(1) Natural Disaster and Humanitarian Crisis in Myanmar
In May 2008, cyclone Nargis swept Myanmar and caused enormous loss of life and prop-erty damage. In the aftermath of this devastating natural disaster, the UN and the interna-tional community immediately offered humanitarian aid. Yet, the Myanmar military gov-ernment questioned the intent behind the humanitarian approaches from the interna-tional community, which has in the past repeatedly called for improvements in human rights in Myanmar, considered it as a threat to their sovereignty, and refused to accept the aid. As a result, the crises deteriorated with 130,000 deaths and more than two million people falling victim (OCHA 2008).
At that time, the French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner claimed that the interna-tional community should invoke R2P in Myanmar on the grounds that the acts of the military junta, in neglecting the victims of the cyclone and rejecting international relief aid, was a crime against humanity. His position was supported by a number of politicians and analysts in Europe and North America. European Union’s High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy also mentioned that the international commu-nity “should use all possible means to aid through the victims of Myanmar’s cyclone.”
However, this idea was limited because damages caused by a natural disaster did not en-compass the scope of R2P. Accordingly, the international community could not reach a consensus on implementing R2P in Myanmar. The Chinese government rejected the French proposal, arguing that natural disasters did not fit the invocation of R2P (Wenrong 2011). The British Minister for International Development, as well as the Brit-ish UN ambassador had feelings similar to those of the Chinese government over the ap-plication of R2P to natural catastrophes. The Secretary-General’s special advisor on R2P Edward Luck also concurred that the implementing of the R2P in Myanmar would be a
“misapplication” of the concept (Luck 2008).
As an alternative to the limitations of the R2P, some scholars reinterpreted it in the Asian context and developed “R2P-Plus,” which encompasses various threats to human security, but excludes the possibility of military intervention (Caballero-Anthony and Chang 2008). Although the likelihood of the R2P-Plus actually being implemented in real situations seems unlikely, R2P as an international norm and principle has been an effec-tive diplomatic tool for negotiations undertaken by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the UN Secretary-General. When ASEAN and Secretary General Ban were negotiating with Myanmar’s military juntas, the threat of implementing R2P in the region and resulting fear of intervention persuaded junta members to accept the ASEAN-UN humanitarian relief. In fact, active and frequent discourse regarding the im-plementation of R2P in the aftermath of Myanmar’s cyclone was meaningful, because it worked as a negotiation tool for ASEAN and the UN (Caballero-Anthony and Chng 2008). It also provided the international community with the opportunity to raise the question of the necessity of a global responsibility to address human rights violations that are beyond the four R2P crimes.
(2) State Failure in Somalia and Zimbabwe
Somalia has remained without a representative government and was left in a state of severe conflict that involves military actions since the downfall of the Siad Barre regime in January 1991. Root causes of the contemporary Somali turmoil go back to the historical division of the country under colonialism by the Great Britain and Italy. The colonial separation creat-ed a huge gap between the British-rulcreat-ed region of Puntland and the Italian-rulcreat-ed part that covered the rest of the territory. Furthermore, after colonialism ended, the first elected ci-vilian governments were inefficient, corrupt, and incapable of creating any kind of national political culture. Under these circumstances, General Mohammad Siad Barre decided to usurp power in 1969, suspending the constitution and banning political parties.
The Barre regime stayed in power for twenty-two years until 1991, backed by the United States and the former Soviet Union during the Cold War. The end of the Cold War, however, led to the collapse of the military regime. By 1991, the Somali civil war had bro-ken out and destroyed what was left. At present, Somalia is governed by a weak Islamic government with little control or legitimacy outside the capital. The reality is, and has been, that clans rule the country on a regional basis. For the last two decades, Somalia has remained stateless, or has been identified as a collapsed state, with no central authori-ty or provision of public services. For several years, the failed states index (from Fund for Peace) has shown that the situation in Somalia is unquestionably the worst among the
failed states,40 and Robert Rotberg categorizes it as a collapsed state (Rotberg 2003).
Because of the collapse of the state, the Somali people suffer severely from various humanitarian issues including poverty, famine, health problems, and flows of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs).
Zimbabwe is another example of a failed state that has no authority or ability to pro-tect its people from mass human rights violations. From 2000, Zimbabwean national se-curity forces committed illegal detentions, forced disappearances, murder, torture, and rape upon thousands of its civilians. Moreover, President Robert Mugabe has pursued corrupt financial and economic policies, including unfair land reform, bringing about collapse of social services and economic breakdown (with unemployment rate exceeding 80 percent and hyperinflation). Nevertheless, Mugabe failed to keep his word to step down from presidency and was reelected in 2008 by dishonest means. Zimbabwe is listed as a failed state and fails to fulfill the fundamental responsibilities of a sovereign state.
‘Fund for Peace’ also ranked Zimbabwe the fourth in the Failed States Index41. The UN has announced that they are keeping an eye on the situation in Zimbabwe, but its effort does not lead to practical collective responses for civilian protection against human rights abuses. Likewise, there are ongoing controversies over whether the human rights situa-tions in Zimbabwe fit any of the four R2P crimes (Rotberg 2003).
These two cases are clear examples of state failure, which is a situation of a state with an inability to perform core state functions, such as the provision of public goods, having little or no political authority or legitimacy, and an inability to impose the rule of law. Ac-cording to Robert Rotberg, the term “failed states” refers to countries that can “provide only very limited quantities of essential political goods,” and as a result their populations suffer immensely from direct threats to human security, including political instability, economic deterioration, food shortage and high crime rates (Rotberg 2003). Oftentimes, these states manifestly show an inability or unwillingness to improve the situation, and thus meet the condition for applying the secondary international responsibility to protect.
However, any discussion related to the possible application of the R2P to such situations would be flatly rejected as too ambiguous and subjective an intervention. This could bring about enormous contentions onto the world stage and endanger the process of translating the notion of the R2P into the real implementation.