By Aman Ullah
The Mission made its conclusions in a new
report, released on Aug 22 in New York, that soldiers routinely and
systematically employed rape, gang rape and other violent and forced sexual
acts against women, girls, boys, men and transgender people in blatant
violation of international human rights law.
One of the core demands of the Rohingya
refugees in Bangladesh is that, they will return only if international
protection is in place. In the recent statement of the ministry of foreign
affairs of Bangladesh also mentioned that, Bangladesh is seriously consider
engaging the international community for creating an environment conducive to
their return as well as for monitoring the repatriation and reintegration
process.
According to the UN Independent International
Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, the brutal tactic of military of Myanmar was
so severe in Rakhine State, during the “clearance operations” of 2017, that it
was a factor indicating the Myanmar military’s genocidal intent to destroy the
Rohingya population.
“Extreme physical violence, the openness in
which it is conducted … reflects a widespread culture of tolerance towards
humiliation and the deliberate infliction of severe physical and mental pain or
suffering on civilians,” the report said.
Myanmar’s military, known as the Tatmadaw,
demonstrated its genocidal intent against the Rohingya population “through the
widespread and systematic killing of women and girls, the systematic selection
of women and girls of reproductive ages for rape, attacks on pregnant women and
on babies, the mutilation and other injuries to their reproductive organs, the
physical branding of their bodies by bite marks on their cheeks, neck, breast
and thigh, and so severely injuring victims that they may be unable to have
sexual intercourse with their husbands or to conceive and leaving them
concerned that they would no longer be able to have children,” the report said.
The majority of assaults reported were
directed at women and girls who were beaten, burned with cigarettes, slashed
with knives, raped and held as sexual slaves on military bases. The report also
documents cases of rape, forced nudity and the sexual torture of men and boys.
Many of these acts amount to crimes under
international law, including war crimes, crimes against humanity and acts of
genocide. Yet, the Myanmar Government has failed to cease, prevent and take
action against sexual and gender-based violence in the country, or hold those
responsible to account.
With hundreds of thousands of Rohingya
refugees still trapped in Bangladesh, too fearful to return home, the report
should serve as an important reminder of the need for accountability of
perpetrators and justice for victims. It makes a call to action to the
Government of Myanmar, the Security Council and the international community to
make accountability for these grave crimes an urgent priority.
Despite the government’s withholding of
justice, the international community has failed to take necessary action to
protect Muslim victims. Though, the United Nations has acknowledged the role of
Burmese authorities in “widespread” and “systematic” attacks against Muslims
that “may constitute crimes against humanity.”
These violations perpetrated primarily by
state actors on a widespread and systematic basis, rise to the level of crimes
against humanity, ethnic cleansing and war crimes – three of the four crimes
states committed themselves to protect populations from in endorsing the
responsibility to protect (R2P) at the 2005 World Summit.
Why the Responsibility to Protect, R2P?
The political uprisings in Libya and the
Libyan government’s brutal repression are reminders that the world is far from
achieving “freedom from fear”, one of the grounding purposes for the
establishment of the United Nations in 1945. Often in the twentieth century,
crimes against humanity provoked condemnation. The world has said “never again”
many times. In reality, however, “again and again” would be a more accurate
description. As each subsequent slaughter has occurred, in places like Rwanda
and the Balkans, little has been done to prevent or avert mass atrocities.
The R2P norm grew out of events in the 1990s,
such as the Rwandan genocide and the atrocities in the former Yugoslavia. In
both of these cases, the international community did not effectively prevent or
respond to the gross human rights violations perpetrated against populations
within the two sovereign states. These unfortunate events made it apparent that
state sovereignty alone should not prevent the international community from
responding to humanitarian crises. The norm focuses on the “victims’ point of
view and interests, rather than questionable [state-centered] motivations.”
In 2000, and in his capacity as UN
Secretary-General, Annan wrote the report “We the Peoples” on the role of the
United Nations in the 21st Century, and in this report he posed the following
question: “if humanitarian intervention is, indeed, an unacceptable assault on
sovereignty, how should we respond to a Rwanda, to a Srebrenica – to gross and
systematic violations of human rights that offend every precept of our common
humanity?”
What is the Responsibility to Protect, R2P?
In 2005, governments around the world
unanimously agreed to the principle of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P),
which holds that all states have a responsibility to protect their populations
from genocide and mass atrocities, that the international community should
assist them to fulfill this duty, and that the international community should
take timely and decisive measures to protect populations from such crimes when
their host state fails to do so. R2P is committed to peaceful interventions
including assistance, peaceful persuasion, and financial sanctions. The nature
of collective action must exhaust the possibilities of “appropriate diplomatic,
humanitarian, and other peaceful means” before ‘forceful means’ can be
considered.
The R2P principle entails four pledges
First, all states have the “responsibility to
protect their own citizens from genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and
crimes against humanity.”
Second, the international community must help
states with this responsibility, including capacity building and assistance.
Third, the international community has the
obligation to pursue peaceful means, such as diplomatic and humanitarian
channels, to protect people from genocide, ethnic cleansing, and mass
atrocities.
Fourth, the UN Security Council will
implement its powers under Chapter VII of the UN Charter should all peaceful
means fail to protect the afflicted population from the mass atrocities.
Under R2P, the international community has
three main responsibilities: the responsibility to prevent, the responsibility
to react, and the responsibility to rebuild.
A. The responsibility to prevent: to
address both the root causes and directs causes of internal conflict and other
man-made crises putting populations at risk.
B. The responsibility to react: to
respond to situations of compelling human need with appropriate measures, which
may include coercive measures like sanctions and international prosecution, and
in extreme cases military intervention.
C. The responsibility to rebuild: to
provide, particularly after a military intervention, full assistance with
recovery, reconstruction and reconciliation, addressing the causes of the harm
the intervention was designed to halt or avert.
Military Intervention
The responsibility to protect implies a duty
to react to situations in which there is compelling need for human protection.
If preventive measures fail to resolve or contain such a situation, and when
the state in question is unable or unwilling to step in, then intervention by
other states may be required. Coercive measures then may include political,
economic, or judicial steps. In extreme cases — but only extreme cases — they
may also include military action. To justify military intervention, six
principles have to be satisfied: the “just cause” threshold, four precautionary
principles, and the requirement of “right authority.”
(1) The Just Cause Threshold
Military intervention for human protection
purposes is an exceptional and extraordinary measure. To be warranted, there
must be serious and irreparable harm occurring to human beings, or imminently
likely to occur, of the following kind:
A. large scale loss of life, actual or
apprehended, with genocidal intent or not, which is the product either of
deliberate state action, or state neglect or inability to act, or a failed
state situation; or
B. large scale ‘ethnic cleansing’, actual or
apprehended, whether carried out by killing, forced expulsion, acts of terror
or rape.
(2) The Precautionary Principles
A. Right intention: The primary purpose
of the intervention, whatever other motives intervening states may have, must
be to halt or avert human suffering. Right intention is better assured with
multilateral operations, clearly supported by regional opinion and the victims
concerned.
B. Last resort: Military intervention
can only be justified when every non-military option for the prevention or
peaceful resolution of the crisis has been explored, with reasonable grounds
for believing lesser measures would not have succeeded.
C. Proportional means: The scale,
duration and intensity of the planned military intervention should be the
minimum necessary to secure the defined human protection objective.
D. Reasonable prospects: There must be
a reasonable chance of success in halting or averting the suffering which has
justified the intervention, with the consequences of action not likely to be
worse than the consequences of inaction.
(3) Right Authority
A. There is no better or more appropriate
body than the United Nations Security Council to authorize military
intervention for human protection purposes. The task is not to find
alternatives to the Security Council as a source of authority, but to make the
Security Council work better than it has.
B. Security Council authorization should in
all cases be sought prior to any military intervention action being carried
out. Those calling for an intervention should formally request such
authorization, or have the Council raise the matter on its own initiative, or
have the Secretary-General raise it under Article 99 of the UN Charter.
C. The Security Council should deal promptly
with any request for authority to intervene where there are allegations of
large scale loss of human life or ethnic cleansing. It should in this context
seek adequate verification of facts or conditions on the ground that might
support a military intervention.
D. The Permanent Five members of the Security
Council should agree not to apply their veto power, in matters where their
vital state interests are not involved, to obstruct the passage of resolutions
authorizing military intervention for human protection purposes for which there
is otherwise majority support.
E. If the Security Council rejects a proposal
or fails to deal with it in a reasonable time, alternative options are:
• Consideration of the matter by the General
Assembly in Emergency Special Session under the “Uniting for Peace” procedure;
and
• Action within area of jurisdiction by
regional or sub-regional organizations under Chapter VIII of the Charter,
subject to their seeking subsequent authorization from the Security Council.
F. The Security Council should take into
account in all its deliberations that, if it fails to discharge its
responsibility to protect in conscience-shocking situations crying out for
action, concerned states may not rule out other means to meet the gravity and
urgency of that situation – and that the stature and credibility of the United
Nations may suffer thereby.
Don’t forget to read more below:
What Will We Expect From the Tripartite
Efforts? https://lnkd.in/gAXB_Na
NVC at Gunpoint: Rights Group https://lnkd.in/gBuCU6i
NVC is most dangerous genocide alert https://lnkd.in/d4nzUGs
Rohingya: NVC is Genocide Card https://lnkd.in/gC-N28A
Myanmar cannot Simply Whitewash their Crimes https://lnkd.in/gsfYySJ
The Political will of the Government of
Myanmar https://lnkd.in/gKS8r2X
Muslim of Arakan and Censuses of India https://lnkd.in/g8rsaSY