This report discusses what part regional organizations can and should play in ensuring implementation of the international Responsibility to Protect (R2P). What formal responsibility and which enabling capabilities do regional organizations have for assuming a role in protecting populations from mass atrocity crimes?
The report begins by discussing the formal role projected for regional organizations in the implementation of R2P, individually and vis-à-vis the UN, in the 2005 UN World Summit Outcome Document. The description of this role is then compared to the one depicted in the 2001 report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS). The second part of the report offers an overview of relevant capabilities held by key regional organizations in Europe, Africa, the Americas and Asia, capabilities that could enable them to take part in protection tasks prior to, during or in the aftermath of mass atrocities. In the third and final part of the report, the capability aspect is seen in relation to the constitutive and constraining impact that individual member states’ interests may have on the ability of regional organizations to act within the context of R2P.
The following three observations emerge:
First, the Outcome Document explicitly refers to regional organizations as prospective partners for the UN in the implementation of R2P,
both by term and by reference to Chapter VIII of the UN Charter. While the Outcome Document considers regional organizations first
and foremost as partners of or sub-contractors under UN in the context of R2P, the ICISS report opens up for the possibility that regional organizations might act without prior authorization from the Security Council in cases where the latter fails to take action.
The international community’s failures to respond to atrocities in the past are in themselves evidence that the present UN system, including the role of the Security Council, is sub-optimal. However, opening the door for action by regional organizations without prior authorization from the Security Council would probably create more problems for R2P than it would resolve. Despite its deep-rooted institutional weaknesses, the UN is today the only proper international forum for extensive political dialogue and decision-making. Further consideration of alternative authorization structures within the UN system therefore seems a more promising path than allowing for indistinct practices outside the UN system.
Second, it is problematic to treat the wide spectrum of different regional organizations under the same collective term when operationalizing the principle of R2P. If R2P is defined broadly – as it is in the Outcome Document – then practically all regional organizations today possess capabilities that in some way or another could enable them to take part in the implementation of R2P. In fact, however, regional organizations vary significantly in their actual abilities. This aspect needs to be recognized when further identifying and concretizing the role of regional organizations in relation to R2P.
Third, capabilities alone are no guarantee for effective action. A key factor that both constitutes and constrains regional organizations’
