With
the united and determined
will, mountains can be moved"

By Joseph
Yav Katshung

1.
Introduction

In September
2005, world leaders at the United Nations endorsed
a historic
declaration that the international community has a
“responsibility…
to help protect populations from genocide, ethnic cleansing,
war
crimes and crimes against humanity” and expressed a willingness
to
take timely and decisive action when states “manifestly
fail” to protect
their own populations from these threats.ⁱ

Member states of
the African Union have been even more
categorical in their support
for humanitarian intervention in the context of
their own continent.
The AU Constitutive Act declares “the right of
the Union
to intervene in a Member State in respect of grave
circumstances,
namely: war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity”.ⁱⁱ

However, the
statements of some African leaders have suggested
very different
interpretations of their commitment to protect vulnerable
civilians.
For instance, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has declared
that:

The vision
that we must present
for a future United Nations should not be one
filled with vague concepts that
provide an opportunity for those
states that seek to interfere in the
internal affairs of other
states. Concepts such as “humanitarian
intervention” and
the “responsibility to protect” need careful scrutiny
in
order to test the motives of their proponents.”
ⁱⁱⁱ

Yet President
Paul Kagame of Rwanda
has asserted:

Never again
should the international community’s response to
these crimes
be found wanting. Let us resolve to take collective actions in
a
timely and decisive manner. Let us also commit to put in place
early
warning mechanisms and ensure that preventive interventions are
the
rule rather and the exception. ^iv

Clearly, the
current circumstances and recent experiences of
these respective
countries have a major influence on their leaders’
approaches
to Responsibility to Protect (R2P). Nevertheless, these
conflicting
attitudes raise serious questions over African
leaders’
willingness to fulfil their responsibilities to protect
endangered
civilians in practice. Ultimately, the proof of the pudding is in
the
eating and the AU will be judged on its responses to
humanitarian
crises on its watch.

This paper
assesses the level of support among African leaders
to follow through
on their commitment to R2P in practice and makes
recommendations on
how to enhance the will to act where it is seen to be
lacking.
Generating the political will to protect civilians remains a
priority
in Africa. The emerging African
peace
and security architecture provides a structure for African efforts
to
implement R2P in practice. This paper
traces
the evolution of Africa’s peace and security capability
within a continental
political context, focusing on shifting
approaches to civilian protection.
Yet the involvement of the
international community – and of African states in
particular –
in seeking to promote peace and security remains ad hoc
and
inconsistent. One of the challenges is the gap between
the
commitment of governments to respond to humanitarian crises and
the
embodiment of this commitment into national foreign and
defense
policy. Given political realities in the world, intervention
on
humanitarian grounds in Africa will in all likelihood still depend
on
the political will of key member states that dominate both the
decision
to intervene and the decision to make funds, troops, and
equipment available,
whether to the UN or an ad hoc multinational or
regional force. Therefore, as
there is a link between the political
will to intervene and capacity to
deploy, this paper relates
political will and capacity to
the continental preparedness to
intervene for humanitarian purposes.
It is notable that having
a more robust, at-the-ready capacity to
intervene would affect the
political equation by removing the
lack-of-capacity obstacle and
excuse, thereby unambiguously testing political
will: whether member
states would still say “no” in the face of a
humanitarian
disaster.

2. The
Responsibility to Protect Civilian Populations in
African Crises

Conflict,
violence and religious radicalism continue to
undermine the
maintenance of peace and security and the promotion of human
rights
in Africa. Generating the political will to protect civilians
remains
a priority in Africa. Yet the involvement of the
international
community – and of African states in particular – in
seeking
to promote peace and security remains ad hoc and
inconsistent.

Dictated by
realpolitik, the timing and nature of
appropriate collective
security action remains contentious. As the ICISS
report stressed,
controversy over intervention relates both to
inaction^v
and
action^vi
(ICISS 2001). However, in
recent years, many stakeholders in Africa
and in the broader international
community have recognised that
serious questions of principle and practice
relating to civilian
protection need to be confronted in a much more
comprehensive way.

In 2000, the
International Commission
on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) was
established to help
shake the world out of its indifference and political
paralysis. The
ICISS report released in 2001 advocated a duty upon the
international
community to protect populations when the government of a
country
fails to do that for themselves. It argued that:

…there
are exceptional circumstances in which the
interest that all states
have in maintaining a stable international order
requires them to
react when all order within a state has broken down. Also
when civil
conflict and repression are so violent that civilians are
threatened
with massacre, genocide or ethnic cleansing on a large
scale…'
^vii

This emerging
doctrine of the
responsibility to protect was reflected in the UN’s
High-Level
Panel Report on Threats, Challenges and Change, which called for
a
recognition of the international community’s legitimate right
to
intervene in internal conflicts to prevent the loss of life and
further
deterioration of the situation. Thus:

…history
teaches us all too clearly that it cannot be
assumed that every state
will always be able, or willing, to meet its
responsibilities to
protect its own people and avoid harming its neighbours.
And in those
circumstances, the principles of collective security mean that
some
portion of those responsibilities should be taken up by
the
international community…^viii

At the 2005
Millennium Review Summit at the United Nations, the
proposal to
enforce a clear framework for humanitarian intervention and a
clear
duty to act was highly controversial.^ix
After protracted negotiations,
the declaration from the Millennium
Review Summit did include specific
reference to this duty to act,
stating that:

‘Each
individual state has the responsibility to
protect its populations
from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and
crimes against
humanity… The international community should, as
appropriate,
encourage and help states to exercise this
responsibility.’^x

The African
Union (AU), having
deliberated at length on the Report of the High-level
Panel on
Threats, Challenges and Change, adopted a Common African
Position
(known as “The Ezulwini Consensus”), stating that:

‘ …
It is important to reiterate
the obligation of states to protect
their citizens, but this should not be
used as a pretext to
undermine the sovereignty, independence and territorial
integrity of
states.’^xi

Africa has a
mixed record on
humanitarian intervention. Efforts to prevent the escalation
of
nascent conflict, including crisis diplomacy and the imposition
of
sanctions, have often proved inadequate or ineffective. And once
a
crisis has escalated to the point of imminent or outright disaster,
the
impulse of many African states to provide troops to intervene to
stop the
suffering has often been deflected by resort to the norm
of
‘non-interference’.

Recent efforts
to move forward to a
culture of ‘non-indifference’ in Africa have focused
on
the development of the various components of the African peace
and
security architecture. This is a difficult process for Africa,
where
the experiences of colonialism and subsequent weakness of many
states
have made issues of sovereignty and non-interference
particularly
sensitive. The next section outlines continental and regional
efforts
to develop its peace and security capacity.

3. Towards
Africa’s Responsibility to
Protect

The African
Union and the various
sub-regional organisations have adopted an ambitious
peace and
security agenda and are establishing a bold new architecture
designed
to take the continent more proactive and effective in preventing
and
responding to serious crises both within and between African states.

3.1. The
OAU principle of
‘non-interference’

From its
inception, and as stated in article 2 of its Charter,
the OAU was
guided by two main principles: the ‘sovereign equality of
all
member states’ and ‘non-interference in the internal
affairs of member
states’. Further more, the member
-states agreed to maintain and
respect inherited colonial borders.

While these
principles aimed to enhance stability in Africa and
to deter
superpower adventurism, they also had a negative
implications.
Principles of non-interference were exploited by many African
leaders
and their allies to bolster the position of elites against
the
consequences of dissent among their populations. The OAU was
often
criticised as a ‘Heads of State club’ as it tended to
focus more on
protecting Africa’s leaders from its citizens
rather the other way
round.^xii
The organisation’s adherence to
the cardinal principle of
‘non-interference in internal affairs’ led to a
failure
to act aggressively in the face of egregious violations
within
states, most famously in the cases of Uganda, Equatorial Guinea
and
the Central African Republic.

More progressive
approaches to peace and security that have
emerged since the end of
the Cold War and have sought to shift focus from
protecting states’
security to protecting their citizens (i.e. human
security) continued
to be resisted by the OAU under the guise of
’non–interference’.
It developed conflict resolution mechanisms that
privileged the use
of soft power and presented less of a threat to
sovereignty, such as
its Commission of Mediation, Conciliation and
Arbitration in 1964 and
subsequently the Conflict Prevention, Management and
Resolution
Mechanism in 1993.^xiii

Between 1963
and 2002, the OAU was
faced with many occurrences of border disputes,
inter-state
aggression or subversion, separatist movements, and in extreme
cases,
state collapse. The OAU’s Commission of Mediation, Conciliation
and
Arbitration lacked the capacity and commitment to manage and
resolve conflict
and protect civilians. In general, this structure
remained largely
ineffective in protecting civilians and quelling
conflicts in
Africa.

Where the
organisation decided to act to defend member
states’
sovereignty and territorial integrity, civilian protection was
seldom
a priority. During the 1967-70 Civil War in Nigeria, the OAU
created
an ad hoc Consultative Committee that helped to prevent
Biafra's
secession. When Portugal attempted the re-conquest of Guinea in
1970,
the OAU rendered financial and military aid to Guinea, declared
war
on mercenaries in Africa and waged a reasonably successful
information
campaign that galvanised international opinion against
the aggression. In
Equatorial Guinea, OAU support enabled the young
republic in 1977 to
reinforce its newly-won independence.

The magnitude
of instability that
continued to plague Africa and the political
circumstances of the
post-Cold War continent led to a re-evaluation of the
mechanisms for
conflict prevention, management and resolution, and
–
ultimately – the establishment of the African Union.

3.2 The
African Union and the ‘non-indifference’
principle

The
AU, inaugurated to replace the OAU in 2001, was designed
to
explicitly confront both the central weaknesses of the OAU and the
need
for a reinvigorated African ‘ownership’ of the
challenges facing the
continent. Importantly, the first objective of
the Union is to ‘achieve
greater unity and solidarity between
the African countries and the peoples
of Africa’. This
recognition of the fundamental importance of peoples,
rather
than just states, in continental affairs is indicative of
the
drafters’ determination to replace the OAU’s ‘Heads
of State Club’
with an institution aimed at overcoming the
challenges faced by people and
their communities.

Moreover, a
major aspect of the AU is a new spirit of
“non-indifference”
towards massive crimes against humanity and genocide in
Africa, as
opposed to a policy of non-interference. Collective
security
innovations of the AU Constitutive Act include: the establishment
of
a Common African Security and Defence Policy^xiv;
affirmation of the right of
the Union to intervene in a member state
to restore peace and security in
respect of grave circumstances such
as war crimes, genocide and crimes
against humanity^xv;
and respect for democratic
principles, human rights, the rule of law
and good
governance^xvi.
Encouragingly, the new AU has
put in place a
number of important mechanisms to support its bold new mandate
to
confront the continent’s serious peace and security problems.
These
include a standing African Peace and Security Council, an
advisory ‘Panel of
the Wise’ made up of eminent former
statespersons, a Continental Early
Warning System, an African Standby
Force to provide for quick and effective
‘humanitarian
intervention’ in extreme circumstances.

The
establishment of these new African means of preventing and
responding
to crises on the continent represent a bold step forward and
offer
the hope of a new era of collective African responsibility to
the
most vulnerable. These provisions are a radical departure from
the
peace and security arrangements of the OAU, and reflect an
emerging
recognition of the “responsibility to protect”,
resulting in the
transformation of the absolute right of state
sovereignty that dominated the
era of the OAU.^xvii
However, seasoned observers of
African affairs know that, on both
fronts, the gap between rhetoric and
action can often be
overwhelming.

3.3 The
Ezulwini Consensus and
the use of force

In February
2005,
15 African foreign ministers gathered in Swaziland to forge
an
African Common Position on the UN reform.
Having deliberated at length
on the Report
of the High- level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change,
they
adopted “The Ezulwini Consensus”, which contains the
following
elements:

• Collective
  security and the challenge
  of prevention;

• Collective
  security and the use of
  force and;

• Institutional
  reform.

On the legality
of the use of force in order to protect
civilians, the Ezulwini
Consensus reiterates that it is important to comply
scrupulously with
the provisions of Article 51 of the UN Charter, which
authorises the
use of force only in cases of legitimate self-defence.
Additionally,
Article 4(h) of the AU Constitutive Act authorises intervention
in
grave circumstances such as genocide, war crimes and crimes
against
humanity. Consequently, any recourse to force outside the
provisions
of these treaties should be prohibited.

However, since
the General Assembly and the Security Council
are often far from the
scenes of conflicts and may not be in a position to
accurately
evaluate the nature of crisis situations, it is imperative
that
Regional Organisations are empowered to take action in
certain
circumstances. The African Union agreed with
the High-
level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change
that the
intervention of Regional Organisations should be done with
the approval of
the UN Security Council; although in certain
situations such approval could
be granted “after the fact”
where urgent action is required. In such cases,
the UN should assume
responsibility for financing such
operations.^xviii

IV. From
Rwanda to Darfur: Lessons
for Political Will to Protect Civilians in
Africa

Civilians in
Africa bear the heaviest brunt of acts of terror,
civil wars, violent
suppression of political opponents and criminal violence.
The most
heinous examples of the failure of civilian protection in Africa
were
the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 resulted in the deaths of an
estimated
800,000 people, mostly women and children,^xix
and the war in the Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC) between 1998
and 2003, resulted in one of the world’s
worst humanitarian
crises, with over 3.4 million persons displaced from their
homes and
an estimated 4 million killed.^xx
Those are a tragic part of
Africa’s contemporary history.

4.1. Darfur
and political will in
Africa

Despite
African leaders’ pledge
to never let another Rwanda happen again, they have
not demonstrated
the will to exercise the African Union’s right to intervene
to
stem gross human rights violations in either a concerted or
consistent
manner.

In the Darfur
conflict that started in 2003, estimates of
numbers killed range from
180,000 to 400,000. At least two million people
have been forced to
flee from their homes and are displaced in Sudan or in
camps in
neighbouring Chad.^xxi
Significantly, Rwanda was the
first African country to deploy a
protection force to Darfur as part of the
AU mission. However, it is
clear that the African
Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) has – despite its best
efforts –
clearly not been able to provide effective protection or
prevent
massive human rights abuses.

AMIS’
role in Darfur has been a critical test case for the
AU’s
capacity and willingness to protect civilians on the continent.
Its
mission has been an enormously difficult and complex one. AMIS
has
been tasked to monitor, as far as possible, the humanitarian
ceasefire
agreement of April 2004 and to report on violations; remain
in touch with
local authorities to build confidence and increase
dialogue; monitor
humanitarian convoys (these are often attacked);
and establish police
stations in various locations to reduce attacks.
Despite some limited
achievements, AMIS has largely been unable to
provide effective protection to
most of the population of Darfur.^xxii

Effective
civilian protection is also hampered by a lack of
will to implement
and comply with existing standards and principles. For
instance,
despite the AU being the only international organisation that
has
given itself the right to intervene for human protection
purposes,^xxiii
it is increasingly becoming
clear that its good intentions need the
political will to see them through.
Unfortunately, the on-going
crisis in Darfur has shown that few African
countries can be counted
upon to answer calls for civilian assistance.

Political will
for intervention is a major concern for the
protection of civilians
especially in Africa. General Romeo Dallaire, UN
force commander
during the Rwandan genocide, has recently argued that
“Darfur,
is a ‘perfect example’ of a ‘lack of political
will’ to prevent
crises developing”.^xxiv
Meanwhile, UN Secretary General
Kofi Annan has observed that
“everybody is looking to see if world leaders
will make good on
their World Summit pledge last September to protect
vulnerable
communities…. A certain political will is required for action
–
and I don’t think we have the kind of political will that is
required to
drive things home… African leaders…will
have to work collectively with the
Sudanese government to convince
them that it is in their interest to
cooperate with the international
community."^xxv

4.2. Darfur
and international political will

Political will
to resolve African crises is lacking more
generally at the
international level. A recent report from Action Africa
argues that
in 1994, the Clinton Administration refused to name the
unfolding
genocide in Rwanda and failed to act decisively to stop it.
It
blocked international intervention in Rwanda, claiming that there
was
neither domestic constituency nor compelling foreign policy
interest
to support U.S. action.^xxvi

In Darfur, the
Bush
Administration is the first government to have publicly
acknowledged that
what is happening constitutes genocide. There is
controversy on this notion
of genocide in Darfur and one could
support the position of the then
President Olusegun Obasanjo
of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, who noted,
there is little doubt
that, despite the hair-splitting of the proper
description of the
unfolding tragedy, there is a developing genocide in
Darfur.^xxvii

Yet although the
U.S. has contributed diplomatically and
financially to the peace
process in Sudan, it has not implemented a
comprehensive strategy to
protect the people of Darfur from the ongoing
crise.

The Action
Africa report concludes that despite some key
differences in the
domestic and international dynamics today compared to
twelve years
ago during the Rwandan genocide, the U.S. response on Darfur
reveals
that important lessons remain unlearned. The U.S. is the
most
powerful country in the world, with an unmatched capacity to
respond
to crises and to mobilize a broader international response. If
the
U.S. were to do everything it could to stop genocide, it is
certain
that it would succeed in doing so. However, in the realm of
U.S.
foreign policy priorities, Africa is most often absent
or
marginalised, and the human cost of this myopia is most clear in
the
death toll of these two genocides.^xxviii

In Rwanda in
1994, the Clinton Administration was more focused
on the crisis in
the former Yugoslavia, and was still reeling from the
disastrous
intervention in Somalia the previous year. In Darfur at present,
the
U.S. is focused more on the crisis in the Middle East, on the war
in
Iraq and on the so-called “War on Terrorism”, which are
estimated to be
more pressing policy priorities than genocide
in
Africa.^xxix
It is hard to imagine another
part of the world where killings would
be left to continue, and where the
loss of hundreds of thousands of
lives would be tolerated.

To sum up, one
could say that the failure of the international
community to
intervene in the 1994 Rwandan genocide provided many lessons for
the
AU’s current mission in Sudan. The AU’s intervention in
Darfur has
revealed the limitations in the current peace and security
structures both at
its headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and on
the ground. While the AU’s
deployment of a force in the region
demonstrates a strong commitment to the
protection of citizens across
borders, logistical problems as well as the
lack of political will to
challenge the government in Khartoum make the
situation stark. This
highlights the need to strengthen continental capacity
in such
scenarios and call for the international community to
intervene
effectively in conflict situations in
Africa.^xxx

V. Lessons
from the Regional
Economic Communities (RECs) in garnering the political will
to
protect civilians

Created
primarily to forge regional economic
partnerships, RECs have, over
time, embraced peace and security mandates and
developed mechanisms
for conflict prevention, management and resolution These
mechanisms
form part of the overall security architecture of the AU, and
are
tasked with adapting continental visions and policies to
their
regions, and providing guidelines for implementation of
various
activities by national governments. Africa’s
sub-regional organisations such as the
Southern African Development
Community (SADC), the Economic Community of West
African States
(ECOWAS), the Economic Community of Central African States
(ECCAS),
the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the
Arab
Maghreb Union (AMU), are often touted as the pillars of
development,
yet real development and stability remain elusive.

Increasingly,
both the UN and the AU
are looking to regional organisations as the initial
respondents in
preventing, managing and resolving conflicts occurring in
their
backyards. Among the comparative advantages of regional
organisations
is their ability to intervene in situations where there are
political
constraints to UN action; their speed of response; flexibility
or
improvisation; and their familiarity with issues on the ground.

Examples of
African regional intervention include IGAD has been
central in the
negotiations that sought settlement of two of the most
delicate peace
agreements on the continent, namely the Comprehensive Peace
Agreement
between the Government of Sudan and the SPLM, and the agreement
that
led to the formation of the Somali Transitional Federal Government
in
Kenya, both in 2005. Meanwhile, ECOWAS has been involved in
numerous
complex peacekeeping missions, such as the ECOMIL operation
in
Liberia in 2003. The collaboration with the Economic
Community
of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG)
helped to restore peace in Liberia and protect
civilians. This is a
model of cooperation that could usefully be applied to
other
situations

Yet in other
circumstances where forced intervention has
occurred, results have
been mixed. The capacity of African regional
organisations to conduct
peacekeeping missions is substantially affected by
the political and
social environment of the region. For instance, the
weakness of ECCAS
is reflective of the instability in the Central African
region and
the lack of a strong state that can chaperone the peace and
security
agenda. SADC’s ability to act in concert is hampered by
distrust
and lack of a common normative framework for dealing with
security issues in
Southern Africa. And in the Horn of Africa, IGAD
is a cautious and frequently
paralysed regional organisation.

If the RECs
are to play their role as
the building blocks for the AU Peace and Security
architecture, their
capacity must be developed and sustained. Increased
training
opportunities are necessary to meet the enormous demand
for
peacebuilding that is being placed on these organisations. There
is
also a need for stronger ties and better information-sharing
between
the AU, UN and RECs in addition to enhanced co–operation
between
RECs themselves.

However, one
should not draw the conclusion that such
responsibilities can
henceforth be delegated solely to regional
organisations, either in
Africa or elsewhere. Regional organisations can face
political,
structural, financial or planning limitations. At times
the
impartiality or neutrality of their member states might not
be
assured, for a variety of historical, political or economic
reasons.
Furthermore, the AU and the RECs can only be as efficient
and
effective as the states that comprise them. Therefore, the
political
will for intervention must first be generated in states
themselves.

VI.
Challenges for Responsibility to Protect in
Africa

6.1.
States ‘interests’ as barrier for
intervention in Africa

One might
conclude from the evidence above that states prefer
not to intervene
unless there are compelling reasons for doing so. Experience
shows
that states will not usually intervene against allies,
friendly
governments, major powers, or states within major
powers’
immediate sphere of influence, however badly their governments
may
behave. The situation in Darfur is illustrative of this fact.
Aaron
Tesfaye notes that Sudan has so far rejected the UN
resolution
authorising the replacement of the AU Mission in Sudan (AMIS) by
a
stronger UN force. Pointing out that Khartoum has been able to
block
this development because it has powerful allies on the UN
Security
Council, namely China and Russia.^xxxi
There are economic and
political reasons behind Russian and Chinese
support of Sudanese sovereignty.
Russia is a major arms supplier for
Sudan and therefore lacks incentive to
assist in resolving the Darfur
crisis.^xxxii
Meanwhile, China’s demand for
natural resources and extensive
investment in Sudan’s oil industry has
prevented it from taking
a firmer stance on the
conflict.

It seems that
the unwillingness of states to intervene on other
states’
territories is connected to governments’ political
uncertainty
about actions that do not directly serve their national
interests.^xxxiii
This reluctance is all the
greater when the crisis is taking place in
an area that is geographically
remote or of little interest to the
media. Conversely, it seems that the
closer the crisis is to home,
the greater the pressure to intervene. This was
a key reason for
NATO's involvement in Kosovo. The effects of such crises are
clearly
visible and may, moreover, undermine regional security.
Such
considerations almost inevitably result in a selectiveness which
in
itself is difficult to reconcile with the collective responsibility
to
protect endangered civilians.

6.2. The
question of State
sovereignty

Like President
Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, many Africans believe
that the principles
of “responsibility to protect” and “use of force”
pose
potential threats to the sovereign independence and security of
less powerful
African states. This is regrettable in a period where
the entire community is
looking for ways to prevent further human
rights abuses in Africa. Pillay
suggests that “the protection
of human rights of all people is
unquestionable, but there has to
be a clearer, more sensitive and careful
articulation of a collective
responsibility to protect. Unless this principle
is open to debate
and negotiation, African and other developing states, will
likely
perceive the idea of collective security as an instrument of
coercion
and intervention, rather than of global
co-operation".^xxxiv

The
deteriorating situation in Darfur demonstrates how urgent
it is for
African leaders and communities to resolve this debate over
semantics
and to reach a consensus on when a defence of 'state sovereignty'
is
patently unacceptable. From the outset, the AU’s involvement in
Darfur
was conditional upon receiving consent from Khartoum. Surely
this is not the
“last resort” type of intervention that
is envisioned in the ICISS report and
the AU’s Constitutive
Act.^xxxv
How can intervention be subject
to the consent of a state which is
incapable of protecting its own citizens,
or is committing human
rights abuses itself? This example of conditional
intervention is
illustrative of the lack of political will to implement
the
Responsibility to Protect principles.

The situation in
Zimbabwe is another case of a state oppressing
its own people but
hiding behind the shield of sovereignty. According to the
ICISS
report, sovereignty is responsibility. This implies that the
primary
duty of the state is to ensure the well-being and safety of
all
people under its jurisdiction.^xxxvi
This includes taking into
account their actions towards their own
citizens and towards the rest of the
world. These responsibilities
are clearly not being fulfilled in countries
such as Sudan and
Zimbabwe.

VII. The
way forward

Despite the
collective shame and
regret expressed over the genocide in Rwanda, gross
violations of
human rights, and mass killings continue. It is a failure
of
governments, international organisations and the UN Security Council
to
generate the necessary political will to protect the
world’s
citizens.

In Africa, the
development of law, norms and political
mechanisms to allow
collective intervention in crisis situations is of little
more than
academic value if it is not accompanied by a strengthening of
the
practical means of carrying out such interventions. In certain
cases,
this ‘capacity gap’ is one of the most significant
challenge facing
the implementation of the “responsibility to
protect” in Africa. That is true
as there is a link
between the political will to intervene and
capacity to deploy. It is
notable that having a more robust, at-the-ready
capacity to intervene
would affect the political equation by removing the
lack-of-capacity
obstacle and excuse, thereby unambiguously testing political
will:
whether member states would still say “no” in the face of
a
humanitarian disaster.

The AU should,
in the name of non-indifference, make efficient
use of its Peace and
Security Council (PSC) to interfere in the internal
affairs of member
states in the event of an imminent threat to peace,
security and
stability. As Musifiky Mwanasali has observed, the
AU’s
15-member PSC is legally empowered to implement the
“responsibility
to protect” in Africa. The Protocol Relating to
the
Establishment of the Peace and Security Council of the African
Union^xxxvii
confers to the PSC with “the
authority to use its discretion to
intervene” or “entry into” and
“take
appropriate action to address potential or actual
conflict
situations”.^xxxviii
This is an unambiguous legal
framework with which to operationalise
the “responsibility to protect” in
Africa. Yet in both
Rwanda and Darfur several African states were willing to
deploy men
and material, but most lacked the military capability to be
fully
effective and the financial and logistical wherewithal to
sustain
their forces for the long term. To strengthen African states
engaged
in humanitarian interventions, more thought must be given to
the
challenge of developing regional capacities to act.

VIII.
Conclusion

On a continent
where gross human rights abuses and violence are
rampant, it is more
critical than ever to protect civilians. African
conflicts not only
kill more civilians than soldiers but also deliberately
target
civilians and use children as combatants. With sufficient
political
will – on the part of Africa and on the part of the
international
community – to protect civilians in Africa can be
enhanced.
Governments must not wait to act until images of death
and
destruction are shown on TV screens. With political will, rhetoric
can
be transformed into reality. Without it, not even the noblest
sentiments will
have a chance of success. Political will is also
needed from the
international community. Whenever the international
community is committed to
making a difference, it has proved that
significant and rapid transformation
can be achieved. Yet significant
progress will require sustained
international attention at the
highest political levels over a period of
years.

The responses to
protect civilians would immensely benefit from
Vaclev Havel’s
sagacious words, “we live in a new world, in which all of
us
must begin to bear responsibility for everything that
occurs.”^xxxix
This means that civilian
protection is not just a responsibility of
the government, armed forces, and
other security apparatus but rather
a collective and shared responsibility of
the state, civil society
groups and the international community. Besides a
strong commitment,
effective protection of civilian requires resources. Over
time,
civilian protection must not only become a norm but also a
practice.
Its success as a norm will rightly be judged on whether it
has
reduced the vulnerability of civilian populations to armed
conflict,
and on the extent to which human rights and humanitarian
obligations
are observed and enforced. Successful implementation of
protection
strategies requires the development of a comprehensive and
holistic
approach to security combined with the necessary political
will.