Responsibility to Protect
Gareth Evans is President of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group and co-chair of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, based in New York. Today on "To the Point," a program that airs on National Public Radio (US), Evans was a guest of host Warren Olney, and they had the following exchange...
Olney: Time is growing short, according to all concerned, particularly the Secretary-General of the UN who can't even get through on the phone to the leader of the junta in Myanmar. How long do you think it will be before the pressure builds in such a way that the international community will feel ashamed?
Evans: Well, I think there's already a very large measure of shame, and it's coming through the discussions I'm hearing at the EU here in Brussels, and it's coming through from what people are telling me is being said around the corridors in the UN. Whether that can be converted to a willingness to formally authorize some kind of more intrusive intervention is a very hard call; it's too difficult for a lot of people to contemplate.
But, whether or not it creates a sense that there's just enough moral outrage out there and enough good rational grounds out there for one or two countries to take the bit between the teeth and actually do something creative and adventurous and get that aid in there, come what may, that pressure for that to happen is building up very very substantially.
I hope that this message is somehow getting through to the generals, that they are listening -- because the world is not going to stand by and let another catastrophe involving a million or more people to die. It's just not going to be allowed to happen. Times have changed, and we don't have that indifference that people seem to have managed for previous centuries. There's just too much consciousness, too much media attention, too much concern out there, and I don't think that voice can be ignored.
With the death toll continuing to mount in Burma/Myanmar; with the generals who run the country reported to be hoarding supplies and preventing relief from reaching the worst struck areas; and with fears of an even larger man-made catastrophe caused by avoidable contamination, disease, and starvation -- the possibility of a UN-sanctioned international invasion to defy the ruling junta and bring aid to those who so badly need it apparently is being considered.
Last week, we wrote that a lesson might be learned from this disaster, that we (the free world) might just decide that our moral obligation to protect the defenseless from needless suffering could be seen as so strong that it trumps the sovereign rights of irresponsible states. We're frankly surprised -- but pleased -- to find that we are not alone in this thinking.
There's no question, of course, that all this is far easier to say than to do. But we believe it's a good sign that cosmopolitanism is gaining strength, and not for philosophical reasons alone.
Since the founding of CRN, we have been concerned that the unprecedented power of molecular manufacturing and the potential for exponential proliferation of nanofactory technology may make it essential to create an international administration to regulate it. That may not prove to be necessary, but just in case it does, it would be helpful if the world already had experience in managing global challenges with a collaborative consensus approach.
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