The Responsibility to Protect: A Beaver Without a Dam Review of The Responsibility to Protect: Reprot of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty

The beaver\u27s dam is comparable to protective intervention for at-risk populations.\u27 Beavers need dams to enlarge the underwater habitat that will be open to them in winter, by creating a pond deep enough so that the bottom will not freeze. Humanitarian corridors and safe havens serve parallel functions for displaced civilians during times of conflict. Deep water, whether it is due to a beaver dam or not, provides storage for winter food and year-round underwater access to the den secure from predators. The shelter and safety deep water provides can be likened to the physical protection needed to safeguard civilians and aid convoys, deliver humanitarian supplies, forcibly disarm belligerents, and shield humanitarian workers during and after conflict. Increasing the area of the pond through damming and additional downstream impoundments provides safer access to additional food supplies for beavers in the same way that buffer or no-fly zones protect vulnerable civilians. The Responsibility to Protect can be likened to the beaver because it seeks to build a dam of protection through the actions of the international community, to safeguard and preserve human life in nations whose governments fail to do so. Just as beavers without dams are more at risk of death and starvation during the winter season, people in areas of conflict that lack buffer zones are similarly at risk year round. This analysis seeks to determine whether the report adequately lays out a viable strategy for the international community that complements, in human terms, the protective rationale or logic behind the beavers\u27 dam, by providing a framework for intervention to protect at-risk populations in such a manner as to minimize human suffering and loss of life

The Responsibility to Protect: A Beaver Without a Dam?

Review of International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect and The Responsibility to Protect: Research, Bibliography, Background (Supp. Vol. to the Responsibility to Portect by Thomas G. Weiss & Don Huber

The Responsibility to Protect: A Beaver Without a Dam?

Review of International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect and The Responsibility to Protect: Research, Bibliography, Background (Supp. Vol. to the Responsibility to Portect by Thomas G. Weiss & Don Huber

Domesticating International Law Through Truth and Reconciliation Commissions: The Case of the Liberian TRC

African states actively domesticate international law through judicial capacity-building in, for example, Botswana’s Industrial Court’s use of the Convention for Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and International Labor Organization conventions in the Moatswi v. Fencing Center case; Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Ghana’s creation of the Human Rights Division of the Ghana High Court; and the institution of a sexual crimes division—Liberia’s Court ‘‘E’’—by the Liberian legislature. Moreover, high courts in Africa have demonstrated their willingness to adjudicate cases using regional and international law. For instance, in Kaunda v. President of the Republic of South Africa, the case turned on whether South African mercenaries who had been captured in Zimbabwe and threatened with prosecution and capital punishment after an unfair trial in a third state could claim diplomatic protection from South Africa, i.e., could claim a right to be extradited back to South Africa. In 1990 Benin’s Constitutional Court determined that the ACHPR was an ‘‘interpretive tool’’ for the constitution, including its ‘‘freedom to associate’’-related provision. In 2001 the Botswana High Court in Unity Dow employed international human rights law to challenge the constitutionality of its 1982 Citizenship Act, and in the 2000 Windhoek Prison case, the Namibian Supreme Court used the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention Against Torture (CAT) to determine that chains or mechanical restraints violated a person’s right to dignity, and his or her right not to be tortured or subjected to degrading and inhumane treatment. While these courts and cases provide only a brief snapshot of the various ways in which international law has been and is being used by African judiciaries, it is important to note that this phenomenon is not exceptional. While few know about the impact of international law on domestic courts, much less is known about the normative force that truth and reconciliation commissions have played in fashioning and domesticating international rules. Hence the forgoing analysis will focus on the various and distinct ways in which the Liberian TRC not only applied and domesticated international law, but also how it made a normative contribution to the practice of truth commissions and transitional justice, namely the human rights protective regime. Before I embark in this intellectual exercise, however, it is important briefly to highlight the mission and mandate of the ITAC and TRC, as well as their use of international law to fulfill their mandate as quasi-judicial mechanisms

Black Women and International Law: Deliberate Interactions, Movements and Actions

From Compton to Cairo, Bahia to Brixton, black women have been disproportionally affected by poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, discrimination and violence. Despite being one of the largest and geographically dispersed groups in the world, they are rarely referenced or considered as a subject of analysis in international law literature. Thus, it is vital that scholars refashion global discourse by re-conceptualizing international law and relations from their unique experiences and perspectives. This collection covers a broad range of topics and issues that examine the complex interactions - as subjects and objects - between black women and international law. The book critically explores the manifold relationship between them with a view toward highlighting the historic and contemporary ways in which they have influenced and been influenced by transnational law, doctrine, norms, jurisprudence, public policy, public discourse and global governance. It purports to unearth old law and fashion new paradigms born out of the experiences of black women.https://commons.law.famu.edu/faculty-books/1008/thumbnail.jp

Fuck Your Breath : Black Men and Youth, State Violence, and Human Rights in the 21st Century

This polemical essay was written at the behest of Black men and youth, and it is dedicated to African American women who relentlessly fight to safeguard the rights and well-being of Black men, even when in the process their maltreatment and welfare are grossly overlooked and forgotten. Bree Newsome\u27s courageous and necessary removal of the confederate flag in the South Carolina State House is a prime example of such fearless activism. Joanne Deborah Chesimard aka Assata Shakur\u27s-a former leader of the revolutionary organization known as the Black Liberation Armyascendency to the FBI\u27s Most Wanted Terrorist list is another tragically intoxicating example. This commentary is a politically incorrect, unapologetic and passionate harangue from the soul; a painful scream, indictment and warning shot over the bow of our socio-cultural condition and national consciousness. I have tried to make it accessible to readers from Main Street to Wall Street. It is an expression of progressive Black fury and likewise dedicated to Black victims--dead and alive-of police brutality; those spirits and souls broken by an unrelenting pathology of white supremacist ideology, coercion, and deadly police force. My thoughts are underwritten by the imitable exchange articulated by W.E.B. Dubois in his landmark work, The Souls of Black Folk, To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word. \u27 This essay is also devoted to the souls of Black parent folk, who are silent victims of police criminality and violent white extremism. The purpose of this essay is to confront the remorseless and pathological killing of Black people, particularly men and youth, by police agencies across the United States. In doing so, it assesses the human rights implications and global responses to anti-Black violence, highlights probable implications of state violence and offers tentative proposals

The Law on Intervention: Africa\u27s Pathbreaking Model

This article seeks to examine the sum and substance of the evolving intervention regime in Africa. I employ a structural approach to highlight the normative framework governing humanitarian intervention in Africa at the sub-regional and regional levels. The article is meant to be a snapshot rather than a comprehensive treatment of the law of intervention in Africa. Space constraints preclude examination of the legality of the various post-Cold War, unilateral African interventions (i.e., those that took place without prior Security Council authorisation or valid state consent). These include the interventions by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea and Cote d\u27 Ivoire; that in the Central African Republic by the Mission for the Implementation of the Bangui Agreement; and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) operation in Lesotho. I will nonetheless discuss the efficacy of the regional practice, law and frameworks that gave these interventions impetus. The discussion that follows will also include an analysis of the peace and security framework of the new African Union that replaced the Organisation of African Unity as the premier continental organisation in Africa in March 2001

UN Peacekeeping: A Sheep in Wolves Clothing? Review of UN Peacekeeping in Lebanon, Somalia and Kosovo: Operational and Legal Issues in Practice

Scholars and practitioners have been debating the legal and operational aspects of UN military operations since its enforcement actions in North Korea in 1950 and the Congo in 1960 (UN Operation in the Congo [ONUC]). Since then, the UN Security Council (UNSC) has authorized some semblance of enforcement action in Kuwait, Somalia, the former Yugoslavia, Kosovo, East Timor and Albania, and authorized, sanctioned or co-deployed forces in Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Coˆte d’Ivoire and Sudan. The scholarly literature is abundant with analysis of nearly every aspect of peacekeeping and peace enforcement by the UN, regional organizations, regional alliances and coalitions of the willing. Hence, the challenge for new scholarship on peacekeeping is to carve out an identifiable niche while simultaneously making an original contribution to scholarly debate and policy-related discourse. Ray Murphy’s book attempts to meet this challenge; albeit awkwardly. Generally speaking, his text is a solid read for graduate students, junior academics and lower-level policy and operations staff in government and international institutions preoccupied with peacekeeping issues. It provides a rich analysis of the character of UN military and civilian operations in Lebanon, Somalia and Kosovo, while providing insightful regional analysis. It is a straightforward, relatively compelling and ‘politically incorrect’ indictment of UN peacekeeping and peace-enforcement practice and doctrine

Pre-intervention Trust-building, African States and Enforcing the Peace

This article is concerned with examining the dynamics of trust-building in a pre-intervention context.\u27 Specifically, it will analyse the concept of trustbuilding prior to the ECOWAS humanitarian interventions in Liberia and Sierra Leone, although the general thrust of my argument will no doubt apply to other African interventions.\u27 Humanitarian intervention can be taken to mean: Intervention in a state involving the use of force (U.N. action in Iraq and Somalia or ECOWAS action in Liberia and Sierra Leone) or threat of force (U.N. action in Haiti), where the intervenor deploys armed forces and, at the least, makes clear that it is willing to use force if its operation is resisted-as it attempts to alleviate conditions in which a substantial part of the population of a state is threatened with death or suffering on a grand scale.\u27 Within this context, trust-building should be seen as the pre-intervention political processes that seek to demonstrate, assess and verify the predictability of behaviour of all parties to a given conflict, and forecast the consequences of that behaviour with respect to political outcomes (the probability that an intervention will succeed)? In this sense, a viable pre-intervention trust-building scheme should seek to proffer all parties to a conflict, including the de jure government, factional leaders, civilian populace and humanitarian enforcers (herein relevant parties), a transparent and detailed overview of the political, legal and operational significance and ramifications of intervention. This does not necessarily mean that trust will emanate amongst the relevant parties by following this approach, nor that the conflicting parties would favour or support intervention if this method were followed, but only that they may attain a confident expectation that the intended operation is not ill-intended nor illegitimate. Simply stated, my thesis is as follows: Pre-intervention trustbuilding can determine post-intervention operational outcomes and the extent to which a humanitarian enforcement operation may succeed.\u27 Hence, I argue that the primary reason why the Liberian mission encountered many more problems than the one in Sierra Leone is due in part to the degree of preintervention trust-building that took place

Regional Security and the Challenges of Democratisation in Africa: The Case of ECOWAS and SADC

In recent years, African leaders have aggressively sought to strengthen their regional security structures while simultaneously attempting to democratise. Although they recognise that African regional organisations will need to assume a greater role in tackling Africa\u27s security problems, the challenges posed by on-going democratisation efforts have had a visible impact on the effectiveness of some regional organisations. This article examines the challenges that democratisation poses to regional collective security arrangements in Africa, with specific reference to ECOWAS and SADC. It argues that whilst the inclination to democratise has influenced the establishment of new collective security structures, the superficial nature of the changes have prevented the gains at the structural level to be translated to meaningful practice on the ground. Nevertheless, some progress has been made