And what happened to the "responsibility to protect"? (James Smith via Norman Geras)

Norman Geras (on Normblog)
July 11, 2006

Further to Jeff Weintraub's guest post here yesterday (also here), see this piece by James Smith in today's Times:

A countdown of less than 90 days has begun until the vulnerable people of Darfur are abandoned by world leaders who cannot make a decision - whether to protect them or leave them at the mercy of a Government that has killed at least a quarter of a million and driven millions more from their land. The scene is set for the world's worst humanitarian crisis to tip from bad to worse.

Where Jeff reminded people of the terms of Genocide Convention, Smith recalls a declaration of, oh, some 10 months ago:

At the World Summit in September 2005, leaders declared that "The international community... has the responsibility... to help to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity." They also stated: "We are prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner... should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their populations."

Peaceful means are clearly inadequate and the national authorities in Sudan are manifestly failing to protect their populations.

Read the rest for the details of that.

Posted by Norm at 12:27 PM | Permalink