Og helt uanset alle humanitære idealer…
LONDON, 10 February 2012 (IRIN): The UN recognizes the international community’s responsibility to protect civilians during conflict.
And this philosophy has quickly become embedded (indlejret) in peacekeeping and peace enforcement missions. But a new report questions some basic humanitarian assumptions.
Responsbility to Protect (R2P) evolved in the 1990s in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide (folkedrab) in realization that states could no longer be relied on to protect civilians.
Therefore, the onus was placed on the international community to prevent gross human rights abuses, a belief that has since been cited as a reason to intervene in places like Libya and Syria.
Yet the reality – reinforced by a new study from the UK’s Overseas Development Institute (ODI) entitled “Local to Global Protection in Burma, Sudan, South Sudan and Zimbabwe” – is that in conflicts and crisis people almost always have to provide their own protection, for themselves, their families and their villages.
ODI’s Humanitarian Practice Network set out to see what protection there was for communities facing real and serious crises in two areas of Burma, in the Sudanese province of South Kordofan, in Jonglei State in South Sudan, and in Zimbabwe.
Their researchers asked people what they saw as the most serious threats they faced, what they themselves could do about the threats, and what they thought of any outside help which might have been available.
Danish coordinated
(Danskeren) Nils Carstensen, who coordinated the project (known as Local to Global Protection) said at the London launch of the report on 8 February:
– We had an annoying sense of disconnect (manglende forbindelse) on several levels; a sense of disconnect between much of the talking and writing about humanitarian protection, and the impression that this… was not being mirrored by any actual improvement for those in need of protection.
– Also there was a disconnect between our own international efforts at protection, and then a multitude of local, or community based local activities aimed at protection which seemed to be running in a different stream.
The threats faced were many and various: aerial bombardment in Kordofan, cattle raiding in Jonglei, being trapped in the middle of a long insurgency in Karen regions of Burma, hunger and destitution in areas hit by Cyclone Nargis, political harassment and impoverishment in Zimbabwe.
But they also cited threats that did not fall into the normal humanitarian categories of rights abuse – threats to their cattle, for instance, or other aspects of their livelihoods, or threats to their solidarity and life as a community.
They all considered their own actions to protect themselves as more important than anything done by outsiders.
– They saw official efforts as rather modest, in fact non-existent, or even counter-productive, said Nils Carstensen.
Get out of the way
Læs videre på http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=94827
