This state of independence shall be: Africa, the West, and the responsibility to protect

Este texto corresponde a la conferencia de clausura del Octavo Congreso Ibérico de Estudios Africanos (CIEA8), organizado por el Grupo de Estudios Africanos y celebrado en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid del 14 al 16 de junio de 2012; traducida y publicada con la autorización del autorHoy en día se dice que los estados africanos respaldaron el principio de la responsabilidad de proteger y la creación de la Corte Penal Internacional (CPI) solo para invertir la tendencia y conseguir mayorías igualmente grandes en el momento de su implementación. Este supuesto giro, especialmente en torno al procesamiento de Omar al Bashir en Sudán y la intervención de Libia, ha sido una sorpresa para los grupos de derechos humanos y aquellos que supuestamente se implican en la acción humanitaria. Estos últimos esperaban que las poblaciones y las élites africanas abrazaran de manera uniforme la Corte Penal Internacional y la responsabilidad de proteger como desarrollos normativos saludables para un continente acosado por guerras civiles y violaciones de derechos humanos. Las reacciones al supuesto giro africano son, en el mejor de los casos, erróneas. La mayoría de los africanos no se opone a la normativa que sustenta los nuevos regímenes humanitarios. Lo que vengo a sostener es que, generalmente, los africanos se oponen a las lagunas que se desarrollan entre, por un lado, los discursos y las doctrinas de seguridad humana, intervención humanitaria y responsabilidad de proteger y, por el otro, las prácticas de intervención bajo el humanitarismo. Estas lagunas no son mera casualidad. Para las sensibilidades poscoloniales, son el resultado de tradiciones occidentales de larga duración en las que el derecho imperial de intervención se ha mezclado perfectamente con predicados morales de intervención humanitaria, y ahora con la responsabilidad de proteger. En mi opinión, las posiciones africanas a este respecto ilustran una lucha continua por la descolonización del derecho y de la moralidad internacional en la medida en que estén relacionados con la subjetividad política, democracia global, justicia y existencia o vida internacional. Como advertencia, me gustaría indicar que no pretendo hablar de un África y/o de todas las entidades africanas como algo definido de manera uniforme. Así como tampoco quiero mezclar el Occidente oficial y las decisiones autoritarias tomadas por líderes occidentales, con los sentimientos y las tradiciones de todos los electores de lo que podría llamarse OccidenteIt is argued today that African states largely endorsed the principle of the responsibility to protect and the establishment of the international criminal court (ICC) only to reverse course in equally great majorities at the moment of implementation. This supposed reversal —particularly around the indictment of Sudan’s Omar al Bashir and the intervention in Libya, has surprised human rights groups and wouldbe humanitarians. The latter entities had expected African populations and elites to uniformly embrace the ICC and the responsibility to protect as salutary normative developments for a continent beset by civil wars and human rights violations. The reactions to the supposed African “reversal” are misguided at best. The majority of Africans do not object to the normative underpinning of the new humanitarian regimes. It is my contention that Africans generally object to evolving gaps between, on the one hand, the discourses and doctrines of human security, humanitarian intervention, and the responsibility to protect and, on the other, the practices of intervention under humanitarianism. These gaps are not merely happenstance. To postcolonial sensibilities, they are the result of long Western traditions in which the imperial right of intervention has blended seamlessly with moral predicates of humanitarian intervention —and now the responsibility to protect. To me, the African positions in these regards illustrate a continuing struggle for decolonization of international law and morality as they pertain to political subjectivity, global democracy, justice, and international existence or life. As a note of caution, I wish to indicate that I do not intend to speak for a uniformly-defined Africa and/or for all African entities. Nor do I wish to conflate the official West and authoritative decisions made by Western leaders with the sentiments and traditions of all constituencies of what might be called The Wes

To the Orphaned, Dispossessed, and Illegitimate Children: Human Rights Beyond Republican and Liberal Traditions

After the Helsinki Accords, the collapse of the Soviet Union and its empire, and the collapse of states in Africa and elsewhere, many in the West have come to envisage the enforcement of human rights as a practical matter. Human rights are thus incorporated in normative regimes under the rubrics of either the rule of law or the responsibility to protect to be held against the purveyors of violence. I do not discount the normative underpinnings of the related stands taken today by states and transnational and national civil society organizations. I wish to insist on the futility of envisaging human rights merely as legal standards and norms and on the need to revisit the question of the human on whom rights are bestowed. The present article is an exercise in historical and comparative analysis of what human rights meant to Haitian slaves in the eighteenth century when, as happened in France and the United States, notions of human rights emanated in a constitutional scheme intended to protect the newly freed slaves against violence from the prevailing post- Enlightenment political, economic, and ideological systems-all of which had been integral to the processes of enslavement. It is my contention that, like Haitian slaves, anti-colonialists and some postcolonial entities found liberal human rights schemes to be equally implicated in modern violence and therefore responded by proposing novel grounds for imagining human rights outside of the strictures of liberal constitutionalism. Human Rights and Legal Systems Across the Global South, Symposium, Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Bloomington, Indiana. 9-10 April 2010

Sovereignty in Africa: Quasi-statehood and other myths in international theory

Este capítulo se centra en dos errores a menudo repetidos. El primero es la idea de que los estados poseen, de modo uniforme, una cierta coherencia orgánica generada por un ajuste resuelto entre estado y nación, un deseo legítimo del estado de mantener esta relación, una probada aptitud por su parte para crear y conservar un entorno seguro para la nación, así como una capacidad verosímil para defenderse frente a las entidades competidoras. El segundo es que la soberanía postcolonial constituya una desviación histórica del sistema westfaliano, tanto en lo relativo a la ficción jurídica como a la realidad empírica. [...] Para ilustrar mis argumentos, tendré en cuenta las formas de soberanía histórica que los hegemons occidentales previeron para Bélgica y Suiza por un lado, y para el Congo/Zaire por otro, durante los dos últimos siglosThis chapter focuses on two oft-repeated errors. One is the notion that Western states uniformly possess a certain organic coherence generated by a purposeful fit between state and nation, a legitimate state desire to maintain this relation, a proven state capacity to defend itself against competing entities. The other is that post-colonial sovereignty constitutes an historical deviation from Western norms, both as a juridical fiction and an empirical reality. [...] To illustrate my points, I will consider the historical forms of sovereignty that Western hegemons envisioned for Belgium and Switzerland, on the one hand, and Congo/Zaire, on the other, during the last two centuries

Intricate Entanglement: The ICC and the Pursuit of Peace, Reconciliation and Justice in Libya, Guinea, and Mali

International justice is not merely a function of legislation and adjudication. It depends on the extent to which it is viewed as legitimate by litigants and others based on perceptions of the relationships of the operations of existing regimes of dispensation of justice. This is a reflection of the operations of the institutions of justice and those of the international order: including but not limited to the actions of judicial authorities and other judicial auxiliaries and intermediaries who give effect to justice through their interpretation and application of the law. From this perspective, justice extends beyond the ability of courts to specify the legal, material and moral dimensions of an offence. International justice has social ends that are easily undermined by self-interested attempts to delegitimize judicial institutions – a charge often levelled at the African Union – but also by the desire of others to preserve, as a matter of political inherency, their own sovereign spaces. Above all, the social ends of social justice, which is the end of international justice, is undermined by elevating judicial or punitive justice over larger social goals – as the examples in this article suggest

To the Orphaned, Dispossessed, and Illegitimate Children: Human Rights Beyond Republican and Liberal Traditions

After the Helsinki Accords, the collapse of the Soviet Union and its empire, and the collapse of states in Africa and elsewhere, many in the West have come to envisage the enforcement of human rights as a practical matter. Human rights are thus incorporated in normative regimes under the rubrics of either the rule of law or the responsibility to protect to be held against the purveyors of violence. I do not discount the normative underpinnings of the related stands taken today by states and transnational and national civil society organizations. I wish to insist on the futility of envisaging human rights merely as legal standards and norms and on the need to revisit the question of the human on whom rights are bestowed. The present article is an exercise in historical and comparative analysis of what human rights meant to Haitian slaves in the eighteenth century when, as happened in France and the United States, notions of human rights emanated in a constitutional scheme intended to protect the newly freed slaves against violence from the prevailing post- Enlightenment political, economic, and ideological systems-all of which had been integral to the processes of enslavement. It is my contention that, like Haitian slaves, anti-colonialists and some postcolonial entities found liberal human rights schemes to be equally implicated in modern violence and therefore responded by proposing novel grounds for imagining human rights outside of the strictures of liberal constitutionalism. Human Rights and Legal Systems Across the Global South, Symposium, Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Bloomington, Indiana. 9-10 April 2010

Roundtable: The Limits of Bridge-Building

This roundtable develops arguments presented at the 2008 International Studies Association (ISA) annual convention. The theme of the convention was 'Bridging Multiple Divides' and its aim to enhance dialogue among the diverse research communities within international studies. The aim of the 'Limits of Bridge-Building' panel at ISA, and the present roundtable, has been to probe the challenges presented by bridge-building and specifically the possible limitations or dangers that might inhere within attempts to build bridges in International Relations. The roundtable then is aimed at problematising the concept of bridge-building and sounding a hesitant note that takes seriously not only the possibilities but also the limitations and, indeed, possible dangers of 'bridge-building'