Business Participation in the Responsibility to Protect

Past research on business engagement with human rights, peace, and security has identified specific economic and practical reasons why national and transnational companies may be interested in participating positively in these issues, as well as specific ways in which companies previously contributed to protecting human rights (e.g. Nelson, 2000). The international discussion around the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) can be considered a special case of protection of human rights and security. The issues addressed under RtoP, such as the prevention of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, are all issues that fall within the scope of business engagement with human rights or peace. This suggests that there is a role for business to contribute to the RtoP. This paper extends the existing literature in business engagement to argue that there is a specific role for businesses to participate in all three “pillars” of the RtoP. I discuss specific characteristics of RtoP that may mean that business participation in RtoP issues is more pressing or more likely than participation in other forms of human rights protection, including the severity of abuses relevant to RtoP and the current endorsement of international governmental and non-governmental organizations. Business Participation in the Responsibility to Protect 1 A growing literature within the broader framework of “corporate social responsibility,” has begun to develop the logic and empirical evidence of active participation by business firms in issues of armed conflict, stability, and the prevention of mass atrocities (Forrer, T. Fort, and Gilpin 2012; T. L. Fort and Schipani 2002; Nelson 2000; Oetzel et al. 2009). While this literature varies in its specific focus and recommendations, it is consistent in treating businesses as a feature in the domains where conflict is likely to occur in the 21st century and hence a potential contributor either to the resolution of these problems or their persistence. By considering firms as potentially positive actors in the sphere of human rights and security provision, albeit actors with specific incentives and reasons for choosing to engage in these issues, this literature opens several strategic possibilities by broadening the sphere of potential partners and potential tools that groups interested in supporting the prevention of armed conflict and mass atrocities can use. One specific domain where this broadened scope may be particularly valuable is in the discussion occurring around the “Responsibility to Protect” (RtoP). RtoP as a developing international norm focuses on only a restricted list of actions widely agreed to be abhorrent: genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity (Ki-moon 2010; UN General Assembly 2005). It has been developed as a formally constituted idea accepted by the UN General Assembly (UN General Assembly, Session 63 2009) as well as adopted in academic discussion (e.g. Evans and Sahnoun 2002; Weiss 2011; P. D. Williams and Bellamy 2012). It has also been put into practice as the basis for attempts to stop violations including economic sanctions (Cotler and Genser 2011) and military interventions (Serrano 2011). However, specific mechanisms to implement the core “pillars” of RtoP remain somewhat limited. Core documents on RtoP including the ICISS report (International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty 2001) and the 2009 Report of the UN Secretary-General (Ki-moon 2009) acknowledge the role of international NGOs as watchdogs and partners in some interventions, but other than this the primary actors in the typical discussion of RtoP are states. The “responsibilities” inherent in the framing of the issue are specifically state Business Participation in the Responsibility to Protect 2 responsibilities: to protect citizens, to assist other states in this protection, and to intervene when protection fails. The literature on business participation in peace and conflict suggests that this focus on state responsibility misses a potentially significant partner. While businesses do not have the coercive power that states do, existing literature suggests that they can play a potentially powerful role in the development of RtoP violations. Businesses can contribute to stabilization through economic development. They can act as agents of norm diffusion reasserting international norms about the protection of civilians and what kinds of political action are appropriate. They can also act directly as political actors by pressuring states to avoid the kind of economic and social disruption associated with violations of RtoP, by acting as conveners to facilitate peacemaking, or supporting groups which oppose these violations. However, businesses are ultimately businesses, and they are not organized to be agents of the prevention of RtoP violations. Many companies do not see such participation as being a part of their role, and even when companies see immediate and material reasons for participating in the prevention or cessation of RtoP violations they may not see a legitimate pathway by which they may participate. For these reasons, it’s important for the academic and policy discourse around RtoP to develop the role of the private sector in the prevention and cessation of RtoP violations, so that businesses can be approached with appropriate arguments and a legitimate pathway to participation may be identified. This paper attempts to contribute to the existing discussion by pointing out the reasons that businesses may be interested in participating in RtoP issues, the methods by which firms can positively participate, the reasons why they may not have a strong record for participating to this point, and what international institutions and groups interested in the Responsibility to Protect may do to encourage business participation in this issue. I begin with a brief ideational history of RtoP. Business Participation in the Responsibility to Protect 3 A brief history of the Responsibility to Protect The core argument of the Responsibility to Protect is that state sovereignty does not extend to all activities: governments’ primary responsibility is to protect their civilian population, and states which willingly allow the commission of mass atrocities against their citizens therefore are not legitimate. The formal beginning of the current discussion around the Responsibility to Protect can be traced to the publication of the 2001 report by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, a commission lead by Gareth Evans and Mohamed Sahnoun and supported by the Canadian government for the purpose of engaging with the question of how the international community should respond to mass atrocities (International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty 2001). The idea did not originate purely in the discussions of the ICISS, and it has roots in prior publications focusing on the protection of refugees and humanitarian intervention such as the concept of “sovereignty as responsibility” (Deng 1996). However, it was the 2001 report that introduced the term “responsibility to protect” and first fully developed the concept of RtoP. This concept was rapidly taken up in international discussion (Weiss 2011), and has been the focus of a series of reports by UN SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki-moon engaging with questions of how to implement RtoP (Ki-moon 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012) as well as included in the outcome document of the 2005 World Summit (UN General Assembly 2005) and formally adopted for consideration by the UN General Assembly in resolution A/RES/63/308 (UN General Assembly, Session 63 2009). In its current formulation as defined by Ki-moon and generally accepted in current discourse, the responsibility to protect is focused specifically on a narrow range of mass atrocities, including “genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity” (Ki-moon 2009; UN General Assembly 2005) and built around three broad “pillars.” These pillars include: 1. “The protection responsibilities of the state,” or the idea that states are required to prevent mass atrocities within their areas of control; 2. “International assistance and capacity-building,” or the idea that the international community – specifically defined as UN member states in the UN documents is Business Participation in the Responsibility to Protect 4 obligated to support states in their execution of the first pillar; and 3. “Timely and decisive response,” or the idea that when violations of RtoP occur, the international community is obligated to step in to stop the violations. While most discussion of the RtoP revolves around this standard language, Stahn (2007) documents the diversity of emphasis and specific interpretations of what exactly the Responsibility to Protect entails. One of the core questions academics and policy figures have not yet come to a consensus on is to what degree states face a specific obligation to respond to significant and persistent abuses of human rights in other states, and what tools are appropriate for use in this response. Stahn points out the resistance by several states to the idea that military engagement to stop or prevent abuses is a responsibility of the international community, an extension of an ongoing discussion preRtoP over whether humanitarian interventions that violate sovereignty are legitimate, appropriate, or even actually motivated by humanitarian aims versus more narrow national foreign policy agendas (e.g. Ayoob 2002). This debate has continued after the introduction of RtoP as a concept, and the argument over the appropriateness of humanitarian military intervention and its associated violations of state sovereignty continues to be a feature of debate about appropriate response to ongoing violations, such as those occurring in Syria at the time of this writing (Macfarquhar and Shadid 2012). A related debate about the degree to which