It’s already taken too long to intervene in Burundi

It is welcome news that the African Union has started talks on sending troops from the East Africa Standby Force to Burundi. It is about time, even as reports of more than 100 people killed in the past week seemed to firm the fear that this could be genocide in the making in the strife-torn nation. The AU Peace and Security Council, in its 565th meeting, in Addis Ababa discussed the Burundi situation. It has already taken too long. The mandate to do something about Burundi already exists in the principle of “Responsibility to Protect (R2P)”. So, why has the regional and international community appeared to dilly-dally even as the country’s situation continues to look grave with each passing day? The expression R2P has been articulated in the report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) that was ratified during the 2005 United Nations World Summit. All UN Member States formally accepted the responsibility of each State to protect its population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, including forced expulsion, acts of terror and rape. Consensus was built around three central “responsibilities” – the Responsibility to Prevent; the Responsibility to React; and, the Responsibility to Rebuild. The three collectively came to be called the “Responsibility to Protect.” The international community agreed that sovereignty not only gave a State the right to “control” its affairs, it also conferred on the State primary “responsibility” for protecting the people within its borders. Inherent in the agreement was the notion that if a State fails to protect its people, either through lack of ability or a lack of willingness, the responsibility shifts to the broader international community. The responsibility to protect is implicit within the African Union’s Constitutive Act of July 2000. The AU, therefore, recognized the R2P before the 2005 UN World Summit when all Member States accepted to protect their civilians. The AU is the world’s only regional or international organization that explicitly recognizes the right to intervene in a member state on humanitarian and human rights grounds. This will be the second time the AU will be intervening in Burundi after the country was ravaged by civil war between 1993 and 2005. To many it is an indictment on the AU, and the larger international community, that it has taken too long to act this time round. It is something of shirking the responsibility to protect as the crisis has continued to deepen and as lives have continued to be lost and displaced. Some inherent challenges have been identified to R2P that are feeding the seeming inertia to act. The first is a lack of clarity in R2P that is both conceptual and institutional. R2P is based on the concept of responsibility, not duty. Legal, political and moral status of the concept of responsibility is not clear, thus the inertia. Although the R2P argues and emphasizes the international responsibility to be engaged in a country for rehabilitation and development in the Responsibility to Rebuild, it does not mention the importance of evaluation of “taken actions after the action”. If this had happened perhaps the current Burundi crisis could have been foreseen. It has also been pointed out that the principle of R2R abstractly indicates strategy for prevention of conflict and crisis by the means of early warning, root-cause prevention and direct prevention. However, it has not been clearly established yet whether, how and which preventive strategies are effective for prevention of crisis or conflict. Thus the current spectre in the East African nation. However, as these issues continue to be debated, it is not too late that the AU is contemplating sending troops from the East Africa Standby force. But it must act. And it behooves the international community to give the necessary support.

Opinions

It’s already taken too long to intervene in Burundi