Syria is a failure of commitment, not principle

The Responsibility to Protect is a disarmingly simple principle. Agreed to in

2005 by every world government, it holds that states should protect their populations
from atrocious crimes and that when they manifestly fail to do so, the world through
the U.N. and regional organizations should take timely and decisive action to protect
people in their stead.
Though it might not look like it, the world is better at responding to atrocities
today than it was in the past. Compared with the 15 years before 2005, the international
community is more likely to respond to humanitarian crises and much more likely to
focus on protecting civilians.
But like all political principles, the responsibility to protect R2P for short
is not a self-executing silver bullet. Political leaders must commit the will and resources
needed to deliver on their commitments. And when it comes to todays crisis in Syria,
the international community has clearly failed to fulfill its duty.
The reasons for our failure in Syria are well known. Russia and the West have
been unable to find common ground and have radically different interpretations of the
problem and its resolution. Regional players have established and backed their own
proxies in the fight. The Syrian opposition has been badly fragmented, and the conflict
has given rise to violent extremism. No party has negotiated in genuine good faith, and
all think they can fight their way to a better outcome. And all the while, Syrias civilians
have been trapped in the crossfire, subjected to atrocious crimes chemical weapons
attacks, indiscriminate bombing, mass executions, mass rape and the selling of women
and girls into sexual slavery on a bewildering scale. By besieging whole
communities and denying them humanitarian aid, the Syrian regime has also returned to
the barbaric art of using starvation and malnourishment as a weapon of war.
Despite the commitment that states have made, principles like the responsibility
to protect still rub up against harsh realities. But that does not mean that R2P itself is a
failure only that we have failed to fulfill it.
The principle provides a standard against which to judge the international
response in times of crisis, and the U.N. General Assembly has openly deplored the
Security Councils failure to fulfill its responsibilities, showing that the response to
Syria is well out of step with community expectations. If the council fails to take heed,
it will soon find itself in a crisis of legitimacy as states look for ways around it. Perhaps

aware of these pressures, the council member states have found some common ground
on protecting Syrians:disabling chemical weapons stockpiles in the wake of the Ghouta
massacre,permitting humanitarian access with the governments consent and addressing
the threat to civilians posed by the Islamic State.
Still, responsibility to protect enjoins us to do more. We need innovative
thinking and comprehensive approaches to protection.
One of the most obvious ways in which governments can fulfill their
responsibility to protect innocent Syrian citizens is by providing asylum to those fleeing
Bashar al-Assads barrel bombs and the Islamic States beheadings. Rather than the
piecemeal, disjointed and perpetually shifting policy it has adopted this far, the
international community should empower the U.N.s high commissioner for refugees to
register the displaced, ascertain their credentials as genuine refugees and find
resettlement places in third countries.
Governments should also dramatically step up the provision of humanitarian
relief to front-line states the U.N.s humanitarian request was little more than halfmet in 2015 and is faring little better in 2016 and inside Syria, and to think about
better ways to deliver it to those most in need. Should cease-fire proposals fail to deliver
as well they might ideas such asmilitarily defensible secure zones and
humanitarian aid corridors might have to be dusted off and seriously considered.
At the institutional level, governments should provide international support for
the U.N.-brokered peace negotiations and search for tangible ways to reward those
committed to peace and to punish those who block it. Both in this crisis and elsewhere,
more resources should be made available to investigate atrocity crimes, to ensure that
those responsible are one day held to account. These and other measures are practical
steps that can make a real difference to whether people live or die.
The Responsibility to Protect was born out of a shared belief that we must do
better to protect people from mass atrocities, and a conviction that we coulddo better.
Syria shows that we have a long way to go to make it a lived reality.
Yet retreating into cynicism and blame wont help those living under threat.
What is needed is frank acknowledgement of failure, a shared determination to do better
and imaginative thinking about how to overcome the roadblocks. We owe that to the
survivors of Syrias horror.

Fonte:

BELLAMY,

Alex.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-

theory/wp/2016/02/16/syria-is-a-failure-of-commitment-not-principle/. 16 de fevereiro
de 2016.