North Korea and Crimes against Humanity
North Korea has long proven unable and unwilling to protect its citizens. Currently, North Korea faces a deteriorating situation marked by chronic humanitarian disasters and human rights violations within the state’s political detention camp system. The inhumane treatment of citizens inside these camps, as well as violations during the sentencing and deportation process, has become a symbol of North Korea’s crimes against humanity. The international community should address North Korea’s human rights abuses within the context of ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P). The R2P doctrine affirms that each state has the responsibility to protect its population from four mass atrocity crimes including ‘crimes against humanity’. As such, this article focuses on North Korea’s fundamental responsibility to protect its citizens from crimes against humanity, and the international community’s commitment to assist North Korea in fulfilling this obligation. In considering a policy option to improve North Korea’s human rights conditions within the context of R2P, the international community needs to assist the North Korean government to bring an end to further instances of crimes against humanity.
The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and for All
Never again! the world has vowed time and again since the Holocaust. Yet genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other mass atrocity crimes continue to shock our consciences --from the killing fields of Cambodia to the machetes of Rwanda to the agony of Darfur. Gareth Evans has grappled with these issues firsthand. As Australian foreign minister, he was a key broker of the United Nations peace plan for Cambodia. As president of the International Crisis Group, he now works on the prevention and resolution of scores of conflicts and crises worldwide. The primary architect of and leading authority on the Responsibility to Protect (""R2P""), he shows here how this new international norm can once and for all prevent a return to the killing fields. The Responsibility to Protect captures a simple and powerful idea. The primary responsibility for protecting its own people from mass atrocity crimes lies with the state itself. State sovereignty implies responsibility, not a license to kill. But when a state is unwilling or unable to halt or avert such crimes, the wider international community then has a collective responsibility to take whatever action is necessary. R2P emphasizes preventive action above all. That includes assistance for states struggling to contain potential crises and for effective rebuilding after a crisis or conflict to tackle its underlying causes. R2P's primary tools are persuasion and support, not military or other coercion. But sometimes it is right to fight: faced with another Rwanda, the world cannot just stand by. R2P was unanimously adopted by the UN General Assembly at the 2005 World Summit. But many misunderstandings persist about its scope and limits. And much remains to be done to solidify political support and to build institutional capacity. Evans shows, compellingly, how big a break R2P represents from the past, and how, with its acceptance in principle and effective application in practice, the promise of "Never again!" can at last become a reality.
Into the Mogadishu Maelstrom: The African Union Mission in Somalia
The African Union mission in Somalia (AMISOM) endured a difficult first 30 months of operations. Deployed into an active war-zone, it was not long before an international debate began to revolve around how the mission should be brought to an end. This article analyses the main challenges as well as the most important local and international dynamics that affected the operation. It concludes that AMISOM was an ill-conceived mission that attracted few serious political champions partly because of the dangerous environment in which it operated and partly because of its lack of stable funding and capabilities. The predictable results were a dangerously under-resourced operation that placed peacekeepers in harm's way for morally and politically dubious reasons.