MÉTODOS EXTRACTIVOS

prevent and respond in particular to war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. To many observers, it appeared as though the AU had become the first multilateral organisation to truly embrace the responsibility to protect norm and to operationalise it through the Union’s peace and security structures (Aning and Atuobi, 2009). Given the relatively rapid emergence and cascade of the responsibility to protect norm in the UN, and the concomitant development of a strongly interventionist AU mandated in particular to prevent and respond to conflicts characterised by atrocity crimes, the assumption that interventions conducted on humanitarian grounds in Africa, either by the AU or the UN, or by the two organisations working in unison, would receive greater attention could easily be drawn. Indeed, given the entrenchment of the responsibility to protect norm in the UN and its mirroring in the AU, the assumption that responsibility to protect discourse would increasingly come to inform the formulation and conduct of interventions on humanitarian grounds could easily be drawn. Indeed, the conceptual underpinnings of the responsibility to protect seemed to resonate well across the African continent. During the UN Security Council debate on the responsibility to protect held on 9 December 2005, Benin, Rwanda and Tanzania all provided strong support to the norm. The Rwandan representative drew on his country’s own traumatic past, before arguing forcefully that international “business as usual” was inadequate and could no longer prevail, arguing that the use of Chapter VII action where states failed to live up to their sovereign responsibilities was not only justified but indeed required. The representative from Benin ventured further, arguing that the collective responsibility to protect was the basis for the creation of the AUI, and that its structures concerned with the maintenance of peace and security represented an embodiment of the responsibility to protect norm (Williams, 2007: 275 - 276). Similarly, the new Commissioner for Peace and Security in the AU, Said Djinnit, argued that:

Africans cannot watch the tragedies developing in the continent and say it is the UN’s responsibility or somebody else’s responsibility. We cannot as Africans remain indifferent to the tragedy of our people (in Williams, 2007: 276).

Both the development and the entrenchment of the responsibility to protect in the international system, in particular at the level of the UN, and the apparent positive resonance of the norm across the African continent appeared to indicate that the norm would play a role in the

formulation of international interventions on humanitarian grounds, in particular in conflict situations characterised by the commission of atrocity crimes. Indeed, the endorsement of the responsibility to protect norm by the UN and the development of a strongly interventionist peace and security regime in Africa commensurate to the content claims of the responsibility to protect norm itself appeared to indicate that the norm had become relatively salient in a short space of time.

The challenge with this observation, however, is that its utility must be clarified. Arguing that a norm appears to be salient does not shed sufficient light on the impact that this norm can or could be expected to have in international organisation. Rather, the relevance of this norm salience must be explored further. As highlighted elsewhere in this study, it is clear that norms do not determine behaviour, and the existence of a norm does not guarantee that states will adhere to the prescriptive, enabling or constraining components of the norm. Thus, norms do not determine behaviour, nor can they serve as a framework through which to predict behaviour at an actor or system level. Norms do however influence the behaviour of actors, through their enabling or constraining components tied to cognitive frameworks or a logic of appropriateness. Therefore, norms either enable or constrain actor behaviour; enabling new forms of behaviour which were not previously possible, or constraining forms of behaviour which were previously admissible, on the basis of appeals to a reframed logic of appropriateness. If a norm is relatively salient, in that it has emerged, developed, become institutionalised and codified, and has attained a general level of acceptance as a norm, then it could be expected that evidence of the impact of the norm should be witnessed in the international system through state practice and the discourse surrounding that practice. Here, reference to the norm would either be made to justify the actions of states in the international system, or states would argue that the norm did not apply to a certain type of action, or actions which violated the norm would be justified as a necessary violation of an acknowledged norm. Therefore, a fair dialectical expectation of a salient norm would be to witness this norm featuring in the international system, not necessarily in that states either comply with or act in contravention to the norm, but that the norm features in actor discourse surrounding state practice.

With regards to the responsibility to protect norm, and extrapolating from the above analysis, it could be argued that, given the rapid development, entrenchment, institutionalisation and codification of the norm, it would play a prominent role in state discourse and practice in cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and genocide. Naturally, the norm development process must be taken into account, and it should be anticipated that the norm would play a more prominent role as its salience increased in the international system. Overall, however, in cases where the norm should apply, based on an assessment of the norm content, it should reasonably be expected that responsibility to protect discourse would feature in actor discourse. Therefore, as the strength of the norm increased over time, it should be expected that the norm would come to feature in discourse surrounding state behaviour in response to humanitarian emergencies, and that state action (or inaction) would be justified within the same logic of appropriateness as that which governs the norm. Here, then, it could be expected that responses to future humanitarian emergencies should not witness debate on whether or not a right of intervention existed, or whether a humanitarian emergency was to be considered an internal matter or a matter of international peace and security. Rather, it would be expected that dialogue surrounding a humanitarian emergency would be framed within the discourse of the responsibility to protect. Therefore, in a humanitarian emergency, a dialectical expectation of the responsibility to protect norm would be that states, in deliberating on and designing their responses, would use the responsibility to protect norm as a framework, as a reference point, or

as a socially weighted argument in favour of, or in opposition to, a course of action. In essence, and in its most simple form, it could be reasonably expected that the responsibility to protect norm would impact on state behaviour, evidenced through discourse analysis, in cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and genocide. This is not to argue that the responsibility to protect would actually succeed in attaining the substance of its content goal (ensuring the prevention of and meaningful reaction to atrocity crimes), but certainly that it would impacton state behaviour, or be ofrelevancein decision-making, in these situations. If a norm is salient, which as argued above the responsibility to protect was rapidly becoming, then this dialectical expectation should hold.

Thus far, this study has focussed on generating an understanding of how norms develop in the international system, and has applied this understanding to tracking the emergence and development of the responsibility to protect norm in international society. The findings thus far indicate that the norm emerged from 2001 to 2005, and from 2005 onwards entered into what has been labelled the cascade phase of norm development. While much of this norm development was centred around the UN as an institutional platform, the transition from the OAU to the AU, and the development of a strongly interventionist peace and security regime, appears to have reinforced the responsibility to protect norm, and much of the security thinking underpinning the AU was commensurate with the principles underpinning the responsibility to protect norm. The dialectical expectation therefore would be that the norm would increasingly be of relevant to decision-making on intervention on humanitarian grounds, and would feature in discourse surrounding state practice.

However, as will be demonstrated throughout the remainder of this study, a major discrepancy quickly emerged with regards to the responsibility to protect norm. At the same time as the norm emerged, developed, became institutionalised, was further codified, and became increasingly entrenched in international society, a humanitarian crisis began to unfold in the Darfur region of Sudan. The conflicts in the Darfur region quickly came to test not only the resolve of the AU and the UN, but also came to test the utility of the responsibility to protect norm itself. Chapter 5 will assess the manner in which the norm was applied in response to the conflicts in Darfur from 2003 to 2005, the same time period in which the norm was in the emergence phase of development. Chapter 6 will in turn assess the manner in which the norm was applied to the Darfur conflicts over the period 2005 through 2010, the same time period in which the norm was in the cascade phase of development. This assessment will be conducted in an attempt to gain insight into whether the responsibility to protect norm contributed to the formulation of effective responses to the kinds of conflict situations it was designed for. Building on this analysis, chapter 7 will assess how future responses to conflicts characterised by atrocity crimes in Africa may be formulated, and what role the responsibility to protect norm may play in future.

Chapter 5 –

Whose Responsibility to Protect? Responses to the Darfur Conflicts from 2003 – 2005 5.1 Introduction

While a general sense of optimism accompanied the launch of the AU and the new peace and security architecture of the continent, few member states or Commission staff could anticipate that the organisation would at its very creation come to face a conflict that would shake it to its core, and force it to confront every normative contradiction embedded within its founding documents, and which would come to define the African understanding of and approach to the responsibility to protect. As the Peace and Security Council was inaugurated in Addis Ababa in May 2004, accompanied by a ceremony in which fifteen African leaders released white doves as messengers of peace and symbols of the determination to bring an end to decades of misery, pain and suffering inflicted on the African people, one of the worst conflicts the African continent has witnessed was already raging in Darfur, in the Western regions of Sudan. The conflict would be the first to be addressed by the new Peace and Security Council, and would prove to confound it and the work of the AU for years to come. Indeed, the conflict in Darfur would at times pit the AU and the UN directly against one another, and would test whether the responsibility to protect, increasingly embedded in the work of both organisations, held any relevance at all when it came to responding to the worst of atrocity crimes on the African continent.

This chapter will track international responses, in particular at the level of the UN and the AU, to the conflicts in Darfur between 2003 and 2005, focussing in particular on the role played by the responsibility to protect norm, in its emergence phase, to assess whether the norm at this early stage in its development proved of relevance or benefit when responses to the Darfur conflicts were being formulated.