WCC Central Committee receives a document on humanitarian intervention
8.02.2001 · English, Архив 2001
WCC CENTRAL COMMITTEE RECEIVES A DOCUMENT ON HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION
At its meeting held from January 29 to February 6 in Potsdam, Germany, with the participation of a delegation of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches received a document on the Protection of Endangered Populations in Situations of Armed Violence: Toward an Ecumenical Ethical Approach.
The document subjecting the so-called humanitarian intervention to a profound analyses was drafted by the Commission of Churches for International Affairs in compliance with the decision made by the WCC Central Committee at its meeting in September 1999, during which a hot discussion took place on the Kosovo problem. The document states that the participants in the meeting at Potsdam could not reach a consensus on a number of aspects of the “humanitarian intervention” issue. However, the text received at the Central Committee meeting will be circulated to the WCC member churches for further study and responses and for use in their dialogues with governments, international organizations, research centers and civil society.
The document admits that in some cases the international community is obliged to interfere in situations where the lives of the civilian population are at risk due to the government’s actions or inability to protect it in a violent conflict or situation of anarchy. It may be an armed international intervention. At the same time, the document stresses as important the principle of national sovereignty as a corner stone of international law. According to the document, intervention in the affairs of a sovereign state is possible only in a very limited number of cases envisaged, in particular, in the Convention on Genocide and other norms of international law. “Actions to protect endangered populations in situations of armed violence should in principle be taken by an appropriate UN body or by a group of states authorized to act on its behalf and all such actions should be under the strict oversight of the Security Council or other multilateral international instance agreed to by the UN General Assembly. Intervening protection forces should be clearly neutral with respect to the state in which intervention occurs and a decision to intervene should in no event serve as the pretext for the pursuit of narrow self-interests of foreign powers”, the document states.
The aims and limits of armed intervention should be clearly stated while the scale and nature of the force used should be proportionate to them. The conduct of an armed operation should be under the strict oversight of the Security Council and the UN Secretary-General who should evaluate the progress toward stated goals and determine the duration of the operation. The International Court of Justice and other mechanisms of international jurisprudence can consider and rule upon the legitimacy of intervention and its compliance with international law.
In the discussion at the WCC CC Public Issues Committee, the provision for intervention by one state, included earlier in the draft document, was rejected. According to the document’s text, “even for the protection of endangered populations in situations of armed violence, overriding the principles of sovereignty is a very serious action that should be undertaken only in the most grave and extraordinary circumstances. It is not a practice to be used in cases where human rights are routinely violated”. In these cases, other mechanisms of international pressure, such as negotiations, sanctions, etc., can be used. The document states that an armed intervention in general should be undertaken only if the international community has ascertained that a crisis cannot be overcome by peaceful means. The importance of the forecast and prevention of conflicts was emphasized.
The document considers a number of theological, ethical and ideological questions involved in the problem of priorities in the human rights area: “Even here… there are no absolute principles. Governments in some regions, notably Asia, have questioned the concept of the universality of human rights, arguing that they are based on Western concepts of individual rights rather than on peoples’ rights. Some within the Orthodox tradition of Christianity question the exclusive concern for earthly life as the supreme value, emphasizing the primacy of salvation. While all life is sacred, they argue, holy places, objects of adoration and even land are also considered by the community of faith to be sacred, and their protection may take precedence in some situations. There are also questions about what kinds of human rights violations are so grave as to justify intervention. Is action by the international community to be used only in response to violations of civil and political rights? Or do violations of economic, social, and cultural rights also call for an international response?”
The document analyses in particular the situations in Kosovo and Rwanda. It is noted that the WCC and many of its member churches protested against the NATO actions in Yugoslavia, which were regarded as violation of the principles of the UN Charter. At the same time, in case of Rwanda, the international community managed to respond in good time to the massive destruction of the civilian population. According to the document, intervention to protect the civilian population risks provoking additional violence that could aggravate the suffering of the population. However, the failure to take appropriate and prompt action, including the use of arms, can result in further massive loss of life.
Doubt about the very term of “humanitarian intervention” was expressed, “since in practice it too often represents a contradiction between humanitarian principles of compassion and the use of lethal military force”. It is noted that the very fact that the use of armed force is considered reflects the failure of the international community to present or heal conflicts during their early stages.
“Recent decisions to intervene with massive armed force have often been influenced by globalized public media that tend to report crises in a selective way, exaggerating some and ignoring others where equal or greater numbers of people were at imminent risk. For example, while the crisis in Kosovo was reported to be escalating to dangerous proportions, simultaneous crises in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East that continued to claim far higher numbers of lives received comparatively little media coverage in the North. Media have also often exaggerated the losses and suffering of some ethnic groups and almost ignored those of other groups. Some critics have charged that such media selectivity is rooted in racial, ethnic or political bias and that this has contributed to the situation in which the international community responds with disproportionate armed force in situations where some Europeans suffer, while refusing to intervene to save others and to ignore altogether many crises in the South where much larger populations are in clear danger”, the document states.
Full English text of the document is available at
http://wcc-coe.org/wcc/who/cc2001/pi2rev-e.html
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