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United Nations

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for giving us an opportunity to debate this issue and for her excellent opening speech. There has been a change in the nature of conflicts around the world. Internal conflicts have in many instances replaced conflicts between states, and civilians now make up the vast majority of casualties. The genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda and Bosnia as well as the crimes against humanity in Kosovo, East Timor and Darfur, have demonstrated massive failures by the international community to prevent atrocities. That is why I was so delighted when in 2005 world leaders endorsed a new doctrine for the UN—the responsibility to protect—which is designed to provide a moral and legal framework for the international community to respond to mass atrocities. This means that if a state defaults on its responsibility to protect its citizens, the international community would assume the responsibility collectively. The notion that the international community has a responsibility to protect entails three distinct yet related commitments—a responsibility to prevent, to react and to rebuild. But by far the most controversial element of the doctrine is the idea that military force should on occasion be used to protect civilians. That amounts to a new take on a very old and divisive issue—humanitarian intervention. In recent years, there have been many debates and discussions about the application of responsibility to protect in relation to, for example, Zimbabwe and Burma. However, I should like to focus on Sri Lanka. I am puzzled at the lack of action from the UN in the context of responsibility to protect. Just last week the International Crisis Group talked of the humanitarian tragedy unfolding in Sri Lanka. The International Committee of the Red Cross has warned that, ""conflict parties must take immediate action to prevent further mass casualties among civilians"." Members of the International Advisory Board of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect have urged the Security Council to uphold the responsibility to protect 100,000 civilians at risk of mass atrocities in northern Sri Lanka. It states, of the responsibility to protect: ""At the core … is the obligation to act preventively to protect peoples from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, rather than waiting until atrocities have already occurred, as states have too often done in the past"." I agree with my noble friend Lady Howells that we need to strengthen the UN. We need to enable it to act responsibly, and intervene in urgent humanitarian situations. The responsibility to protect goes some way towards doing that, which is why I ask the Minister why the UN has not taken action in Sri Lanka.