47 / 532
31
RESPONSIBILITY WHILE PROTECTING ȃ AN ALTERNATIVE TO R2P…
rather, as that of exclusion of the latter by the former. That is, again, what made
Edward Luck stress that
“effective and integrated strategy is likely to involve elements of
both prevention and response. Neither offers promising results without the other”.
34
While the second reading extends the scope of RwP beyond Pillar Three of
R2P, the third, most
extensive reading
extends it even beyond the scope of R2P.
This reading focuses on the role of the UN Security Council and the options of its
reform. Not surprisingly, Brazil holds the view that the UN Security Council lacks
of representativeness, which
“undermines its credibility and effectiveness”.
35
The organ
is thus in urgent need of a reform, which would
“bring in new permanent and non-
permanent members, especially developing countries”.
36
Brazil obviously has aspiration
to become, together with some other regional and/or economic powers (India, South
Africa, Germany, Japan etc.), one of such new members. This aspiration again
predates the introduction of the RwP and also of R2P, yet since 2005, references to
the UN Security Council reform have been often made in the course of the debates
on these new concepts.
37
Brazil has also repeatedly invoked the topic at the meetings
of the G4 (Brazil, Germany, India, Japan), the IBSA (India, Brazil, South Africa),
and the BRICS (Brazil Russia, India, China, Russia, South Africa), where it has
gained support among other candidates to the UN Security Council membership.
To sumup, Responsibility while Protecting is a complex concept that encompasses
several different, albeit largely complementary components. In the narrow reading, it
simply seeks to recall limit imposed upon the use of force under Pillar Three of R2P,
stemming from the mandate given by the UN Security Council, the just war criteria
and the standards of international law (international humanitarian law, human rights
law, etc.). In a more extensive reading, RwP introduces hierarchy and sequencing
into the three-pillar structure of R2P. In the most ambitious reading, the new
concept aims at prompting reform of the UN Security Council and at bringing in
new members from the developing world, especially Brazil. The next section assesses
the relationship between RwP and R2P with the purpose of showing that the former,
regardless of the reading one embraces, is not as much an alternative to the latter as it
is, rather, an attempt to reinvigorate the original ethos behind R2P.
3. RwP as an Alternative to R2P or Return to Its Original Ethos?
The concept of Responsibility while Protecting has given rise to
criticism
both
in the Global North and in the Global South. The Global North, represented mainly
by the USA and the European Union States, sees in it
“an attempt to obstruct the debate
rather than a genuine attempt to enrich the conceptual discussion about humanitarian
34
UN Doc. A/66/874-S/2012/578,
op. cit.,
par. 20.
35
Brazil,
Statement by H. E. Dilma Rousseff,
21 September 2011,
op. cit.
36
Ibid.
37
See Aziz Tuffi Saliba, Dawisson Belém Lopes, Pedro Guimaraes Vieira,
An Assessment of the Brazilian
Position on the “Responsibility to Protect” Doctrine,
Proceedings from the Conference “Responsibility To
Protect In Theory And Practice Conference“, Ljubljana, April 2013, pp. 681-703.