By Luis Manuel Aguana
The blockade of the international
bridge of Las Tienditas that Maduro's regime made to avoid the passage of
trucks loaded with food and medicines coming from Colombia with humanitarian
aid for Venezuelans makes it obligatory that the issue of the Responsibility to
Protect (R2P) of the States arise again and the great confusion that this has
brought to the common of Venezuelans.
I referred to this in a recent
interview in RCR750 in the program of journalist José Domingo Blanco (Mingo)
because on Thursday, February 7, the closing of the aforementioned bridge by
the regime was national and international news (see program in RCR750 – Por
todos los Medios - 07/02/2019, in https://youtu.be/RGIL7gTb8q0), because I am convinced that Venezuelans still have the general
perception that the term "humanitarian intervention" validates an
armed invasion with a humanitarian excuse, a perception that the regime
magnifies in its favor, flying the flags of national sovereignty.
Seen in this light, Venezuelans polarize between those of us who agree
that foreign military should arrive with food and medicine to attend to the
humanitarian crisis because the regime does not want to recognize it, and those
who break spears for national sovereignty even though the regime is willing to
kill us with hunger and disease. That discussion is by no means new and is
still valid in the concert of nations.
However, nations have taken fundamental steps to recognize this problem,
which can be summed up in a quote from former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan,
on the occasion of the UN intervention in Kosovo: "No country's government has the right to hide behind national
sovereignty in order to violate human rights or the fundamental freedoms of the
inhabitants of that country”.
And Kofi Annan's concern led to what is now internationally known as the
principle of Responsibility to Protect (R2P), a concept that emerged from a
thorough study carried out at the proposal of Canada and produced an
extraordinary report published in 2001. (see in Spanish
ONU-ICISS La Responsabilidad de Proteger “The responsability to protect – Español -
Report of the international Commission on intervention and State Sovereignity”
https://tinyurl.com/ybu63qgf) and that I
described in a last note last year (see From Humanitarian Intervention to the
Responsibility to Protect, in http://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/p/from-humanitarian-intervention-to.html).
What did this concept point to? That States cannot stand by and watch with
evidence that another State is massacring its own population for any reason, be
it ethnic, political, religious or otherwise, giving them permission to enter
and avoid it, if necessary by force. It is not so simple but in essence it is
that. Of course there are previous considerations that are detailed in the
UN-ICISS report within the framework of the countries' actions and the UN
regulations, but a great step is taken by recognizing the moral obligation of
States to make Human Rights prevail over the principle of sovereignty.
This is a quantum leap in how this issue was dealt with after the disasters
in Kosovo, Rwanda and Srebrenica, and history is still being written with this
issue on the international scene, Venezuela being an unpublished case to
continue writing it.
Having
accepted this, the UN signatory countries in the 2005 World Summit Outcome
agreed on the "Responsibility to
protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes
against humanity", and in their Agreement No. 138 they
established:
“138. Cada Estado es responsable de
proteger a su población del genocidio, los crímenes de guerra, la depuración
étnica y los crímenes de lesa humanidad. Esa responsabilidad conlleva la
prevención de dichos crímenes, incluida la incitación a su comisión, mediante
la adopción de las medidas apropiadas y necesarias. Aceptamos esa
responsabilidad y convenimos en obrar en consecuencia. La comunidad
internacional debe, según proceda, alentar y ayudar a los Estados a ejercer esa
responsabilidad y ayudar a las Naciones Unidas a establecer una capacidad de
alerta temprana” (see 2005 World Summit Final Document, in
https://tinyurl.com/yxcmt7vs).
In other words, all
States accept responsibility to protect their populations and are
"prepared to take collective action in a timely and decisive manner ... if
peaceful means are inadequate and it is clear that national authorities fail to
protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and
crimes against humanity" (Agreement No. 139) (emphasis added).
Given the evidence that Nicolás Maduro Moros openly ignores that
Venezuelans die in hospitals and from hunger in the streets looking for food in
garbage dumps, then the International Community has the duty and the right to
act by force if peaceful means are inadequate to make him desist from this
criminal attitude. In other words, by international agreement, Maduro or no
other ruler, has the right to kill its people with hunger and disease without
waiting for a responsible response from the world. This is why this situation should not continue to be called a
"humanitarian intervention" but rather the "responsibility to
protect" of countries to stop a humanitarian tragedy in Venezuela,
which can manifest itself with or without the use of force, depending on the
resistance that the aggressor puts up to Human Rights to avoid paralysing the
situation that caused it.
In the UN-ICISS report cited above, "military intervention for human
protection purposes is justified... when it comes to halting or preventing...
great losses of human life, real or foreseeable, with or without genocidal
intent, resulting from the deliberate action or negligence of a State...".
(see point 4.19 of the Report) A better portrait of what is happening in
Venezuela is impossible!
Although it
was not necessary for the legitimate TSJ to sentence in favor of the
Responsibility to Protect because this principle is an obligation of the
States, they already authorized the international military coalition in peace
missions to achieve humanitarian aid, based on the principle of the
Responsibility to Protect. (see decision of the legitimate TSJ, en https://twitter.com/TSJ_Legitimo/status/1093912886005649414).
Consequently, for all the above arguments and in view of the authority that
the people granted Juan Guaidó when he was publicly acclaimed as President in
Charge of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and his duty to protect
Venezuelans, we citizens remain awaiting his decisions, since there is no
impediment to authorizing what is necessary to materialize the humanitarian aid
that the world has granted and Venezuelans urgently need.
Caracas, February 9,
2019
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
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