Written evidence submitted by The European Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (XIN0058)

1. This evidence is submitted by The European Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (ECR2P).  ECR2P was formed in 2016 by academics based at the University of Leeds.  It is dedicated to advancing understanding of the United Nations ‘responsibility to protect’ principle through research, education, and policy dialogue.

2. This submission speaks to the Committee’s question: how effective is the FCDO’s current approach to atrocity prevention, and how can it be restructured to maximise the UK’s impact in this area?

The Responsibility to Protect

3. The responsibility to protect (R2P) sets out to protect populations everywhere from four crimes: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing (commonly known as ‘mass atrocity crimes’). The R2P was unanimously endorsed by the UN General Assembly in 2005.

4. To date, the R2P has been referenced in over 80 UN Security Council Resolutions and over 50 Human Rights Council Resolutions. This has led analysts to claim the R2P has now become ‘accepted language’[1] at the UN, yet there remains widespread concern over whether this reflects ‘meaningful support’[2] as states have failed to prevent and respond to the threat and commission of atrocities in countries such as Cameroon, China, Syria, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Venezuela.[3]

5. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the UK has a ‘special responsibility’ to lead on this issue.[4] The failure of permanent members in this area does not mean the “R2P” is dead.  It simply means those states are irresponsible and failing to live up to the commitment they made at the 2005 World Summit.

6. The R2P embodies a broad range of coercive and non-coercive measures available under Chapters VI, VII, and VIII of the UN Charter. These form part of a tripartite framework commonly known as the three pillars.[5]
1. Pillar I: States have a domestic responsibility to protect populations from the four crimes. This applies to all people whether nationals or not which is important for cases such as Myanmar where the Rohingya have had their citizenship status rejected.
2. Pillar II: States have an international responsibility to ‘encourage’ and ‘assist’ states (with their consent) so that they can fulfil their domestic responsibility.[6] This is most needed where states are unable to protect their populations, for example, from the threat posed by non-state armed groups (e.g. Mali and the Central African Republic). Measures include preventative diplomacy, capacity-building and denying the means to commit atrocities.[7]
3. Pillar III: if a state is ‘manifestly failing’ to protect its population from the four crimes, then the international community can use non-coercive and coercive measures under Chapters VI, VII, and VIII of the UN Charter.[8] Non-coercive measures include diplomacy, public advocacy, human rights mechanisms, monitoring and information gathering. All of which can be done without the consent of the UNSC.[9] The latter includes coercive measures such as economic sanctions, arms embargos, and the use of force under Chapter VII of the UN Charter and therefore require the consent of the UNSC.[10]

Atrocity Prevention

7. Critics sometimes associate the R2P with military intervention (e.g. Libya 2011).  This is a mistake because there are many ways to fulfil the responsibility to protect, including using tools designed for the upstream prevention of atrocity crimes. As paragraph 138 of the 2005 World Summit Outcome document explains ‘this responsibility entails the prevention of such crimes, including their incitement, through appropriate and necessary means’ including ‘establishing early warning capability’.[11] When states unanimously endorsed R2P at the UN, they agreed that ‘their commitment to the responsibility to protect is first and foremost a commitment to prevent and mitigate the risk of commission of atrocity crimes’.[12]

8. It is in the UK national interest to track mass atrocity risks and do what it can to mitigate them before they reach the Security Council agenda. By atrocity risks we mean the long-term and short-term factors that may facilitate mass atrocities being perpetrated. Long term prevention or root cause prevention focuses on creating structural conditions (social, economic, political, cultural, legal or institutional) that reduce the risk of atrocities occurring.[13] Short-term prevention or direct prevention tackles the immediate threat of mass atrocities.

9. In 2014, the United Nations launched its Framework of Analysis for Atrocity Crimes: A Tool for Prevention, as a guide for assessing the risk of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, and as a way to better sound the alarm, promote action and improve monitoring, early warning and early action. [14] This guide, which identified 14 risk factors and 143 indicators, reflects the UN’s commitment to placing ‘the protection of populations and the prevention of atrocity crimes at the centre of [UN] work’.[15] In January 2019, the European Union launched its own ‘EU Responsibility to Protect: Atrocity Prevention Toolkit’ which highlights ‘structural risk indicators’ and ‘imminent warning signs’. Both of these can be used by the UK Government in their assessments of situations at risk of mass atrocities, across the globe.

10. These toolkits stress that ‘each situation demands its own contextual analysis and tailored response’ and that this has to be analyzed by the relevant actors. For example, the UN suggests that to be effective, ‘assessments require the systematic collection of accurate and reliable information based on the risk factors and indicators that the framework identifies’. [16] Similarly, within the EU, tailored responses are to be considered by ‘GEO-desks’.[17] In other words, an assessment of risks atrocity prevention has to be overseen by the right people, with an in-depth understanding of the particularities of mass atrocities.  We now analyze the UK approach.

Restructuring the UK’s existing approach

11. Atrocity prevention (AP) should be integrated with wider foreign policy objectives and global responsibilities. It is to this Committee’s credit that it has reminded Her Majesty’s Government of its responsibilities and called for a national atrocity prevention strategy.[18] HMG attempted to address that call in its July 2019 statement UK’s National Approach to Preventing Mass Atrocities.[19]  Unfortunately, that statement was brief and falls short of an effective strategy. To address this, we offer the following thoughts on restructuring the UK’s existing approach.

12. We first propose capitalizing on the recent update from the Foreign Affairs Committee identifying atrocity prevention as a core priority for the government. Particularly important is the recommendation that ‘the FCDO prioritises mediation, conflict resolution, and atrocity prevention, [and]…that the Government equips the FCDO with an enhanced and institutionalised capability to coordinate with the Ministry of Defence in this space’.[20] We hereafter propose ways to capitalize on this momentum through a more explicit and coordinated national strategy of atrocity prevention.

13. To restructure the UK’s existing approach to atrocity prevention we propose creating an “AP Focal Point” at the level of Deputy National Security Adviser. 

14. The Global Network of “R2P Focal Points” was launched in September 2010 in collaboration with the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect.  The motivating idea behind the Focal Point position was that it would ‘integrate atrocity prevention within both domestic and foreign policy’. To do this, it was anticipated that ‘the R2P Focal Point should have sufficient influence and access across their national system to be able to promote R2P broadly and to meaningfully engage with relevant operation mechanisms for preventing and halting mass atrocities’.[21]  A Focal Point is thus ideally a senior official within a government who facilitates national mechanisms for atrocity prevention and promotes international cooperation. 

15. The UK appointment of an R2P Focal Point was uncertain until 2014.[22]  Since then, the Focal Point role has been carried out by the Director of Multilateral Policy in the FCDO, and the UK has been represented at Focal Point meetings by a local representative, which might suggest that it is not a priority of the Director.

16. The Multilateral desk in the FCDO is of course well-placed to deal with questions as they emerge at, for instance, the UN.  Yet the Committee might ask whether that position best enables the Focal Point to coordinate a cross-departmental strategy to (for example) effectively distribute aid in ways that prevent a situation descending into the kind of atrocities that only then trigger Security Council interest.  The Committee’s own report on Myanmar suggests it is not. ‘This crisis was sadly predictable, and predicted, but the FCO warning system did not raise enough alarm’.[23]  Protecting the UK position at the UN requires coherent strategies to mobilize effective atrocity prevention strategies.  That is a cross-government task.

17. If the government, as Lord Ahmad states, is committed to ‘a comprehensive cross-government response’, then it suggests moving the Focal Point duties to – or replicating those duties at - the level of Deputy National Security Adviser.  The National Security Council was created in 2010 to strengthen the co-ordination capacity within the centre of government, and it is best placed to think strategically and formulate an integrated approach. 

18. This does not mean atrocity prevention will dictate UK priorities, which quite rightly is the product of deliberation amongst the members of the NSC.  It would mean, however, that the NSC will be aware of situations of concern, and will be able to assess the consequences of UK actions (direct and indirect) on atrocity risk levels.

19. Nor does it mean UK policy responses to these situations will be formulaic.  The ‘responsibility to consider’ which tool is most appropriate in any given situation is constant,[24] but the response may vary after a prudential weighing of the consequences.[25] Exercising good judgment requires an in-depth understanding of the specific dynamics of the given situation.  That means drawing on the expert knowledge of country/area specialists to help anticipate the consequences of action for the national interest, vulnerable populations, and atrocity risk levels. 

20. It is in the UK’s interest that these situations do not escalate to the kind of crisis that challenges the credibility of the UN Security Council and the UK’s position on it. As strategic direction is set by the NSC, an AP Focal Point needs to feed in to deliberations at that level.

21. To create such a position would signal renewed UK leadership. It would follow the US lead in creating the Atrocities Prevention Board (APB), a standing interagency committee led out of the White House, which has been credited with successful interventions in Burundi, CAR and Iraq.[26]  Relocating or replicating the Focal Point’s work in NSC would help to address concerns within the United Nations that UK post-Brexit will turn its back on human rights concerns in its pursuit of lucrative trade deals and narrower conceptions of the national interest.[27]

Conflict, Stability and Security Fund

22. Existing practice can accommodate this kind of restructuring.  A Deputy NSA has been responsible managing the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund,[28] a major resource for conflict and atrocity prevention.  In strategically managing this Fund, the AP Focal Point would help to address what further research on Myanmar shows is a risk in the distribution of such aid.  This research exposes the way vulnerable populations can be overlooked when aid is distributed using a ‘conflict prevention’ rather than ‘atrocity prevention’ lens.  In Myanmar, for instance, EU aid was concentrated on Kayan and Shan states (where there was conflict) rather than Rakhine state (where the threat of genocide was high).[29] Situating the AP Focal Point at the NSA would help integrate an AP lens into the strategic management of UK aid.

Joint Analysis of Conflict and Stability

23. Allocating the AP Focal Point role to the Deputy NSA would also make it more likely that atrocity prevention is better integrated into the JACS process.  There are two concerns: firstly, how Joint Analysis is triggered.  It was only after the clearance operations began in Rakhine that a Joint Analysis was launched, despite constant early warnings across civil society that there was risk of genocide.[30]  Second, as per point 22, guidelines to JACS analysts insufficiently distinguish the specific threat of atrocity crimes from the threat of conflict.[31] 

24. Progress has been made in this area.  In his Policy Paper of 16 July 2019, FCO Minister Lord Ahmad cited JACS as a tool that enabled ‘government to identify situation-specific interventions that are most likely to prevent conflict, build stability and prevent atrocities’ (emphasis added). This recognition that atrocities can change the character of a conflict (and may take place outside conflict) needs to inform Joint Analysis, which can now draw on the aforementioned (para.9) UN Framework of Analysis for Atrocity Crimes,[32] as well as the EU’s Atrocity Prevention Toolkit.[33]

Conclusion

25. The UK commitment to atrocity prevention must be integrated with its wider foreign policy objectives, including its responsibility to maintain international peace and security and meet other global challenges.[34] The R2P principle, as stated in the World Summit Outcome Document recognized the importance of international peace and security when it urged states to act through the Security Council. The permanent member’s veto can frustrate collective action, but classic texts of International Relations remind us that the veto ‘registered power; it did not confer it’.[35]  It reminds great powers, in other words, to pursue their values and interests without threatening stability between themselves. 

26. International cooperation between the great and emerging powers is now needed to meet global challenges, including climate change and pandemic preparedness/response.  How that is done while also fulfilling the responsibility to protect, which has divided existing and emerging powers, requires exercising diplomatic skill and judgement on a case-by-case basis. Our argument here is that future dilemmas can be sidestepped by integrating atrocity prevention into UK aid and diplomatic strategy.  If atrocities are successfully prevented in this way, questions of coercive intervention will not be an issue of great power relations.  To do that effectively we recommend elevating atrocity prevention concerns in UK strategy, and to do that we recommend elevating the Atrocity Prevention Focal Point to the level of Deputy National Security Adviser.    

October 2020