Genocide and Mass Atrocities

For nearly five years, the UN Security Council has failed to end Syria’s suffering. The numbers are numbing: The war has claimed 250,000 lives and displaced over 50 percent of Syria’s prewar population of twenty-two million. The grinding conflict has deepened sectarian turmoil in the region and created the world’s largest humanitarian catastrophe. The tragedy has also laid bare an inconvenient truth about the inherent limits of the Security Council in an era of great power rivalry. Because in Syria, the system worked—just not for the Syrian people. By "system" I refer to the rules of the international game set out in the United Nations Charter. At the San Francisco conference of 1945, world leaders established a new instrument to preserve international peace and security. The UN Security Council was empowered to pass resolutions legally binding on the entire UN membership. But its five permanent members (the “P5”) exacted a heavy price in accepting their responsibilities as guarantors of the postwar order. They insisted on the right to block any Council enforcement action that ran counter to their national interests. The rationale for the veto was plain: no structure of peace could be viable if war could be authorized contrary to the expressed wishes of one of the world’s policemen. Throughout the Syrian conflict, many Americans have bemoaned Russian and Chinese vetoes—both actual and threatened—for blocking Security Council action. But it is worth recalling that seven decades ago the United States and the Soviet Union were equally insistent in demanding a veto for the P5. During the Dumbarton Oaks conference of 1944, a U.S. senator complained to Secretary of State Cordell Hull that the emerging blueprint for the UN Security Council constituted "a discrimination against small nations.” Hull replied bluntly that the United States "would not remain there for a day without retaining its veto power." That provision was "in the document primarily on account of the Unites States. It is a necessary safeguard in dealing with a new and untried arrangement." Indeed, the veto enjoyed strong bipartisan backing in the United States, including from Senator Arthur Vandenberg (R-MI), the powerful chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. On February 16, 1946, the Soviet Union cast the first-ever Security Council veto (in an effort, as coincidence would have it, to hasten the removal of French forces from Syria and Lebanon). “The system worked," Vandenberg told his Senate colleagues, by making great power consensus a requirement for Security Council action. In the ensuing decades, the United States itself would have more recourse to the veto. In the wake of decolonization, it often found itself on the defensive—particularly in safeguarding Israel from what U.S. officials considered one-sided resolutions. Since 1975, the United States has used the veto seventy-three times, more than other member of the P5. What the Syria conflict lays bare, however, is that the "system" is amoral, even when it "works." It is rigged to advance the interests of the great powers—and to reduce the likelihood that major war will break out among them. The system provides a baseline order. That is nothing to sneeze at, given the horrors of the First and Second World Wars. But such an order is a far cry from justice and—as we have seen in Syria—it often fails to deliver peace. Short of an overhaul of the UN Charter to eliminate the veto—a wholly implausible scenario—it is unclear what can be done to ameliorate this situation. The French have proposed a new international norm—the "responsibility not to veto." This would take the form of a voluntary (thus non–legally binding) commitment by each of the P5 not to veto resolutions designed to prevent or end large-scale atrocities, with the exception of when the resolution would run counter to a permanent member’s "vital national interests." And therein lies the rub. For that loophole is one that is broad enough, as the saying goes, to drive a truck through. Indeed, one could make the case that this proposed caveat is already in operation. It’s just that the great powers—being great powers, after all—have expansive views of their vital national interests. To be sure, the average number of vetoes cast each year has declined markedly since the Cold War—a promising sign. But the veto remains a non-negotiable symbol of P5 privilege, employed when core interests are perceived to be at stake, a situation more likely if great power tensions are high. The upshot is that enforcement action under Chapter VII of the UN Charter will remain highly selective—focused on those crises and conflicts where P5 interests converge or, conversely, are absent. It is in the interest of all P5 members that additional states not acquire nuclear weapons—and thus they are relatively in agreement on the importance of nuclear nonproliferation. The Security Council has also vigorously expanded peacekeeping missions in recent years (though the results have been far from perfect) in countries where none of the members perceive a vital national interest, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. The tough situations will be those like Syria where the P5 are divided, and where advocates of enforcement action will continue to confront an uncomfortable choice of either staying on the sidelines or intervening with an ad hoc coalition that may provide a surrogate—if lesser—form of legitimacy. For these reasons, it’s not surprising that the Security Council has failed for the last five years to restore peace and a political solution in Syria. That’s not likely to change. Syria underscores the futility of attempting to force agreement within a bitterly divided Security Council. Indeed, turning repeatedly to the same body and expecting a different result approaches the colloquial definition of insanity. The Security Council is effective at protecting and advancing the interests of the P5. But, intended to provide order over justice, it fails those caught in the middle of great power conflict. That’s not just a failure of performance. It’s a failure by design.

Along with presidential campaigns comes an array of what candidates deem the greatest threat to the United States. Senator Ted Cruz said in July, “The single greatest threat to the United States, if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, is that of an electromagnetic pulse,” while Dr. Ben Carson during September’s presidential debate referred to “global jihadists” as an “existential threat to our nation.” U.S. officials have a different outlook. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford said in July, “If you want to talk about a nation that could pose an existential threat to the United States, I’d have to point to Russia.” Last October, Vice President Joe Biden said, “We face no existential threat—none—to our way of life or our ultimate security.” Meanwhile, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper listed cyber as the top threat to the United States for the past three years. Among many, these are several challenges that threaten global security. What is more concerning, as echoed by FBI Director James Comey earlier this year, are developing or unforeseen threats. “If you imagine a nationwide haystack, we are trying to find needles in that haystack”, Comey said. “And knowing there are needles out there that you can’t see is worrisome.” To successfully address threats, U.S. policymakers must first understand which of these potential contingencies they should focus their finite time and resources on most directly. For the past eight years, to assist policymakers in anticipating and planning for international crises that threaten U.S. national interests, CFR’s Center for Preventive Action have conducted a Preventive Priorities Survey (PPS). The annual PPS evaluates ongoing and potential violent conflicts and sources of instability based on two factors: 1) the impact they would have on U.S. interests and 2) their likelihood of occurring in the coming year. What threats and conflicts are you worried will emerge or escalate in 2016? Please tell us your suggestions in this survey by Wednesday, October 14. Keep your responses short and to the point, but feel free to explain why the contingency is important. Compelling suggestions will again be included in this year’s survey, which will be published in December. Take the survey here: http://svy.mk/1Q4EyCy.

Bruce W. Jentleson is a professor at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and the 2015-16 Kissinger chair at the Kluge Center in the Library of Congress. Jenna Karp is a Duke University senior studying public policy and global health and an intern in the State Department Foreign Service Internship Program. As the UN General Assembly (UNGA) opens its seventieth session, you’ll hear “never again” rhetoric regarding genocide and other mass atrocities, while witnessing the “yet again” reality. The UNGA passed a resolution two weeks ago establishing an International Day of Commemoration and Dignity for past victims of genocide. One week before, it had held a dialogue marking the tenth anniversary of the adoption of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). Unfortunately, while R2P was reaffirmed as “a vital and enduring commitment,” the gap between rhetoric and reality is all too evident in Syria, South Sudan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, among other countries. Closing the gap between rhetoric and reality is going to take a three-part strategy involving military intervention (when necessary), crisis diplomacy (when possible), and early prevention (steadily, systematically). Military intervention will continue to be necessary in certain situations. This was the only means by which to stop Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi in 2011 from delivering on his threat to slaughter civilians. Although the immediate objective was achieved in the Libya case, the post-intervention dilemma—what R2P cofounder Gareth Evans calls the “responsibility to rebuild”—has been an abject failure. Libya thus shows both what late-stage military intervention can and cannot achieve. Crisis diplomacy, also largely a late-innings effort, is a second strategy for prevention. In Kenya’s 2013 elections, coordinated diplomacy by the United States, Europe, and the UN helped to prevent replays of the mass violence witnessed in the 2008 elections. More frequent, though, have been cases like Burundi, South Sudan, and Guinea, in which crisis diplomacy has been too little too late—arriving only after atrocities are unfolding, subsequently having limited impact. The final component to closing the gap is early prevention: acting when the number of options are greater, risks are smaller, and potential costs are lower. This basic logic underlies the original conceptualization of R2P put forth by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. Even though such logic runs counter to the political reality of postponing action until the bodies begin to pile up, more progress is being made by individual states, international institutions, regional bodies, and even non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to build capacities for R2P early prevention than is often acknowledged. In 2012, the Obama administration established the Atrocities Prevention Board (APB), based in the White House, which is charged with coordinating the State Department, Department of Defense, U.S. Agency for International Development, and other federal agencies to ensure the steady attention needed for policy development and pre-establishing a mechanism for crises and other urgent situations. While short on resources and prey to bureaucratic turf battles, the APB has made a positive impact on U.S. preventive policies. Within the UN system, spurred particularly by the 2009 mass killings in Sri Lanka, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched the Human Rights Up Front initiative in 2013, seeking to make human rights and atrocities prevention more of a “system-wide core responsibility…to act with moral courage to prevent serious and large-scale violations.” Here, too, the results have been limited thus far, but provide the basis upon which further progress can be built. Regional institutions have also made their mark. The European Union (EU) has a number of initiatives including the EU Situation Room, which monitors the global political climate and assesses current crisis awareness. Individual EU member states like Denmark have developed their own R2P-related national action plans. The African Union’s (AU) Peace and Security Council provides a regional decision-making mechanism linked to the Continental Early Warning System, a data collection and analysis center tasked with monitoring potential conflicts and threats to peace and security. Its “Panel of the Wise” draws on a group of distinguished African leaders who focus on conflict prevention. In West Africa, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Conflict Prevention Framework and the Early Warning and Response Network (EWARN) came into play in Guinea in 2008, Niger in 2010, and Mali and Cote d’Ivoire in more recent years. Countries have also taken initiative independently. Ghana has its own National Peace Council, and Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Zambia all have their own national committees. In Asia, there has been less region-wide initiative, although the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) convened a high-level advisory panel in 2014 that issued recommendations for “mainstreaming” R2P in Southeast Asia. Australia has been especially active, regionally and internationally, by adapting its civilian corps from a solely natural disasters mission to a conflict prevention one, for example. For its part, China has been showing more flexibility than is often acknowledged by Western states, with an increasingly conditional rather than absolutist approach to intervention and state sovereignty. Latin America has a Network for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention, which includes Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, and fourteen other countries. Brazil has also formulated its own variation of R2P, “Responsibility while Protecting” (RwP). While initially somewhat of a dilution of R2P, it has evolved into a serious component of the policy mix. The NGO community has played a useful and creative role. The Focal Points Initiative led by the Global Centre for R2P now has fifty-one country members with broad, geographic representation. Each is developing internal capacity for promoting R2P at the national level and collectively serving as a like-minded network. The Obama administration must use its remaining time in office to assure the continuity and effectiveness of the APB—Washington is full of doubts about its future—as well as of the State Department Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations (CSO) and other executive branch counterparts. At the UN, as Ban Ki-moon finishes his final term, strengthening the Human Rights Up Front Initiative provides a sorely needed opportunity to leave more of a legacy. Regional bodies also have much work to do, including the EU, both directly and in its assistance to Africa and other regions, the AU and the other African initiatives, ASEAN, and Latin American initiatives. And as is so often the case in twenty-first century global affairs, NGOs have their own crucial role to play, as has been the case with the Global Centre’s Focal Points Initiative. To be sure, such early prevention measures will not resolve the Syria of 2015; that requires targeted, more immediate initiatives. But they can help prevent the next Syria. If there is one thing that the world can be sure of, it is that there will be more Syrias unless greater R2P early prevention capacity is built full-spectrum. The world may not achieve “never again,” but it is certainly possible and necessary to have fewer “yet agains”—and to narrow, even if not fully close, the rhetoric-reality gap.

PARIS — The veto held by the five permanent members (P5) of the UN Security Council is one of the most contentious rules of the United Nations. It was included in the UN Charter of 1945 as the explicit price for agreement among the P5—the members that bore the greatest responsibility for maintaining world order—to establish the UN in the first place. However, the veto has repeatedly stymied the Security Council in the face of mass atrocities, despite unanimous endorsement by all UN member states of their individual and collective responsibility to protect (R2P) all people from crimes against humanity. Since 2011, Russia and China have cast four vetoes to block international action in Syria, where more than 200,000 have been killed since the conflict began. Wednesday in Paris, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius repeated [in French] France’s determination to overcome this paralysis by establishing a new international norm to accompany R2P: a “responsibility not to veto” (RN2V) that would apply in situations of mass atrocities. The French proposal includes a trigger—a request by some subset of UN member states (perhaps fifty) to the secretary-general that (s)he determine whether atrocities are being committed. It also includes an important caveat—and potential Achilles heel: P5 members can still use a veto when they perceive a “vital national interest” at stake. At Wednesday’s conference at Sciences Po Paris, where Fabius spoke, I offered my own thoughts on the many hurdles and preconditions France and like-minded countries must surmount to translate these ambitions into reality. What follows is an abridged version of those remarks. The desire to limit the use of the veto is both understandable and laudable, given growing frustration at the clear failures of a divided Security Council to prevent or end atrocities. The French have wisely framed their initiative not as an amendment to the UN Charter—something that has occurred only three times in the UN’s history—but as a voluntary code of conduct to be embraced by the P5. In principle, the code would reduce not only the explicit use of the veto—which is only the tip of the iceberg in Security Council diplomacy—but the more frequent abuse of the “silent veto” to forestall condemnation of or responses to atrocities. Nonetheless, the French proposal contains conceptual ambiguities and raises practical dilemmas—raising doubts about whether it would actually shore up R2P. These quandaries need to be addressed before the norm can move forward. First, proponents must decide the criteria to determine when the threshold for “mass atrocities” has been crossed—and who gets to make that determination. Inasmuch as any violent conflict is, sadly, likely to include some atrocities, there should presumably be at least some rule of thumb for when the RN2V principle kicks in. Is it a question of body count? Of the stated intent of perpetrators? There should also be provisions for decision-making when the P5 disagree. The initial French proposal would give the secretary-general such authority. This is legally innovative but problematic. The secretary-general is not a judge and it is unclear whether (s)he has (or should be given) the standing to make this determination. Second, proponents must persuade skeptics that the “vital national interest” caveat is not a crippling loophole that P5 states can casually invoke. In the case of Syria, it could be argued that Russia and China have already defined coercion against the government of Bashar al-Assad as contrary to their national interests. From Moscow’s perspective, the Security Council’s failure to act in Syria is not evidence of its failure but of its working as intended, by allowing permanent members to veto coercion that is contrary to their perceived interests. Third, a code of conduct to limit the use of the veto should be coupled with elaboration of yet another norm—proposed by Brazil—known as “responsibility while protecting” (RWP). RWP has its origins in the Libya operation. It emerged from criticism that Western powers hijacked UN Security Council Resolution 1973, intended to halt the imminent massacre of civilians, to pursue a broader campaign of regime change. In response, Brazil advocates the principle of RWP, designed to increase accountability by interveners. As Richard Gowan has written, “if Paris really wanted to secure support for veto restraint, it would make a parallel commitment that any armed intervention at regime change would require a separate explicit authorization.” Despite these misgivings, establishing a norm that permanent members not veto a Security Council resolution in cases of mass atrocities could have at least two salutary effects. First, it would presumably place pressure on each of the P5 to narrow or delimit their definition of “vital national interest” exceptions—and to offer more persuasive public justifications when they do use the veto in such circumstances. Second, beyond creating a normative expectation, the new code could lay down a useful political marker. In the event that a P5 member used its veto in ways others perceived to violate the norm, countries intent on stopping genocide would be on firmer moral and political (though not necessarily legal) ground in intervening in an alternative multilateral manner—such as through NATO (as in Kosovo in 1999), through an ad hoc coalition, or through a Uniting for Peace resolution. France has begun intense diplomatic efforts to win support from the other four permanent members. It faces an uphill struggle. Russia is adamantly opposed to any dilution of their veto prerogative, China has expressed skepticism, and the United Kingdom remains coy. The Obama administration appears ambivalent. Although it has declared the prevention of atrocities itself to be a “core national interest,”it has misgivings about the proposed code. There are concerns that the current proposal is too open to competing interpretations, vague concerning the processes by which the RN2V would be triggered, unmoored from specific types of missions or contingencies, and vulnerable to manipulation by great powers, which might use it as a cloak to intervene for baser motives. (After all, Russia has already thrown around the term “atrocities” with reference to Ukraine, presumably to justify its assistance to separatists there.) Moreover, some worry that debates over RN2V within the UN General Assembly could deteriorate into a more general attack by non-permanent members on the P5 veto prerogative. Lastly, protracted negotiations for a code of conduct could detract from more practical steps to strengthen R2P atrocities prevention, including capacity building within vulnerable countries, as well as strengthening international tools to identify and respond to crisis situations. Given strains between the West and Russia, in particular, the P5 are unlikely to reach agreement any time soon on voluntary limits to the veto. Still, there may be useful steps France, the UK, and the United States (the Western “P3”) can take together: First, as my colleague Matthew Waxman has suggested, the three countries should jointly declare their own position that the veto should never be used “to block timely and decisive action when genocide and crimes against humanity are manifestly occurring,” as long as other criteria, such as proportionality and necessity are satisfied. This step alone would raise the political costs of threatening a veto. Second, the P3 should cooperate on a strategy to minimize the risk that discussions over RN2V within the UNGA do not deteriorate into a broader assault on the veto prerogative or a general debate on the (important but distracting) topic of Security Council expansion. It will be especially important for France to carefully identify a cosponsor (or cosponsors) from the developing world that can resist such pressures. Third, the P3 should link the proposed norm with something resembling the Responsibility while Protecting proposal. Such a package deal could help reassure influential swing states like Brazil—as well as the influential African bloc—that their post-Libya concerns are being taken seriously. Finally, before endorsing the RN2V, the Obama administration will need to consider its potential ramifications for U.S. freedom of action with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. As a staunch defender of Israel, the United States frequently finds itself isolated internationally, at times even from European allies, when it comes to Israeli conduct in the Occupied Territories. Since the UN High Level Event that endorsed R2P in 2005, the United States has used the veto three times with reference to Israel and the Occupied Territories. In all likelihood, it will feel the need to do so in the future. Although there are many traps to avoid if the RN2V is to come into force, the proposal has reopened a much-needed discussion on how to make the Security Council more effective at addressing mass atrocities. The Syria conflict has made it clear that the status quo is unacceptable. Despite outstanding questions regarding its implementation, the French proposal should be pursued as far as possible to raise the political cost of a veto, restore the credibility of the Security Council, and, most importantly, prevent atrocities. Follow me on Twitter: @StewartMPatrick

Three years after the outbreak of war in Syria, the agony only deepens for its civilian population. The conflict has already killed 140,000, forced 9.5 million­­—44 percent of the nation’s prewar inhabitants—to abandon their homes, and led some 2.5 million Syrians to flee to neighboring countries, including Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and Iraq. Syrian refugees now constitute more than 20 percent of Lebanon’s population, on top of 400,000 Palestinian refugees already present. In January, the United Nations sponsored a conference in Kuwait City, requesting that international donors provide $6.5 billion in emergency assistance for the victims of the Syria conflict—a figure dwarfing any previous humanitarian appeal. The scale of this effort underscores the magnitude of the human tragedy in Syria. It also points to broader strains and dilemmas confronting the humanitarian enterprise globally. The war in Syria, and difficulty of providing emergency aid to its population, underscores five major challenges that are facing the United Nations and other humanitarian actors: Multiple crises are stretching global humanitarian response to the breaking point: Syria is not the only complex emergency confronting the UN system and its member states. Even as they seek to ease suffering in Syria, relief agencies are coping with massive flows of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) in South Sudan and the Central African Republic (CAR). The UN’s Office of the Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has designated all three (as well as typhoon Haiyan) as “Level 3” crises—the highest degree of severity. In South Sudan, fighting between the government and insurgents has generated an estimated 708,900 IDPs. The situation in CAR is even more calamitous, as sectarian violence has driven an estimated 950,000 people (mostly Muslim) from their homes, including 300,000 across international borders, particularly to Chad. Thanks to these three crises—and others around the globe, like in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)—the world now has more refugees and IDPs combined than at any other time. Nontraditional donors have failed to fill the gap: The surging demand for humanitarian assistance is coming at a bad time. Traditional Western donors are exhibiting “aid fatigue” after two decades of seemingly unending crises and exhaustion with nation-building efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. To help supplement aid from OECD nations, the United Nations and the United States have appealed for greater support from emerging donor nations, including China, India, and the Gulf states. The results have been underwhelming. The brightest newcomer has been Kuwait, which has pledged and delivered $500 million for Syrian refugees. Saudi Arabia and the UAE, in contrast, have been comparatively stingy. New donors also appear more inclined to let political calculations influence their decisions on relief aid. Witness the miserly Chinese response to typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, which is locked in a struggle with China over sovereignty claims in the South China Sea. Protracted humanitarian crises require different approaches from brief, fast onset emergencies: Conventional wisdom associates humanitarian response with the fast delivery of relief to cover acute emergencies, including natural disasters and man-made catastrophes. This model, still embraced by some relief agencies and NGO aid workers, is ill-suited to chronic or protracted humanitarian crises. In Syria and its surrounding countries (as well as Somalia and Kenya, Afghanistan, and Pakistan), displacement has become a fact of life, with tens, even hundreds, of thousands inhabiting massive camps. Beyond providing food and shelter, donor agencies and NGO providers must take a longer-term perspective informed by development principles. In response, the UN system is now pushing its own agencies and other donors to adopt a common planning framework that links provision of relief aid with longer-term efforts to improve health and education and provide for displaced populations. Along similar lines, governments, UNICEF and other international actors recently launched a “No Lost Generation” initiative targeting the estimated five million children in Syria who have suffered deeply during the war, including spending the last three years without formal schooling. “Humanitarian space” continues to shrink: Since the “invention” of humanitarian action in the mid-nineteenth century, actors providing emergency relief in the midst of war have counted on combatants to respect their special status, guaranteeing their physical safety and access to victims on all sides of conflict. In return for this “humanitarian space,” relief workers have generally embraced the principles of neutrality, impartiality, and independence. Since the end of the Cold War, however, humanitarian workers have increasingly found themselves as pawns and targets of belligerents, particularly by rebel forces, insurgents, and terrorists. In Afghanistan, humanitarian workers complained bitterly (if controversially) that U.S. and allied military forces exacerbated this problem by conducting their own “humanitarian” operations for political and intelligence purposes, thus blurring the lines between humanitarian actors and soldiers and exposing the former to targeting. The conflict in Syria has thrown the problem into even sharper relief, with both sides, but particularly the Assad regime, using humanitarian actors as pawns in their ongoing struggle. USAID has sought to prevent the diversion of aid by both the government and the rebels, including through the use of bar codes to track supplies. However, the government in Damascus continues to pursue a policy of “kneel or starve,” obstructing delivery of relief supplies to rebel-held areas and diverting supplies to regime sympathizers. This explicitly violates UN Security Council Resolution 2139, which passed unanimously on February 22, and insists on unencumbered humanitarian access—both across lines of control within Syria and across Syria’s borders.  Violations of international humanitarian law jeopardize traditional rules against intervention into sovereign states: Both sides in the Syrian conflict, but especially the Assad regime, have directly targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure, including schools and hospitals. According to UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, “some 200,000 people are under siege in government-controlled areas.” Particularly heinous has been the government’s continued use of barrel bombs, in direct contravention of resolution 2139. Deployment of these weapons, intended to terrify and inflict horrific casualties on those perceived as sympathetic to the rebel cause, constitutes a clear violation of international humanitarian law. The deliberate targeting of civilians clearly reinforces the argument for international intervention consistent with the “responsibility to protect” doctrine. But even absent such targeting, the Assad regime’s obstructionism of life-saving humanitarian aid raises two critical policy questions: First, at what threshold does blockage of emergency assistance justify coercive action against a sovereign state to ensure its delivery? Second, when does a regime’s denial of life-saving aid to its civilian population constitute a crime against humanity, for which perpetrators may be held accountable to international justice, whether in the International Criminal Court or some other venue? The Syrian crisis has exposed critical challenges for the future of the humanitarian enterprise, which—for all its faults—surely represents one of most remarkable achievements to reduce suffering in human history. Around the world, emergency relief continues to save thousands upon thousands of lives. Even in Zimbabwe, ruled by Robert Mugabe’s iron fist, a remarkable 86 percent of people requiring aid have received it, according to a recent report. Syria reminds us just how fragile these accomplishments remain, and how the brutality of civil war can challenge cherished humanitarian principles.

As the civil war in Syria rages on, and the United States and its international partners appear unable to mobilize a collective response to stem the bloodshed, CFR’s International Institutions and Global Governance program has launched an update to its Global Governance Monitor: Armed Conflict. The revamped multimedia guide uses a new technology platform to track and analyze recent multilateral efforts to prevent, manage, and respond to armed violence around the globe. Combining stunning images and compelling narrative, it identifies the major successes and failures in global conflict mitigation during 2013. The Armed Conflict update underscores dramatic changes in international cooperation on conflict prevention and peacekeeping in the past year. While Syria has absorbed most of the international media attention, the United Nations has also launched or bolstered major peace operations in Africa. “Peacekeeping,” of course, was not even mentioned in the UN Charter, whose World War II architects were preoccupied with preventing and punishing military aggression. Rather, it was an improvisation—something between the peaceful settlement of disputes under Chapter 6 and coercive action under Chapter 7. Initially, these so-called “Chapter 6 and a Half” operations involved the insertion of observers or lightly armed soldiers to maintain ceasefires between warring parties. Over time, however, the scope of peace operations and the number of actors involved expanded dramatically. In 2013, the UN Security Council authorized assertive mandates for missions in Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). These more robust rules of engagement permitted UN forces to take forceful actions such as neutralizing rebel troops acting as “spoilers” in the respective peace processes. As a result, conditions in both countries markedly improved. The Malian government held presidential and legislative elections without significant levels of violence. In the DRC, the M23 rebel movement agreed to put down its weapons to pursue its goals through purely political means. This growing willingness to deploy combat-ready troops for peace enforcement is a welcome shift, helping the UN quell violence and instability, rather than assuming the role of passive bystander when conflicts escalate. At the same time, more assertive mandates, such as those adopted in Mali and the DRC, carry inherent risks. The use of force can have unpredictable consequences, threatening the safety of UN personnel. Such missions may involve the UN directly in the conflict, jeopardizing its reputation as an impartial, honest broker. To mitigate potential harm to the UN’s reputation and avoid undermining its objectives, the updated Global Governance Monitor recommends that the UN reframe the concept of “impartiality” to mean equal treatment to all parties working for peace, combined with resolute opposition to spoilers bent on violence. It also calls on the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) to prioritize inclusive dialogue and reach out to representatives from all sides of the conflict. Another UN innovation during 2013 was to incorporate drone technologies into its peacekeeping missions. In contrast to drones being used by the United States in Yemen, Pakistan, and elsewhere, these are unarmed. They are designed to provide critical surveillance capabilities for UN peacekeeping missions.  The DPKO launched its first unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in the DRC in December 2013. Considered by many to be the future of warfare, drones may actually enable peacekeepers to carry out their mandates more cheaply, safely, and effectively by providing situational awareness of large swaths of territory. The biggest disappointment in multilateral efforts to mitigate violent conflict during 2013 was assuredly the civil war in Syria. The UN Security Council’s (UNSC) failure to produce an authoritative resolution that ends the fighting in Syria has allowed violence to continue unabated, with devastating humanitarian consequences and mounting atrocities against civilian populations. Although the UN’s Office of the Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide (OSAPG) has called for countries to cease crimes against humanity, the UNSC has failed to catalyze an international response, given deadlock among its permanent members. International inaction in Syria has undermined, and indeed reversed, consolidation of the evolving norm of the “responsibility to protect” (R2P). In retrospect, the 2011 UNSC-authorized intervention in Libya, which many regarded as a vindication of the principle, appears to have been its high water-mark, as many non-Western countries perceived the action as a façade for facilitating regime change. Security Council dissensus over Syria has cast doubt over the future of R2P as a mainstream international norm and policy guide in situations of mass atrocities. U.S. and international action are needed to ensure that conflict-prevention, conflict-response, peace-building, and state-building efforts are supported with ample political backing and resources. The Global Governance Monitor: Armed Conflict’s issue brief identifies six other priority steps: Enhance the global and regional architecture for conflict prevention: The United States should work with the United Nations and regional organizations to strengthen crisis prevention capabilities. An immediate objective should be to better integrate conflict analysis and early-warning efforts into organizational decision-making processes. The United Nations and regional organizations must also improve information-sharing, particularly given the rise of “hybrid” missions involving both sets of actors. Rebalance budgets to enhance conflict prevention: Given budgetary constraints, officials tend to prioritize immediate crises and may neglect emerging ones. Where possible, international institutions should allocate a greater proportion of their funding to support preventive measures, including mediation. Improve planning of UN peacekeeping and peace-building missions: The UNDPKO should seek to improve strategic planning and coordination between UN peacekeeping missions and broader peace-building efforts in crisis countries. Clarify UN mandates and exit strategies for peace operations: UN missions too often suffer from unrealistic mandates. The UNSC must return to the principles articulated in the Brahimi Report (2000), by ensuring that mandates are reasonable, appropriate to conflict context, and sustained by adequate funds, troops, and logistics. Develop rapidly deployable U.S. military forces to prevent mass atrocities: The Obama administration has declared the prevention of mass atrocities a national security priority. To add muscle behind this commitment, the president should direct the Department of Defense to develop doctrine, plans, and training to make that mission a Pentagon-wide priority. Create a dedicated U.S. mediation support team: The Obama administration should develop a strategic vision for, fund, and staff a rapidly deployable Mediation Support Unit within the State Department’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations.

In awarding this year’s Peace Prize to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the Norwegian Nobel Committee had three clear objectives. The first was to reinforce the global taboo against chemical weapons, violated by the large-scale sarin gas attack on civilians in the Damascus suburbs on August 21, which the Obama Administration says was launched by Syrian government forces. The second was to bolster the work of OPCW inspectors newly arrived in Syria as they seek to locate, quarantine, and destroy that country’s one thousand ton arsenal. The third was to chastise international laggards, including the United States and Russia, who have failed eliminate their remaining stockpiles of these horrific weapons. The obscure OPCW, created to supervise implementation of the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), may be the most important international agency nobody has ever heard about. It certainly has a daunting mandate. The CWC is the first international treaty to outlaw the production, stockpiling, and use of an entire category of weapons, in effect declaring them beyond the pale. It requires all parties to declare their chemical weapons holdings and CW production facilities, and to submit and carry out plans to destroy both. It is the job of the OPCW, from its headquarters in The Hague, to ensure that state parties actually live up to these obligations. The actual day-to-day operations of the 189-country OPCW, including supporting country inspections, are undertaken by a modest Technical Secretariat, whose director general supervises a permanent staff of approximately five hundred and manages a budget of some $100 million (with major inspections requiring additional contributions from UN member states). Beyond resource constraints, the OPCW faces major hurdles in fulfilling its mission. One of the most acute is the so-called dual-use dilemma. Many of the subcomponents of chemical weapons (as well as the machines required to fabricate and deliver them) have other legitimate applications, particularly in the world’s massive chemical industry. Globally, there are tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of facilities where precursor and toxic chemicals could be diverted into illicit weapons programs. Beyond this practical challenge, many countries, particularly in the developing world, lack the capacity to comply fully with their CWC obligations, even where they have the desire. And yet the OPCW has some impressive weapons of its own. Perhaps the biggest is the authority under the CWC to conduct challenge inspections—“any time, anywhere,” with no right of refusal—to ensure compliance by a state party. Sovereignty absolutists take note: The United States, like all other parties to the CWC, agreed to this unprecedented provision, even though it would allow foreign inspectors to walk into any facility on U.S. soil. The Republican-controlled Senate approved the treaty, by a vote of 74-26, because three-quarters of senators understood that a voluntary sacrifice of absolute U.S. autonomy was the price of getting other countries to do the same. U.S. legislators acted despite private sector concerns that allowing such inspections could open the door to industrial espionage. Such is the price of global security in a world of potentially catastrophic cross-border threats. By honoring the OPCW, the Nobel Committee reinforces one of the world’s most important but vulnerable taboos: a global prohibition on the use of poison gas to kill human beings. By the 1990s, a century of slaughter—from mustard gas on the Western Front to Zyklon B in Hitler’s abbatoirs to tabun, sarin and VX in Halabja, Kurdistan—had persuaded the world that chemical weapons were qualitatively different from and more heinous than conventional weapons, not least in their potential for indiscriminate use. The 2013 prize is intended to express the world’s continued revulsion against such weapons and its determination to reinforce their prohibition in the face of Syria’s brazen actions. Its second purpose is to ensure that the OPCW inspectors, having finally gained access to Syria, have the global political backing to do their job. The Nobel Committee is aware of the inspectors’ unprecedented misson: to declare an entire country chemical weapons-free within nine months. Nothing on this scale, at this pace, has ever been attempted, much less in the midst of a civil war. As a practical matter, the mission will depend on compliance from a regime in Damascus that has a well-deserved reputation for treachery, ample opportunities to play cat-and-mouse with inspectors, and powerful external patrons in Russia and Iran. The prize’s third and most pointed objective is to shine a spotlight on CWC parties that are lagging in the implementation of their disarmament obligations. In announcing the prize, the Nobel Committee explicitly took to task the United States and Russia for failing to meet the April 2012 deadline for the the complete elimination of their once-massive CW stockpiles. The United States has now destroyed 90 percent of its arsenal, according to the Centers for Disease Control. But the practical effect of perceived foot-dragging is to reduce confidence in the CWC and weaken the CW taboo. If the world’s leading military powers themselves are not “going to zero,” what incentive is there for weaker states to do so? This marks the second straight year that the Peace Prize has gone to an international organization (last year it was the European Union) rather than an individual. In bestowing its award on the OPCW, the Nobel Committee has offered a useful reminder that multilateral institututions, for all their faults, remain essential pillars for a peaceful world order.