to protect is one of the
reasons for the use of chapter VII in bringing about a variety
of actions. The United Nations has adopted a no-fly zone. It is
argued that the Janjaweed must be disarmed, that the U.N. will
deploy a 26,000-strong U.N. force, whether or not the
Government of Sudan approves of which country is sending those
troops. That unfortunately has not happened.
Senator Menendez. If you could wrap up for me----
Mr. Schneider. Sure.
The issue really becomes one of a question of not the
failure of the existence of R2P, but the failure of will of the
members of the Security Council to enforce those actions.
I will stop there.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Schneider follows:]
Prepared Statement of Mark L. Schneider, Senior Vice President,
International Crisis Group on International Disaster Assistance: Policy
Options, Washington, DC
I want to thank the chairman, Senator Robert Menendez, and the
ranking member, Senator Chuck Hagel, for the opportunity to testify
before the subcommittee this afternoon on ``International Assistance:
Policy Options.''
The current humanitarian crisis in Burma following the devastation
of Cyclone Nargis has raised again the question of the policy options
available to the international community when governments pose the risk
of large-scale loss of human life to their own people. As the committee
has noted, Darfur, and most recently Zimbabwe, raise the same complex
questions of what recourse exists when a government's actions, its
failure to act, or its inability to act, produce massive humanitarian
crises.
What is the responsibility of the international community and the
nation-states that comprise that community when the magnitude of loss
of life appears likely to reach or crosses the line of mass
atrocities--whether genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing or crimes
against humanity?
Let me begin by noting that the International Crisis Group came
into being in the aftermath of Rwanda and Srebrenica more than a decade
ago. The intent of our founders was to bring field-based analysis of
conflict situations to the desks of decisionmakers in an effort to help
them find policy options to prevent massive loss of human life or to
bring deadly violence to an end. We now operate in some 60 countries
with permanent offices or ongoing presence in 29 countries. We also
have advocacy offices in New York, London, Moscow, and Beijing as well
as the Washington office I direct. Our methodology has been clear,
nearly from the start:
--First, our analysts in the countries identify the drivers of
conflict.
--Second, based on that analysis, together with our senior staff,
Crisis Group defines policy recommendations on how to prevent those
factors from erupting into deadly violence, how to end it or how to
work in a post conflict environment to prevent its recurrence.
--The third leg of our conflict prevention stool involves advocacy by
our board and senior staff in the countries themselves, and around
the globe.
Our board is abnormally large, abnormally impressive, and
hopefully, abnormally influential. Today it is cochaired by Lord Patten
of Barnes, former European Commissioner for External Relations, and
Career Ambassador Thomas Pickering, former Under Secretary for
political affairs. Of the Americans, we have one former Republican
Senator, one former Democratic Senator as a founder and a chairman
emeritus and a former Cabinet member from each party. We also have a
half dozen former heads of state, more than a dozen former Ministers of
Defense and Foreign Relations, former international officials,
including as of July 1, former Secretary General Kofi Anan, and
business and civil society leaders.
Crisis Group is led by our president, Gareth Evans, former
Australian Foreign Minister, and also previously cochairman of the
Canadian-sponsored International Commission on Intervention and State
Sovereignty and a member of the Secretary General's High-Level Panel on
Threats, Challenges and Change in 2005.
Gareth Evans championed the concept of a ``Responsibility to
Protect'' (R2P) specifically to enable common ground to be found--and
this was a very divisive debate right through the 1990s--between those
who argued for an almost open-ended ``right to intervene'' in the case
of catastrophic human rights disasters, and those who argued at the
other extreme that state sovereignty meant that there could be no such
intervention without the consent of the state involved. In the past 50
years, the international community has come to recognize that a Rwanda,
Darfur, Cambodia, or Sarajevo cannot be veiled from international
responsibility by a curtain of national sovereignty. From the Genocide
Convention, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the
International Covenants, the International Treaties against the use of
Torture and Disappearance to the establishment of the International
Criminal Court--it is clear that there are limitations on state
sovereignty today that did not exist before the Holocaust and post-
Second World War belief that ``Never again'' must become more than
rhetoric.
As someone who served in the first Bureau of Human Rights in the
State Department, I still harbor enormous optimism about how far we
have come in overcoming those who assert the absolute nature of
national sovereignty. We could never have imagined then that a doctrine
incorporating a collective ``responsibility to protect'' individuals
against mass atrocities would be unanimously adopted by the United
Nations General Assembly.
In specific response to the committee's question: Yes; the
Responsibility to Protect is a fundamental element of a multilateral
framework to prevent and respond to mass atrocities.
The doctrine begins with the recognition that states bear primary
responsibility for protection of their populations against mass
atrocity crimes--genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes
against humanity--and the international community's normal role is to
cooperate, support, and help states acquire the capacity to protect
their populations.
The World Summit Outcome Document, September 2005. Heads of state
and government attending the 60th Session of the U.N. General Assembly
agreed as follows:
138. Each individual State has the responsibility to protect
its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and
crimes against humanity. This responsibility entails the
prevention of such crimes, including their incitement, through
appropriate and necessary means. We accept that responsibility
and will act in accordance with it. The international community
should, as appropriate, encourage and help States to exercise
this responsibility and support the United Nations in
establishing an early warning capability.
The concept begins with prevention, focusing on root causes as well
as the potential triggers of a crisis and with the development of an
``early warning'' capacity on the part of the United Nations to be able
to recognize conditions approaching R2P situations. We still would
argue that much more needs to be done to enable the U.N. and regional
organizations to fulfill that early warning capability.
The concept then accepts in paragraph 139 a collective
responsibility where states fail, through intent or incapacity, working
through the United Nations, to react, when conditions reach the point
of ``genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against
humanity.'' The concept calls first to use the whole array of peaceful
tools--diplomacy, humanitarian assistance, special rapporteurs,
commissions of inquiry, arms embargos, targeted sanctions on the
responsible government officials, economic and financial sanctions,
even preventive deployment of military forces--for instance EUFOR on
the Chadian border.
139. The international community, through the United Nations,
also has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic,
humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with
chapters VI and VIII of the charter, to help to protect
populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and
crimes against humanity. In this context, we are prepared to
take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner,
through the Security Council, in accordance with the charter,
including chapter VII, on a case-by-case basis and in
cooperation with relevant regional organizations as
appropriate, should peaceful means be inadequate and national
authorities are manifestly failing to protect their populations
from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against
humanity. We stress the need for the General Assembly to
continue consideration of the responsibility to protect
populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and
crimes against humanity and its implications, bearing in mind
the principles of the charter and international law. We also
intend to commit ourselves, as necessary and appropriate, to
helping States build capacity to protect their populations from
genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against
humanity and to assisting those which are under stress before
crises and conflicts break out.
In fact, the Responsibility to Protect encompasses three finite
components: The responsibility to prevent, the responsibility to react,
and the responsibility to rebuild, particularly the latter if the
military force has occurred. ICISS and Secretary General Kofi Annan, in
his report to the 2005 summit, entitled ``In Larger Freedom: Toward
Development, Security and Human Rights for All,'' embraced that
multifaced nature of the Responsibility to Protect.
A month before the Millennium Plus 5 summit, I had the occasion to
address the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict at
the United Nations, which brought together civil society from around
the world in support of the R2P concept. We were there in part to urge
its adoption by the summit. It was civil society from north and south
that was demanding a collective response when states engaged in, or
failed to stop mass atrocities, but also that prevention had to be at
its core.
Secretary Ban Ki-moon, in naming my distinguished fellow panelist,
Professor Edward Luck, his special advisor on R2P, emphasized the
importance of making it ``operational'' and in that context, hopefully,
this hearing will advance that effort.
Crisis Group also is helping that process as one of the founders of
the ``Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect'' which was
launched in February with a strong statement of support by Secretary
General Ban. He urged the Centre, based at the Ralph Bunche Institute
at CUNY, to help the international community ``take the principle of
the responsibility to protect from concept to actuality, from word to
deed.'' That is still the challenge.
As we engage in this discussion, I think it is useful to recall
what the Responsibility to Protect is not.
It is focused squarely on mass atrocity crimes like genocide
and crimes against humanity, and not human security problems
more generally like HIV/AIDs or the impact of climate change or
natural disasters (where these don't also involve the
commission of mass atrocity crimes).
It is not the same as ``humanitarian intervention'' when
that term is understood, as it almost invariably now is, as
meaning solely the coercive use of military force against the
wishes of the involved nation-state to preserve human life: It
is a broader concept, focused heavily on prevention, and
assistance and persuasion, with coercive measures, including
military force, only appropriate as a last resort.
It does not justify the automatic and unconditional use of
military force even when violation reaches the levels of mass
atrocities: There are other prudential criteria to be
satisfied, including whether coercive intervention would on
balance do more harm than good.
How then does the Responsibility to Protect help us in considering
the cases of Burma, Darfur, and Zimbabwe?
For Burma/Myanmar, the starting point has to be that R2P is not
itself about protecting people from the impact of natural disasters. Of
course they should be protected--and our humanitarian obligation as an
international community is to do everything we possibly can to ensure
that they are--but the R2P principle, as agreed in 2005, and with all
that it implies about the possible coercive use of military force if
all else fails, only cuts in when mass atrocity crimes are involved.
The real question here is whether it can be argued that crimes
against humanity were involved in the recklessly indifferent response
of the generals.
The official figures in May were of some 60-100,000 dead and 2.4
million affected. It was unconscionable that the Burmese generals
prevented international aid and international aid workers for several
weeks from reaching the victims. Amnesty International has estimated
that 2 weeks after the cyclone, two-thirds of the victims had not yet
received aid. Surely had all Western ships in the area been allowed to
bring relief to bear--some of them would have received water and food
and life-saving help.
On Friday, the U.N.'s Office of Coordination of Humanitarian
Assistance (OCHA) issued its 31st Situation Report noting that still
more than 1 million of the 2.4 million victims of the cyclone have yet
to receive aid. It cited a month-old government estimate of 77,738
killed and 55,917 missing. It also noted that some 250 international
aid workers from ASEAN, the U.N. and supporting countries are making a
new assessment of need.
This weekend, I noted that USAID and Agricultural officials have
been able to go on the ground to assess the cyclone-affected areas,
that USAID has been able to coordinate 35 DOD C-130 flights with relief
aid. The U.N., ASEAN, and other relief teams currently are engaged in
assessment and coordination. However, let us be clear. Not enough was
done immediately and people died needlessly as a result. And not enough
is being done today to reach all of the victims with all of the
resources available from the outside community--without obstacles,
without visa restrictions, without considering whose flag is on whose
ships or whose planes.
So does this constitute a crime against humanity of a kind that
would trigger the R2P principle?
On the face of it, whether the government sends its armed forces to
murder large numbers of its citizens or whether it denies them food or
medicine and they die of hunger or disease is different only in kind.
The definition of crimes against humanity, most recently
incorporated by the international community in the Rome statute states,
covers along with widespread or systematic murder, torture, persecution
and the like, ``other inhumane acts of a similar character
intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to
mental or physical health.'' Starving villages by denying food relief
on a continuing basis until the residents died when such relief was
available seems, on any view, to get very close to what is punishable
here, although there is obviously room for lawyers to argue about
whether ``intentionally'' means cold-blooded, deliberate willingness to
cause death or reckless, negligent, indifference as to whether people
died or not.
Even if one gets past this hurdle, there is still an issue, in any
application of the R2P principle, as to whether the coercive use of
military force is appropriate.
The relevant criteria (which have been part of all the public
discussion of R2P but unfortunately were not included in the 2005 World
Summit resolution--partly because of U.S. administration objections)
include not only ``the just cause threshold,'' that is the finding of
``serious and irreparable harm''; right intention, such that the
primary purpose of the intervention is to halt or prevent the harm;
last resort, that nonmilitary means have been tried and failed, or can
be judged unlikely to succeed; proportional means that the ``scale,
duration, and intensity'' of the planned military intervention is the
minimum necessary to protect the population; and--very importantly--
reasonable prospects that the intervention will prevent the crime or
bring the atrocities to a halt and that the consequences of the
intervention will not themselves be worse than if there had been no
intervention. In the Burma/Myanmar context many voices were heard from
aid agencies and others arguing that as a practical matter military
intervention would not work, or make matters on the ground even worse
for the affected population.
There are no easy answers to any of these questions, and it is
clear that there was no consensus about how to answer them in the
Security Council, which is under international law the proper forum to
debate and resolve any issue involving the use of military force other
than in self-defense.
But one can certainly argue that the existence of the R2P norm--as
endorsed by the U.N. General Assembly at the 2005 World Summit, and
endorsed subsequently by the Security Council in resolutions--on
protection of civilians in armed conflict UNSCR 1674 and again in UNSCR
1706 in authorizing U.N. peacekeepers to Darfur--may well have been a
factor in the decisionmaking of the Burmese generals to remove some of
the obstacles to relief. The French Foreign Minister's call for urgent
military action based on that concept undoubtedly did not go unnoticed
in Burma even if, at the time, it brought him much criticism. When in
subsequent days the argument was expressed by the U.K. and others a
little more carefully, making clear that crimes against humanity had to
be involved, not just an inadequate disaster response, if the R2P
principle was to apply, and that there was at least a prima facie case
to be made that crimes against humanity were being committed, there is
reason to believe that the possibility of being held to account by
international criminal law concentrated the minds of the generals.
Overall the diplomatic pressure did have some effect, and the R2P
argument was part of it. Burma's Asian neighbours--the ASEAN countries,
China and India--were reluctant to go down this path, but clearly made
important representations of their own. There is quite a distance to go
in winning international consensus on how the R2P principle should
apply in a variety of situations, and few will be more difficult--or
raise more arguments on both sides--than the Burma case. But the effort
to build that consensus, and further refine and develop the R2P
doctrine so that it does become an effective blueprint for action,
should continue.
The committee also raised the question of the applicability of the
``Responsibility to Protect'' in other situations:
Zimbabwe: If the hijacking of food relief aid continues as well as
the widespread denial of food assistance to the political opposition in
Zimbabwe continues, then we may well have to ask the question as to
whether we are approaching a similar R2P situation in Zimbabwe in which
crimes against humanity, not just lesser human rights violations, are
involved, with all that implies. At the very least, reenergized
diplomatic efforts are urgently called for--both with respect to the
humanitarian crisis and with respect to the political crisis. WFP has
said some 4 million people are in need of food aid.
Darfur: The case of Darfur is much more clearly a matter of R2P and
the United Nations Security Council has considered the matter not once
but multiple times with the adoption under Chapter VII of Resolution
1706, authorizing the U.N. Mission in Sudan to ``use `All Necessary
Means' to Protect United Nations personnel, Civilians under threat of
physical violence'' and specifically citing R2P in that context. If
there is any indication of the need to make R2P operational it is
Darfur. Resolution after resolution, the United Nations members have
failed to follow through on their commitments--whether to impose a no-
fly zone, to act when the Government of Sudan failed to disarm the
Janjaweed, to take over by last December from the African Union full
operational control of the peacekeeping force, to establish unity of
command and lastly to fully deploy the 26,000-strong U.N. force with
the troops needed, whether or not the Government of Sudan approves.
This was not a failure of the doctrine of R2P but the failure of
will of the members of the U.N. to enforce the authority of the
Security Council, and to use instruments of international pressure that
will really work. That remains a challenge even as we speak. It is not
a matter here of assuming that the only remedy is the coercive use of
military force: There are strong reasons for believing that this, even
if it could be mobilized, would be counterproductive, and many of those
engaged in humanitarian relief have argued that the negative collateral
costs are too high in terms of halting relief aid and putting
humanitarian workers--foreign and domestic--at risk. What is disturbing
is that the willingness to use the full range of other instruments and
to maintain unceasing pressure to achieve an end to the crisis has been
lacking. Making R2P fully operational remains an ongoing challenge.
The committee also has asked that we look beyond R2P to whether
other policy instruments which might be implemented and whether
regional organizations have a role to play. Clearly there are roles of
regional organizations and the work of ASEAN in inducing Burma to move
as far as it has is one example. In the Western Hemisphere, the Pan
American Health Organization has a long history of cooperation on
humanitarian issues and with the OAS might well be a source for
movement toward regional agreements on mandatory access for
humanitarian relief. Multilateral organizations like the OAS or the
U.N. are more likely to be accepted by nation-states than countries
whose motives might be suspect. The principles begin with the notion
that it is people who are sovereign, not governments. While a state has
primary responsibility, the International Committee of the Red Cross
and others have suggested that when a state refuses or is unable, an
international treaty would require that humanitarian assistance be
allowed in accord with certain principles:
That humanitarian assistance be provided without
discrimination;
That it be provided through an intergovernmental
organization or a qualified organization unaligned with any
government and qualified by OCHA;
That priority in assistance go to those most urgent cases of
distress;
That it not be used to advance any political or religious
view;
That where possible it respect local culture, customs, and
norms.
In the 21st century, surely we are at a stage where norms should
protect human life and people rather than the absolutist definitions of
state sovereignty coming out of the 17th century.
Senator Menendez. Thank you.
Dr. Patrick.
STATEMENT OF DR. STEWART PATRICK, SENIOR FELLOW AND DIRECTOR OF
THE PROGRAM ON INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS AND GLOBAL
GOVERNANCE, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, WASHINGTON, DC
Dr. Patrick. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman Menendez. It
is an honor to testify before this subcommittee on policy
options for the United States in the wake of natural disasters
when regimes create impediments to the delivery of lifesaving
assistance.
The issue before us is really part of a longer or wider
debate about the limits of state sovereignty when regimes fail
to meet their fundamental obligations to their citizens and
appropriate responses of outsiders, including the United
States, during those circumstances. And as we have said, this
is very timely not only in view of Cyclone Nargis but also in
the decision of the Government of Zimbabwe to shut down the
operations of NGOs that are feeding up to 4 million people in
that country.
Although I agree with my fellow panelists, there are no
easy answers to the questions you have posed, these hearings I
think have already begun to shed some light on the principles
and considerations that should inform U.S. policy on the range
of actions that are available and some of the tradeoffs and
dilemmas inherent in these choices.
Our goal in my view should be to expand the U.S. foreign
policy tool kit so that we are not simply left with the
extremes in the sense of standing idly by as civilians die and
launching a full-scale invasion of the offending state.
In my view, recent natural disasters underscore both the
impressive scope of global humanitarian action and its
vulnerability to political obstructionism, and several points
in my view have emerged from these experiences.
First is that the United Nations possesses a robust
multilateral framework and an unmatched comparative advantage
in launching international responses to natural disasters. At
the same time, the Emergency Response Coordinator, who leads
the U.N. response, generally requires some level of consent
from the host government, however incomplete or grudging, and
when this is absent, as John Holmes discovered in Burma, you
have a real impediment to delivery of assistance.
The second observation is that most countries in the
developing world, even with repressive governments like Burma,
possess some humanitarian presence that the U.N. and other
actors, including the U.S. Government, can leverage during
times of crisis, but that in and of itself is not enough.
The third point that we have learned is that effective
humanitarian response is not simply about delivering supplies
to the host government or to local service providers. It is
also about access, access for U.N. aid workers, donor
governments, and NGOs who are the only ones that normally
possess the technical and managerial expertise necessary to
conduct timely needs assessments, to organize the distribution
of supplies, and to adapt to new phases of the crisis.
The fourth point that we have learned is that
authoritarian, corrupt, and criminally negligent regimes
exacerbate humanitarian catastrophes, transforming natural
disasters into manmade ones. Closed societies like Burma,
Zimbabwe, and North Korea are both more susceptible to disaster
and worse at responding to them.
Given these political impediments, it has been natural to
ask as Foreign Minister of France Bernard Kouchner did about
whether or not the international community should be prepared
to invoke the responsibility to protect. As my colleagues have
noted, the R2P norm recognizes, in effect, that sovereignty is
contingent upon the fulfillment of certain fundamental
obligations. The notion of expanding R2P to natural disasters
implies that callous state indifference to the plight of
disaster victims may rise to the level of a crime against
humanity.
Now others, including Ed Luck, in discussing this earlier
suggest that such expansion would be unwise. They point out
that it would undermine the fragile global consensus on
applying the concept to mass atrocity crimes, that the
threshold level of obstruction necessary to trigger the
doctrine remains unclear, that invoking R2P in disaster
situations would close off entirely what limited access to
humanitarian actors actually exists, and that the doctrine
implies a willingness also to use military force that could
both exacerbate the humanitarian catastrophe and be tough to
sustain domestically in the United States and other intervening
countries.
In my view, these objections are not easily dismissed. My
own belief is that the norm of R2P should be invoked following
natural disasters only in exceptional circumstances subject to
three conditions. The conduct of the offending state must be
conscious and egregious, threatening imminent massive loss of
life. Second, there must be prospects for consensus within the
Security Council on the norm's application. And third,
importantly, the invocation of the doctrine must promise to
increase, as opposed to constrict, humanitarian space by saving
more human lives than it jeopardizes.
There is ample scope, as has been discussed, for lawyers or
even my two copanelists to debate the boundaries of the
responsibility to protect doctrine. These debates, however,
should not distract us from considering practical steps that we
can begin to take today to improve humanitarian access in the
aftermath of natural disasters that fall well short of full-
fledged military invasion. In my written testimony, I
introduced seven principles that should guide U.S. policy, and
I will simply telegraph them here.
The first point is that the U.S. should support the
negotiation of a new multilateral agreement clarifying state
responsibilities to provide humanitarian access while also
encouraging governments to adopt standing protocols with
respect to the receipt of emergency aid.
Second, to avoid being caught flat-footed when disaster
strikes, the United States should create a more robust
contingency planning framework. Such over-the-horizon planning
has been moribund since the second year of the Bush
administration.
Third, when natural disaster strikes, the overriding
criteria for U.S. policy should be whether the proposed action
promises to expand or shrink humanitarian space. And it is
important to put other considerations, even those that we have
espoused such as regime change, on the back burner unless there
is no other means to gain access.
Fourth, the United States should seek to give international
intervention, and any intervention that it contemplates, a
humanitarian face, a multilateral imprimatur, and a regional
dimension. Placing the U.S. military out in front, and acting
on a unilateral, or bilateral ad hoc basis can be
counterproductive to the goal of saving lives.
Fifth, when U.S. relations with the affected country are
particularly poor, the United States should empower others and
particularly the relevant regional organizations. A priority
for U.S. policy must be to bolster the uncertain will and often
limited capacity of regional bodies like the African Union, the
Organization of American States, and ASEAN to prepare,
coordinate, and deliver humanitarian assistance in their
neighborhoods.
Sixth, military force is not the only, nor necessarily the
most, desirable way to change incentives of bad actors. The
United States needs to open up and work on its foreign policy
tool box so that it can hone a wider array of policy
instruments beyond showing up off the country's coast with some
ships loaded with troops and supplies. It needs to invest more
time and resources in crisis diplomacy at the U.N., in regional
organizations, and with critical countries that have leverage
over the recalcitrant regime. And it needs to explore a wider
range of incentives, including those that are both positive and
negative.
And then finally--and this is my last comment--when
considering armed force to ensure humanitarian access, the
United States must be realistic about the likely magnitude of
any military resistance, for instance, from a country like
Burma that has 500,000 people in uniform. It must also treat
the use of force as a last resort, resist the temptation to do
this alone, and be prepared to own the aftermath, as has been
discussed by the previous panel, of any armed intervention
which will imply not only the responsibility to protect, but
the responsibility to rebuild.
Thank you for this opportunity.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Patrick follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Stewart Patrick, Senior Fellow and Director,
Program on International Institutions and Global Governance, Council on
Foreign Relations, Washington, DC
Chairman Menendez, Senator Hagel, and members of the committee, it
is an honor for me to testify on policy options for the international
community in the wake of natural disasters, particularly when
recalcitrant regimes prevent the delivery of life-saving assistance.
This hearing is a timely one, given the abysmal performance of the
Burmese junta following Cyclone Nargis and the recent decision by the
Government of Zimbabwe to shut down the operations of international
NGOs that provide food aid to an estimated 4 million people in that
country. Today's discussion is part of a broader debate about the
limits of state sovereignty and the responses available to outside
actors when governments fail to meet fundamental obligations to their
citizens. I commend the committee for its willingness to grapple with
these tough questions, for which there are no easy answers.
If hard and fast rules are elusive, this hearing may nevertheless
shed light on certain principles and considerations that should inform
U.S. policy, the range of actions available to the United States and
its partners, and the dilemmas and tradeoffs inherent in each. Our goal
should be to expand America's foreign policy toolkit, so that we are
left with a wider array of choices than the extremes of standing idly
by as innocent civilians die or launching a full-scale invasion of the
offending state.
My testimony is divided into three parts. I begin by reviewing the
multilateral framework for humanitarian action following natural
disasters. I underline the importance of ensuring humanitarian access
and the obstacles that dictatorial regimes can place in the way of an
effective response. I then ask whether the ``Responsibility to
Protect'' (R2P) doctrine should be extended to natural disasters in
which the ruling regime impedes international assistance. I submit that
the doctrine should be applied only in exceptional circumstances: When
egregious state misconduct threatens massive loss of life; when there
is broad international consensus on the norm's application; and when
its invocation promises to increase ``humanitarian space,'' by
advancing the goal of saving human lives.
I close by offering some practical recommendations for strategies
to reduce political obstacles to humanitarian action following natural
disasters. Guidelines and priorities for U.S. policy include: (a)
Sponsoring a new multilateral agreement clarifying U.N. Member State
responsibilities; (b) improving U.S. contingency planning to avoid
getting caught flat-footed; (c) focusing U.S. efforts on the expansion
of ``humanitarian space;'' (d) empowering regional organizations to
take the lead; (e) opening the U.S. diplomatic ``toolbox'' to expand
points of leverage; and (f) developing a realistic U.S. doctrine for
the use of military force, as part of a multilateral effort, when all
other avenues fail.
the challenge of humanitarian access
Recent natural disasters, from the Indian Ocean tsunami to Cyclone
Nargis, have underscored both the impressive scope of global
humanitarian action and its vulnerability to political obstruction.
Several points stand out from recent experience.
First, the United Nations possesses a robust multilateral framework
and unmatched comparative advantages in launching prompt international
responses to natural disasters.\1\ U.N. disaster response efforts are
undertaken under the leadership of the U.N. Emergency Relief
Coordinator (ERC), who heads the Office the Coordinator of Humanitarian
Affairs (OCHA). The ERC presides over the U.N.'s Interagency Standing
Committee (IASC) for humanitarian affairs, composed of relevant U.N.
system programs and agencies and representatives of the main private
voluntary aid organizations.\2\ Beyond directing responses from U.N.
headquarters, OCHA generally coordinates emergency responses within the
affected country, in partnership with U.N. agencies, bilateral donor
aid agencies, and nongovernmental organization (NGO) partners.
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\1\ Following the Indian Ocean tsunami, the Bush administration
initially announced the formation of a ``core group'' of major
countries to organize the international response, but quickly abandoned
this ill-conceived effort following objections from the international
community.
\2\ Full members of the IASC include OCHA, FAO, UNDP, UNFPA, UNHCR,
UNICEF, WFP, and WHO. Standing invitees include IOM, the World Bank,
the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Secretary
General's Special Representative on the Human Rights of Internally
Displaced Peoples, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the
International Committee of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the
International Organization for Migration (IOM), the American Council
for Voluntary International Action (InterAction), and the International
Council of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA).
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As legal matter, the ERC has sweeping authorities to declare a
humanitarian emergency and to lead a global effort to respond to it,
without any formal decision by the Security Council or the explicit
consent of the government of the affected state. As a practical matter,
some basic level of consent from the host government (however
incomplete and grudging) is generally required for the U.N. to organize
and deliver humanitarian assistance. Where it is lacking, as Jan
Egeland found in Darfur and his successor John Holmes discovered in
Burma, the United Nations may be blocked from conducting relief
operations.
Second, most countries in the developing world possess some local
humanitarian presence that can be leveraged following natural
catastrophes. This is true even in repressive states. Burma is a case
in point. At the time that Cyclone Nargis struck, some 2,600 Burmese
were working for U.S.-based NGOs in the Irrawaddy Delta. So although
outside agencies could not get supplies and people into Burma, they
could in some cases transfer money to national staff to buy local
resources. Thus Save the Children delivered 145 tons of relief supplies
in the first 48 hours, and international NGOs reached 265,000 people in
the first week. I hasten to add that this was only a small fraction of
the affected population. But it underlines that even in the most
repressive states a local platform often exists upon which an
international humanitarian response can build.
Third, effective humanitarian response is not simply about
delivering supplies. It is also about access--specifically, about
access for international aid workers from U.N. agencies, donor
governments, and nongovernmental organizations who are adept at working
with local partners and capable of conducting needs assessments,
determining where aid should be distributed, organizing the
distribution of these supplies, and adapting to new phases of the
crisis as it evolves, including ultimately restoring livelihoods. Few
governments and societies in the developing world have the standing
capacity to respond to large-scale natural disasters without the help
of the international humanitarian system. Outsiders bring indispensable
financial resources, logistical capabilities, managerial expertise, and
technical skills that rarely exist locally.
Fourth, authoritarian, corrupt, and criminally negligent regimes
can exacerbate humanitarian catastrophes, transforming ``natural''
disasters into manmade ones. In the case of Burma, decades of
unaccountable and unresponsive governance left the inhabitants of the
Irrawaddy Delta particularly vulnerable to a devastating cyclone. The
Burmese junta then compounded human suffering through a litany of
egregious actions designed to limit humanitarian access while
preserving their iron grip on the country. This included denying the
entry of international search and rescue teams; refusing to issue visas
for foreign aid workers; restricting airborne delivery of foreign
assistance; sealing the disaster zone to non-Burmese; and diverting aid
to reward regime cronies. Three weeks after the cyclone, the trickle of
emergency assistance had reached only a small fraction of the estimated
2 million affected people. The Burma experience, like that of North
Korea and Zimbabwe, underscores that closed societies are both more
susceptible to ``natural'' disasters and demonstrably worse at
responding to them than are open societies.\3\ (Contrast Burma with
neighboring Bangladesh, an equally poor but democratic country, which
possesses a sophisticated preparedness and evacuation infrastructure;
or with Indonesia, a new democracy that facilitated the construction of
a massive international aid pipeline within 2 days of the Indian Ocean
tsunami.).
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\3\ Beyond fearing a loss of control to--and being shown up by--
international actors, dictatorial regimes are aware that massive
humanitarian responses can have profound political consequences. In
Indonesia, for example, the influx of post-tsunami aid and humanitarian
actors helped to create a political opening to advance the peace
process in Aceh.
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the ``responsibility to protect'' and its relevance to natural
disasters
Given the political impediments that sovereign governments have
placed on the delivery of emergency assistance, it is reasonable to ask
whether the international community has any recourse to insist upon, or
even enforce, the unencumbered flow of relief in the aftermath of
natural disasters. Following Cyclone Nargis, a number of observers have
argued that the new U.N. norm of a ``Responsibility to Protect''
provides sufficient legal and moral basis for overriding national
sovereignty in such circumstances. While this argument has merit in
extreme cases, it remains highly controversial globally and provides no
silver bullet for improving humanitarian access following natural
disasters.
The United Nations' General Assembly endorsed the concept of a
``Responsibility to Protect'' in September 2005, as part of the Outcome
Document of the U.N. High Level Summit. The concept recognizes that
sovereignty is, in effect, contingent, dependent on the state's
fulfillment of fundamental obligations. Specifically, when a government
makes war on its citizens--or fails to prevent atrocities from being
committed against them--the ``responsibility to protect'' transfers to
the international community. To enforce this new norm, the Outcome
Document envisions a set of graduated responses, beginning with
``diplomatic, humanitarian, and other peaceful means'' under chapters
VI and VIII, but including the potential use of armed force under
chapter VII of the U.N. Charter.\4\
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\4\ The official U.S. position, as outlined by U.N. Representative
John R. Bolton in a letter of August 30, 2005, is that the
international obligation to take collective action under chapter VII is
an ethical rather than legal one, and, moreover, any such action will
remain the purview of the U.N. Security Council, where the United
States and other Permanent Members wield a veto. http://
www.responsibilitytoprotect.org/index.php/government_statements/.
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The underlying motivation behind the ``Responsibility to Protect''
concept was to help prevent new Rwandas, Srebenicas, and Kosovos--
instances in which murderous regimes or their proxies slaughtered
thousands of unarmed civilians. To date, the international community
has found it easier to enunciate this new norm than to enforce it. As
the ongoing violence in Darfur illustrates, it is one thing to declare
a responsibility to protect; it is quite another to marshal the
political will and the practical capacity required to implement it.
Nevertheless, the new ``doctrine'' represents a profound normative
evolution within the context of the United Nations, an organization
founded in 1945 on the bedrock principles of state sovereignty and
nonintervention.
Whether the Responsibility to Protect extends to disasters that are
``natural'' in origin but exacerbated by state incapacity or
malevolence is a subject of vigorous debate. The International
Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), which first
developed the concept, envisioned that it would apply not only to mass
atrocities but also when states are unable or unwilling to provide
relief in humanitarian emergencies.\5\ The 2005 Outcome Document took a
narrower approach, however, restricting the norm's application to four
specific situations: ``Genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and
crimes against humanity.'' \6\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty,
The Responsibility to Protect http://www.iciss.ca/pdf/Commission-
Report.pdf.
\6\ United Nations General Assembly, World Outcome Summit Document,
September 15, 2005, http://www.who.int/hiv/universalaccess2010/
worldsummit.pdf.
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Although this would appear to exclude natural disasters from the
doctrine's purview, things are less clear-cut if the regime's conduct
can be said to constitute a ``crime against humanity.'' In May 2008,
French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, ignited a diplomatic
firestorm by invoking the doctrine in the case of Burma, arguing that
the junta's failure to provide access to outside relief agencies would
condemn tens of thousands of Burmese to death from exposure, hunger,
and disease.\7\ Other prominent European diplomats, as well as
independent commentators, have adopted a similar line of argument.\8\
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\7\ ``U.N. Action Argued over Burma Cyclone,'' Reuters, May 8,
2008. ``International Pressure on Myanmar Junta Is Building,'' New York
Times, May 18, 2008.
\8\ Gareth Evans, ``Facing Up To Our Responsibilities,'' The
Guardian, May 12, 2008. Ivo Daalder and Paul Stares, ``The United
Nations Can Save Burma,'' Boston Globe, May 13, 2008; Stewart Patrick,
``Open the Door To Aid,'' Baltimore Sun, May 15, 2008.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This reasoning has met with equally fierce resistance. Critics
raise several weighty objections: First, the effort to expand the
doctrine to natural disasters could undermine the painstakingly
negotiated (but already fragile) consensus on the concept's application
to situations of mass atrocity crimes, particularly among developing
countries with a neuralgic fear of outside intervention. Second,
determining the precise threshold at which a state's obstruction of
humanitarian access becomes a ``crime against humanity'' remains
elusive. Third, the invocation of the doctrine could lead a
recalcitrant regime to close off entirely what humanitarian access
(however imperfect) currently exists. Finally, the doctrine implies, at
least in principle, a willingness to consider the use of military force
to ensure the delivery of aid,\9\ raising both the specter of armed
resistance and the likelihood of casualties among the intervening
force. Such military action could exacerbate rather than ameliorate the
humanitarian catastrophe, and it could be tough to sustain
domestically.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ Robert D. Kaplan, ``Aid at the Point of a Gun,'' New York
Times, May 14, 2008.
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These concerns are not easily dismissed. They suggest that prior to
extending the doctrine to any natural disaster, the United States and
other would-be interveners must be able to answer three questions in
the affirmative.
First, does the doctrine apply in the current case?
Second, are there decent prospects for securing consensus,
or at least acquiescence, within the Security Council?
Third, is the invocation of the doctrine, and its practical
implementation, likely to make any tangible difference on the
ground, or instead worsen the humanitarian situation?
Answering these questions will require a judicious assessment of
nature of the crisis, the spectrum of possible international
responses--including, but by no means limited to, military force--and
the likely consequences of any course of action for the flow of life-
saving assistance.
practical steps to improve humanitarian access following natural
disasters
There is ample scope for lawyers to debate the boundaries of the
Responsibility to Protect, including the threshold at which the
doctrine kicks in. These debates should not however distract us from
considering practical approaches to improving humanitarian access in
the aftermath of natural disasters that fall well short of full-fledged
military invasion.
A few sensible goals and principles should guide U.S. policy. The
United States should seek to:
(1) Clarify state obligations to provide humanitarian access. A
recurrent limitation of today's global humanitarian system is the
absence of standing protocols governing access that could avoid delays,
uncertainties, and obstructionism in the aftermath of natural
disasters. Many developing, particularly African, countries have
resisted negotiating any new multilateral agreements, on
noninterventionist grounds. The United States should work behind the
scenes to encourage such governments to adopt standing protocols for
humanitarian aid. The longer term goal should be to establish an
international treaty regime (or at a minimum regional frameworks)
enumerating state responsibilities regarding humanitarian access.
(2) Plan ahead. To avoid being caught flat-footed when disaster
strikes, the United States needs a more robust framework for
contingency planning. This would help U.S. officials better anticipate
where such emergencies may arise; what political obstacles may emerge
in particular countries; what range of policy options is likely to be
available; what assets and pressure points the United States has at its
disposal; and what regional bodies and foreign power wielders might
have leverage over difficult regimes. Outside of the U.S. military, the
U.S. Government currently devotes few resources and little time to such
``over the horizon'' planning. A first step should be to revive the
Contingency Planning Policy Coordination Committee (PCC) within the
National Security Council, which met regularly from 2001-2002 but was
abandoned in the run up to the invasion of Iraq.
(3) Keep the focus on ``humanitarian space.'' When a major natural
disaster strikes, the overriding consideration for U.S. policymaking
should be whether the proposed suite of actions promises to expand or
shrink the opportunity to save human lives. Other policy goals,
including as regime change, should be placed on the back burner unless
there is no other prospect of gaining humanitarian access.
(4) Give any intervention a humanitarian face, a multilateral
imprimatur, and a regional dimension. All things being equal, an
authoritarian regime will be more likely to support (or at least
acquiesce to) requests for humanitarian access if the effort appears to
be more humanitarian than military in nature; if the insistence on
access is endorsed by the U.N. Security Council; and if the relevant
regional and subregional organizations play a prominent role in
designing, coordinating, and implementing assistance. In the case of
Burma, the United States hoped to use naval assets to deliver relief
directly (as in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami).
Unfortunately, what the United States viewed as a promising platform
for emergency relief appeared to the paranoid junta as a potential
instrument of regime change.
(5) Empower others to lead, particularly through regional
organizations. Where the United States has unfriendly relations with
the relevant state, efforts to assert U.S. leadership can be
counterproductive. In such circumstances, there is a strong case for
adopting a low profile, while encouraging relevant regional and
subregional organizations to help the U.N. organize and deliver
humanitarian aid. Unfortunately, outside NATO and the European Union,
few regional bodies are currently prepared to discharge this
responsibility.\10\ Thus a priority for U.S. action should be to help
bolster both the will and capacity of organizations like ASEAN, the AU
and the OAS to coordinate and deliver humanitarian assistance in their
neighborhoods, including through joint training and exercises,
stockpiling of supplies, development of emergency logistical
infrastructure and interoperable communications, and joint standby
arrangements to deploy previously earmarked civil and military assets.
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\10\ ASEAN in 2005 approved a framework for Disaster Management and
Emergency Response and has recently begun joint disaster response
training exercises. The Organization of American States (OAS) in 2007
established an Inter-American Network for Disaster Management. The
African Union is beginning to develop an implementation plan for a
disaster risk reduction strategy approved in 2004. All of these
initiatives remain in their infancy, however.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
(6) Open the diplomatic toolbox. Military force is not the only,
much less the most desirable, way to change the incentives of bad
actors. The United States needs to hone a wider array of policy
instruments to persuade recalcitrant countries to expand humanitarian
access following natural disasters, beyond showing up off the country's
coast with warships loaded with troops and supplies. Comprehensive
strategies of ``coerced consent'' should include:
a. Enhanced diplomatic pressure, particularly within the
Security Council, U.N. General Assembly and relevant regional
organizations. Past experience may suggest creative ways to
leverage multilateral bodies. When violence erupted in East
Timor following the referendum of 1999, the Security Council
placed great pressure on Jakarta to ``invite'' a U.N.
peacekeeping operation in what remained then a province of
Indonesia, including by flying to Dili to hold Council
meetings. In the more recent case of Burma, the proposal by
France to pursue a Council resolution under the R2P doctrine
may have had some instrumental value, in encouraging the
Burmese regime to accept an alternative, ASEAN-led humanitarian
initiative.
b. Targeted incentives to change the regime's behavior,
including through positive inducements (e.g., hints of aid or
trade concessions, debt relief, removal of sanctions) and
punitive steps (e.g., trade restrictions, financial freezes,
travel bans, and threats of indictment against senior
officials.) Given that repressive regimes like Burma and
Zimbabwe tend to be heavily sanctioned already, positive
inducements may well be more promising avenues to secure
behavioral change.
c. Cultivation of regional players with leverage. Even
isolated dictatorships like Burma, North Korea, or Zimbabwe
have close ties with one or more large regional players (e.g.,
China and South Africa). While these traditional protectors may
resist interventionist strategies that threaten the stability
or nature of friendly client regimes, they may be enlisted
quietly to ease restrictions on humanitarian assistance, in
return for particular incentives or to burnish their image as
responsible global stakeholders.
d. Military steps short of war. Options include declaring a
``no-fly zone'' over the disaster area, as well as engaging in
preventive deployments in nearby countries.
(7) When considering military action to ensure humanitarian access
following natural disasters, the United States should adopt the
following guidelines:
a. Be realistic. To put the matter bluntly, there is a world
of difference between intervening militarily in a small country
with weak state capacity, such as in Rwanda, Burundi, or East
Timor, and attempting to do so in a massive country like Sudan
or one with a large military like Burma (with 500,000 soldiers
under arms). Given the requirements and implications of
forcible intervention against such countries, policymakers may
need to accept inconsistencies in their responses to the
obstruction of humanitarian aid.
b. Treat the use of force as a last resort. The trigger for
armed intervention must be set high, limited to the most
egregious cases, when peaceful alternatives have been exhausted
and the death of massive numbers of people is imminent. It
should be undertaken only after sober calculation of the likely
lives saved versus lost in any invasion, as well as the
perceived stakes for the United States and the implications for
a variety of U.S. interests.\11\ Any such action should be
consistent with ``precautionary'' principles outlined by the
ICISS. That is, military action should be undertaken only if
``diplomatic, humanitarian, and other peaceful means'' have
been exhausted; if it is directed to saving lives; if it is
proportional to the severity of the crisis; and if it has
reasonable prospects of success.
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\11\ Stewart Patrick, Policy Planning Staff, U.S. Department of
State, ``The Role of the U.S. Government in Humanitarian
Intervention,'' Remarks to the 43rd Annual International Affairs
Symposium, ``The Suffering of Strangers: Global Humanitarian
Intervention in a Turbulent World,'' Lewis and Clark College, Portland,
Oregon, April 5, 2004.
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c. Don't go it alone. Particularly when armed force is
required, prudence dictates acting with partners to maximize
perceived legitimacy and share military burdens. When a storm
is brewing, the U.N. Security Council should be the first port
of call. The major challenge will arise (as it did in the case
of Burma) when the Council is unable to agree on a resolution
insisting on humanitarian access and when the relevant regional
organization fails for a protracted period to step up to the
plate, whether out of weak capacity or fear of alienating one
of its Member States. In such circumstances the United States
should hold out the possibility of acting through an ad hoc
coalition of interested states.
d. Be prepared to own the aftermath of any armed
intervention. Experiences of the last 20 years suggest that
``impartial'' intervention is a delusion. Armed intervention
for human protection purposes invariably involves not only
delivering life-saving aid but also taking sides. It is also
likely to unleash unpredictable consequences (which may include
regime change) and may require a significant, long-term
international presence. The ``responsibility to protect''
involves not only a responsibility to respond, but also a
``responsibility to rebuild'' once the shooting stops.
e. Be honest. Finally, domestic U.S. support for any military
action can be sustained only if the President is honest with
Congress and the American people from the outset, explaining
the mission clearly, speaking frankly about the costs and
risks, and preparing the country for potential sacrifices. From
Somalia to Iraq, such candor has often been conspicuously
absent.
Senator Menendez. Thank you all for your testimony.
Dr. Luck, is it the U.N.'s view that the Burmese regime
exercised its responsibility as a sovereign?
Dr. Luck. Well, I do not know whether the U.N. has a view
per se. I can give you my view on it, which I think is widely
shared within the organization, which is, obviously, this is a
case where international pressure, international encouragement
was required to get the government to begin to carry out its
responsibilities as a sovereign state.
And I think it is very important to remember that under
responsibility to protect principles that the emphasis is on
the state carrying out its sovereign responsibilities, and that
if states do that, they do not have to worry about intervention
of the coercive sort from the outside, that, in fact,
responsibility to protect is an ally of sovereignty, not its
adversary. This should be a natural thing for a government to
do. One of the principal reasons that states were formed to
begin with was to protect people, and that is certainly a
sovereign responsibility.
Senator Menendez. But it is clear that people died
unnecessarily in Burma as a result of the sovereign state not
acting in a way that would have mitigated the loss of lives. Is
that generally accepted?
Dr. Luck. I think everyone believes that is true, yes. Only
over time will we find out what the magnitude has been.
Senator Menendez. And so then the question becomes at what
point is the loss of life acceptable before the world acts. I
certainly heard what you had to say, as well as your written
testimony. Is it your view that the Rome statute that Mr.
Schneider referred to that talked beyond systematic murder or
persecution, that other inhumane acts of a similar character
causing great suffering, serious injury to body or to mental or
physical health--is that envisioned in the purview of
responsibility to protect?
Dr. Luck. Well, obviously, lawyers debate this in different
ways. The advice I have gotten has been largely that this does
not qualify as a crime against humanity. As I suggest in my
testimony, it is unlikely that a nonresponse or an inadequate
response by a government to this sort of situation would
qualify, but it does not mean that it never could. I just think
it is rather unlikely. It is a fairly high standard.
Senator Menendez. There is a difference, however, between
an inept government or a government who does not know its
limitations. Clearly, I do not think anyone would think this
and--I think that any reasonable policymaker would not think
that that is within the scope of the concern.
So the question is, When a government and/or a regime is
willing to accept a higher death count in the pursuit of their
control over the people of that country and is unwilling for a
period of time in which significant loss of life or injury is
taking place, at what point does that invoke the
responsibility?
I understand your answer that lawyers are saying it does
not. So, that means that if we have a competent government,
competent in terms of understanding its limitations, competent
to the extent that it has a threshold level of the ability to
provide assistance, but this tragedy is above their ability,
and their unwillingness to accept the response of help from
others ends up in significant loss of life at the end of the
day, is that something that at this point in time we are
willing to accept?
Dr. Luck. That is a very good question. A couple of points
on this.
Senator Menendez. I am looking for a very good answer.
Dr. Luck. I will try.
One part is the question of intent. Was there intent on the
part of the regime, or is this just part of their pattern of
perhaps paranoia of the outside world, having a very strict
sense of being almost autarchic in the sense of sovereignty.
There are very few regimes in this world that are like that.
But in those particular cases, there is a pattern that develops
over time which from the outside may look like a callous
indifference to the welfare of their people.
I think Louise Arbour, the High Commissioner for Human
Rights, made a rather pointed comment about this, which I have
in my written testimony, suggesting that it has been the
international tolerance of the human rights violations in that
country over time that has set the stage for this. And I think
that connection is an important one.
But in terms of a trigger or a threshold, that is not the
way that we approach the responsibility to protect. We think
that this is a continuum, that even states that are doing
fairly well could turn to genocide or other things. This is
certainly possible and has happened in the past. It is not only
in the developing world. It could happen in the developed
world. And this should be a continuing watch and a continuing
effort by the international community to work with states to
understand what sort of capacities you need internally so you
do not take this kind of path over time, that makes it less
likely, that makes it more difficult, that allows international
attention, an active civil society and judiciary, and all the
other pieces that you need so you do not turn this way.
So we do not think that R2P is something that is triggered
at a particular point. It is something that you should be
paying attention to all the time, so we do not say, aha, all of
a sudden, there is X number of people dying. Therefore, we
should invoke this. This is something that is very much
preventive. It is very much about capacity-building. It is very
much an ongoing dialogue between the international community
and states and very much their civil societies. So we do not
intend to say what is the threshold body count----
Senator Menendez. I appreciate the fact that we want every
state to be responsive to its citizens and therefore whether it
has the capacity to meet the challenge on its own or whether it
is willing to open up its doors to others in the world who want
to help them with that capacity and do it from a strictly
humanitarian point of view, that is great. And if that was the
reality worldwide, then we would not have some of the
challenges we have.
It seems to me that we are going to be, unfortunately,
revisiting this set of circumstances time and time again. And
the question becomes what are the parameters of this.
Could it not be argued--and I will open up this to the rest
of the panel as well who might have any commentary--that a
robust interpretation of the responsibility to protect actually
acts in a protective manner and that in fact it would give
states, and particularly states that are not responsive
necessarily to their citizenry, cause for concern to not pursue
their sovereign responsibility as envisioned under the
principle, and that in some respects, it might even be viewed
as prophylactic in that sense, that it would say I better think
about this before I close the door to outside help?
Dr. Luck. Yes, if I could just comment, and then I am sure
the others will as well.
We hope that responsibility to protect has some deterrence
effect; that it discourages countries and leadership going this
direction. I think Mark Schneider suggested something about
this in terms of the comments that Kouchner and others had
made, what some would see as saber rattling. It may not have
been intended as such. Actually Kouchner had a column in Le
Monde where he said that responsibility to protect does not fit
the conditions there. He actually clarified his position over
time.
But the very fact that there is noise about such things may
have helped open the door a little bit, where you have sort of
a good cop and bad cop situation while the Secretary General is
there making a case with the leadership. I do not know what the
Secretary General said to them. It was conceivable that he
said, look, if you do not want to deal with me, there are some
others who might want to deal with this in different ways. So
let us work this through peacefully and cooperatively.
Also, I think the very creation of the International
Criminal Court and the idea that leaders can be held
accountable for their actions, that there is no impunity, is a
piece of this. The relationship between the responsibility to
protect and the International Criminal Court or other tribunals
is a very important one, because leaders have to realize that
over time they could be held legally accountable if they do not
act in the way that they ought to.
Mr. Schneider. I do not think there is any question that in
this instance the discussion 5 years ago would not have
incorporated the responsibility to protect as a factor in
decisionmaking. Today it does. And as a result of the adoption
of the responsibility to protect by the General Assembly, it
clearly was brought to bear when China and India urged the
Burmese general to permit humanitarian agencies to provide
relief. And it probably encouraged China particularly, to make
that request to the Government of Burma.
Now, the one point to emphasize again--if you do find that
the responsibility to protect applies because there is a
violation that reaches or crosses the line of a crime against
humanity--the response is not automatically military. Even in
this instance, one would argue that a range of responses exist
that incorporate targeted sanctions, economic pressures, and
diplomatic actions. So, again, one should not think that there
is only an issue of does the responsibility to protect apply
and then is the only option military? That is not the case.
Dr. Patrick. Yes; just to pick up on that, if I may, sir. I
think it is very important, as Mark pointed out, that R2P
envisions a graduated set of responses. As noted, many of us
make the mistake of treating it really as synonymous with armed
humanitarian intervention. So I think that is an important
point to make.
Your question seemed to be getting at this notion of
whether or not we should envision a gradually expanded
definition in a sense of R2P. So it is sort of the opposite of
defining deviancy downward--the idea that gradually you could
use it as a lever to cover an expanded number or expanded range
of human rights considerations that would fall perhaps short of
the four ones that all agree it kicks with, the four crimes.
I think we probably should focus mostly on those four
crimes against humanity at this stage for a couple of reasons.
One, there is this question of the fragility of the consensus
that was engineered during the production of the summit
document. People were quite surprised actually since it was
quite a normative evolution in international relations that a
lot of African countries were willing to sign up to this
potentially interventionist document. So I think once one
really tries to apply it to all manner of bad human rights
behavior by all sorts of miscreants around the world, we may
find that consensus evaporating. There is also the question of
credibility of enforcing it.
I do think that one thing we should try to move forward is
the idea of developing some standard operating procedures with
respect to the R2P norm, including perhaps a gentlemen's
agreement on the Security Council with respect to using the
veto and perhaps keeping that veto in abeyance or requiring a
double veto at the Security Council level to try to encourage
some conformity with this norm.
Senator Menendez. Well, I appreciate that. I just wonder at
what point do we consider loss of life that is not per se
genocidal, that is not some of those other categories, but can
be very significant loss of life with an intentional purpose.
The intention may not have even been per se to have those
people die, but it is to enforce a state policy that ultimately
creates the result of having many people die in pursuit of that
state policy. That, I think, is a subject to explore because at
some point, it can rise as significantly as the intention to
create a genocidal act. And that is what I am personally
grappling with as we talk about this issue.
I will say that the inability of the U.N. to pursue a
course of action that halts the continuing genocidal strife in
the Sudan, for example, gives many of us cause about believing
that the United Nations can be a successful vehicle in this
respect. And what is our responsibility?
We have a lot of people who make speeches about ``never
again.'' That is a beautiful speech, but it is very hollow when
we sit by and see many, many people die and we know what it is
and we do not act in a manner that pursues stopping the
incredible loss of life. I think that is one of my core
concerns, as we think about this in a whole different context.
How do we deal with that?
I want to ask one last question particularly to Dr.
Patrick, but anyone else who has any ideas on this. I am always
intrigued about broadening the arsenal of peaceful diplomacy
and initiatives of how we can broaden our arsenal to try to
pursue some of our goals. And you mentioned it briefly. Could
you touch upon how you think we should go about that and what
would be some valued options for us to consider that maybe we
are not doing now? And if anyone else has views on this, I am
happy to listen to it as well.
Dr. Patrick. Sure. No, I would be happy to. Thank you,
Senator.
There are several steps that one could take. One of them is
to try to--I should preface this by saying that in many cases,
I think we have missed opportunities for what might be referred
to as
``coerced consent'' where, through a number of different
instruments of pressure, we could actually get at least enough
conformity with our desires to avoid a larger confrontation.
In the past, I think the United States has occasionally
used the Security Council, as well as the General Assembly and
other regional organizations, to decent effect. An example of
this was in 1999 following the referendum in East Timor which
led to the violence. The Security Council actually traveled to
Dili and placed enormous pressure on the government in Jakarta
to actually permit access and also to invite U.N. peacekeeping
operations. It is one example of which the U.N. Security
Council occasionally actually has been a reasonably strong
instrument. So a first step is to increase the robustness of
our ability to engage at the level of the Security Council and
within regional organizations.
Beyond that, I think that there may be avenues to target
incentives on recalcitrant regimes which we may need to get a
little bit smarter at employing. These include both positive
inducements, for instance hints of trade or aid concessions,
the removal of certain sanctions, and obviously punitive steps.
Now, one of the difficulties there is that many of the regimes
we're talking about are really the ``worst of the worst,'' as
Freedom House calls them, and are already subject to heavy U.S.
sanctions. So we may have little leeway in terms of additional
sanctions that are negative in character, but there may
occasionally be some positive inducements that we can offer;
symbolic positive inducements to secure behavioral change.
I think we also can do a better job at cultivating regional
players that have leverage over particular actors. I think
there probably has been a lot of quiet diplomacy with the
Chinese over Burma, for instance, and while I am not privy to
those conversations it is conceivable that these paid off in
the junta's eventual outreach to ASEAN. ASEAN's response has
been a little bit disappointing, in terms of how slow it was to
actually step up to the plate, but as has been pointed out in
the previous panel, it is certainly better than nothing.
So those are just some ideas of the tool kit.
Mr. Schneider. If I could, Mr. Chairman. Three areas.
One, as you know, the U.N. adopted the guiding principles
on humanitarian assistance in the past, but there is no
enforcement mechanism and there is no requirement that when a
state fails to meet its obligations, anything happens.
It seems to me that when you go back and you look at some
of the obligations to deal with refugees that have been agreed
to internationally, agreements that do involve some limits on
national sovereignty, the U.S. Government should think about
how it might move forward in trying to get an international
covenant that would state that when there is a humanitarian
disaster of the nature of Nargis, for example, that countries
ahead of time will agree to accept, under a United Nations
flag, or under a nonthreatening bilateral neighborhood flag,
ASEAN for example, international relief. And it seems to me
that at least should be pursued.
The only other thing that I would say is as in this
hemisphere, even given the difficulties with Cuba, or 20 years
ago, let us say, with Nicaragua, when natural disasters occur,
there has never been an impediment to U.S. relief efforts. And
the question is whether or not there are some agreements, which
exist in the hemisphere, particularly using PAHO and the OAS
together, that might be used in other regions.
Dr. Luck. Another rather searching question. Let me just
tick off a few things here.
Though we should not spend all of our time on capacity-
building and prevention, it should be noted that the
involvement of the U.N., regional agencies, and bilateral
assistance in development efforts and good governance efforts
within countries really is an intrusion on sovereignty in a big
way, and yet countries accept that. So I do not see any reason
why responsibility to protect principles should not be part of
those development and capacity-building efforts in those
countries, and I think it can make a big difference over time.
Second of all, I do not think that we should underestimate
the importance of the Secretary General's good offices. It is
very quiet diplomacy, but can make a big difference. And here,
how he helped solve this in Myanmar, he really was the one who
helped push the gate open a little bit farther.
One thing that is often ignored in the charter is article
34, which is under chapter VI, a noncoercive pacific measure,
in which the Security Council can investigate a wide range of
situations. They do not have to pose an immediate threat to
international peace and security, as the Council can
investigate to see whether some day they might pose a threat to
international peace and security.
So the Security Council now is going out on these missions
fairly often--they have just gotten back from Sudan--where they
actually visit crisis zones. Having the members go and show
their interest in some of these situations early on might
actually be quite helpful.
Also, I personally--I know this is not normally U.N.
doctrine, but I do not really accept that the use of force
should always be the last resort. I think that is contrary to
the charter. Article 42 makes it quite clear--and it was
debated in San Francisco--that if the Council decides that
noncoercive measures would be inadequate, that then the Council
in fact can act. And it may be preventive deployments or the
show of force that could be done in a noncoercive way but to
get the message across to people. There could also be mixed
deployments, some sort of mix of more peacekeeping-like
military, police, civilians, a mix which is not pure
enforcement but perhaps puts added pressure on those using
violence against civilians--you mentioned Somalia, for example.
There may be places where you do not have a strong government
and where you need some kind of order, and some kind of
international mixed effort could help this.
I do not think we should forget targeted sanctions. People
often suggest that sanctions never work, but sometimes, when
targeted against a particular leadership in particular cases,
they can make a difference.
And certainly we need to look at all the possibilities of
building regional and subregional organizations. One thinks of
AU, ECOWAS, and others. IGAD is rather weak in the Horn. But
looking at those organizations that have tried to make a
difference in several places in Africa, they are much more
willing to take the risks and go early. They do not always have
the capacity, but they are willing to do it when the rest of
the international community moans and complains but does not
want to put any forces on the ground. So if we can help build
that capacity, that could be very important.
Finally, if I could say a word about Darfur and the
responsibility to protect. I think it is worth remembering that
the massive violence in Darfur started 2\1/2\-3 years before
the U.N. accepted responsibility to protect as a doctrine. So I
do not think it is really a fair test case of R2P to, after the
fact, hope that it is going to make all the difference there.
And as inadequate, frustrating, and agonizing as the
international response has been in Darfur, if you compare that
to Rwanda in 1994, when members of the Security Council were
trying to deny that anything was going on, at least I think we
are making historically some progress. It does not help
necessarily the people on the ground day by day, but I think
there is an evolution of values now where it is very hard to
cast a veto in the Security Council to prevent action in an
unfolding genocide.
We should look as well at the one situation where the
responsibility to protect has been applied and no one seems to
recognize it--it was in Kenya. And we do not talk about Kenya
because the pieces have been put back together. But the
Secretary General very consciously, when he went to Adis Ababa
to speak to the summit of the African Union, when he went to
Nairobi to speak both to the government and to the opposition,
he invoked in every case the responsibility to protect
principle and told them they had to live up to it. And everyone
accepted it. When he went back to the Security Council, he used
the same language and they accepted it.
And Kofi Annan has described his whole mediation effort,
which was so successful in Kenya, as the first effort to apply
the responsibility to protect. And there it was largely
preventive, and yet there were some bad things beginning to
happen and perhaps it prevented things from getting much worse.
So we think there are possibilities where it can apply and
it can make a difference.
Thank you.
Senator Menendez. Well, I appreciate all of your testimony.
This panel was definitely very helpful in exploring some of
these critical issues. I appreciate, Dr. Luck, your rattling
off a series of possibilities, along with your other two
panelists.
I will just say about the Sudan, I recognize fully that the
atrocities there preceded the responsibility to protect. Having
said that, however, there is still much suffering going on, and
there is still an incredible lack of action taking place. To be
sitting in the camps either facing the Janjaweed or others and
to listen to the counsels of patience and delay certainly is
not something that I would want to be in the midst of if I was
one of those people sitting in those camps. But I appreciate
the context of your comments.
So we thank you all for testifying. It has been very
helpful.
The record is going to remain open for 2 days so that
committee members may submit additional questions to the
witnesses, and I ask the witnesses to respond expeditiously to
these questions.
And since there is no one here for any other comments, the
hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:29 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]