Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen and all the other arab states

[chrisjb]

I've got an issue for discussion:

The UN's security council likely relied on the responsibility to protect protocol, which was implemented largely in response to the atrocities which occurred in Rwanda, in order to carry out military intervention in Libya. The Libyan uprising was a whisker short of a civil war and under the UN's old paradigm would have been beyond the organisation's jurisdiction as state sovereignty was more heavily protected and intervening in domestic matters was all but unheard of. Whilst the principle of responsibility to protect is generaly praised as a step forward for the UN, the protocol does not allow intervention unless the most atrocious crimes against humanity are being commuted- for example genocide or war crimes. The recent attacks on protesters in Yemen or Tunisia, for example, would likely not fall under the code despite the heinous nature of the acts. Should the RtoP be extended to allow forces to protect civilians from the actions of ruling parties such as occured in Yemen recently, or would this constitute too great an interference with state sovereignty? Discuss.

[izzykose]

I think the r2p principle is the likely beginnings of the UN as a more interventionist body, and perhaps the establishment of the UN as a sort of global police force. If Gaddafi's regime and other belligerents fighting for his ideals are arbitrarily killing civilians, in my opinion a state should reflect the values of the majority of the popular interest, and thus a challenge to his state sovereignty is then legitimised by killings and an unwillingness to accept changing views. The r2p principle refers to "war crimes" or "crimes against humanity" perhaps civilian killings can be classified into one of these categories and then the intervention of the UNSC into Libya is justified. The question is which state in fact leads these forces, if it is a US run operation, the UNSC would possibly remove its objective to run as an internationalist body and instead promote the interests of the US rather than promoting the fall of Gaddafi and the introduction of democracy.