Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility To Protect
I discussed earlier the personal role and impact that the humanitarian crises in Somalia, Rwanda, and Bosnia had on Annan before he became Secretary-General. These horrific events weighed heavily on him and soon after he took office in the spring of 1997, he hosted a dinner party at which he asked Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, to talk about the concept of humanitarian intervention. He then asked all the guests to discuss the issue and over dessert report to the whole gathering what they had discussed. Kofi listened carefully and absorbed what they said.37 Several months later, he was asked to give a speech at Ditchley in the United Kingdom in June 1998, at a gathering of high-level dignitaries and he asked Edward Mortimer, who would later become his speechwriter, to write the speech for him on the issue of humanitarian intervention. These early forays into examining the concept led the way to Annan's speech in the General Assembly in September 1999, after the events in Kosovo and East Timor had revealed once again the urgency of intervening on behalf of victims of genocide and crimes against humanity. Annan explains why he gave this controversial speech:
I think I gave that speech in the General Assembly because despite the experience of the earlier years, and by that I'm talking about the Former Yugoslavia, Somalia, and Rwanda, we had quite a bit of debate about Kosovo and whether there should have been an intervention in Kosovo. So, it led me to believe that we haven't really resolved the issue, and here we were in '99 with Kosovo going through it again. I remember the Russian position and others. So, I thought I should put the issue on the table. It hasn't been resolved; it wasn't going to go away. But I wanted the Member States to think about it, to think about it in the sense that Kosovo may not be the last one. We may have our disagreement, but let's look down the line.38
The speech in the General Assembly represents a number of traits in Kofi Annan's personality. The trauma of adult experience shaped his concern for the suffering of innocent people at the hands of those who were seen as protected by the sovereignty of the state. His own 17 personal need to address this issue on moral, ethical grounds would not let him be passive, even though his actions would become controversial. He also was building a strategy for timing, and first needed to build over several months his thoughts on the issue and then carefully choose the right time and place. The events of Kosovo followed so rapidly by the rampage in Dili in East Timor, offered the media attention, and the General Assembly's opening session in September offered the right audience: all the Member States. Some governments embraced the right to intervene but many, particularly in the developing world, were vociferously against it. And Kofi was heavily attacked by the President of the General Assembly in 1999, Theo Ben-Gurirab of Namibia. The Canadians came to Annan's rescue and formed a commission to study the concept which resulted in the well-known report, the Responsibility to Protect. In the report they turn the concept around by claiming that it is not just a passive right to intervene but a responsibility if the host nation is unable or unwilling to protect its citizens. Kofi has said, "I give them credit for being better diplomats than I am in the sense that I refer to humanitarian intervention, but they came up with the responsibility to protect, which is much more elegant.39
Notes:
37. Traub, page 92.
38. Interview with former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan by Jean Krasno, on Friday, March 21, 2008, in New York City.
39. Ibid.