Gareth Evans and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P)

Gareth’s ideals and words are important if we wish to find peace in this world.  We have to take responsibility. Every man, woman and child.

Interview with Professor Gareth Evans:  A Responsibility to Protect

Another notable interviewee was Gareth Evans, a former Foreign Minister of Australia for eight years, and President Emeritus of the International Crisis Group. He is currently Chancellor of the Australian National University and co-chair of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. As Foreign Minister, he was at the forefront of recasting Australia’s relationship with China, India, and Indonesia, while deepening its alliance with the US. Gareth helped found the APEC and ASEAN security forums. He also played a leading role in bringing peace to Cambodia and negotiating the International Convention on Chemical Weapons. He is the principal framer of the United Nations’ ‘Responsibility to Protect’ doctrine known as R2P.^[i]

I had the opportunity to interview Gareth after his speech on the Non Proliferation Treaty in 2006. He asked which radio station I was from and I told him Plenty Valley FM. He decided to agree, which was interesting given I was not from the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC). I was from a small station in Melbourne with limited coverage that would give him negligible reach. He was giving a voice to community radio. That said a lot about him. Below is the transcript from the interview.

Interview with Hon. Professor Gareth Evans: The International Responsibility to Protect Civilians and Cooperation

SC:   It was a very articulate discussion we had tonight. Also I guess many people reflected a sense of sorrow about you and reform. How are you feeling at this present moment when you are going out and talking to people about what has happened.

GE: I am feeling quite desolate and gloomy I should be saying the glass is half full rather than half empty. There are some things to applaud about what happened at the UN Summit, the creation of this new Peace Building Commission deal with fragile states coming out of conflict is a hugely important innovation. The thing I’ve personally been most associated with for the last five or six years, the idea for responsibility to protect, to establish this new international norm of commitment to help people inside states where there have been massive human rights violations and where there needs to be external intervention. To get that agreed as a new international principle, the responsibility to protect was really pretty important. If you look beyond that, it really was very very disappointing, didn’t do anything at all on arms control or disarmament, didn’t do anything significant on terrorism establishing clear norms and guidelines, didn’t do anything rules to limit the use of military force to acceptable circumstances, didn’t do anything very new at all on the whole range of development issues which is so crucial for all the worlds people, and didn’t do much at all on the structural and institutional issues where there is a real need for efficiency gains if this institution which we all love deserves the love we give.

SC:   In my background peace, nonviolence and anti-bullying to young children, I teach as a world peace clown. What I teach children when we try and solve problems, we don’t hate the person but look at the problem to be solved. Looking at international politics, obviously we are talking about power politics; we are talking vested interests, power over another, US unilateralism and pursuing its own agenda, is there any way that we can move towards collaborative rather, as opposed to, adversarial politics and learning conflict resolution?

GE:  Probably not going to get there by preaching at people like the US they are not going to listen. What you’ve got to do is get them to understand that cooperative collaborative behaviour is really in their own interests. In this world of ours which is ever more interdependent, globalised all the phenomena that we are aware of about the new risks posed by terrorism, health pandemics and by environmental catastrophes and god now what else. Even the big mighty US cannot solve these problems by itself it does need the cooperation of others, it has to be a mindset change. The nicest way I have ever heard this put, was by Bill Clinton a few months ago, I was on a platform with him in California of all places. The critical choice the United States has to make is how to use the great power we have, either we can use it to stay top dog on the global block in perpetuity throwing our weight around unilaterally all the rest, or we can use that power to create a world in which we will be comfortable living when we are no longer top dog on the block.  I think that particular mindset is what has to be encouraged, because nobody is ever top dog on the block. China is rising internationally. Does the US really want to establish those global norms, law of the jungle where might is right and you do your own thing and you ignore the collective views about these things? Might get away for the next 30 or 40 years but sure as heck not going to get away with it forever. I think it is terribly important to think a) the need about cooperative approaches that can’t be resolved by countries alone and b) the long term and necessity for all of us to develop rules for living together that don’t involve unilateral assertion of might.

SC:   Have you ever heard about the Global Movement of Children?

GE:  No I haven’t heard of the global movement of children.

SC:   Some of the NGO’s involved in this new movement are UNICEF and Oxfam and they have apparently gathered about 97 million signatures saying we will put children first.

GE: Yes I have heard of that.

SC:   What do you think about the idea of focusing more on children. For example I am creating a Childrens’ Circle Parliament which is collaborative which is lateral thinking, values based etc. If we focus more resources there perhaps?

GE:  I think more resources on education, education systems in particular are very important priorities. It is then of course what do you do with that education system and whether you just concentrate on the formal disciplines or some of the sort of values you are talking about, this is critical. What is most alarming since whole generations are slipping away from you, they are not being exposed to decent values or decent learning experiences and in our experience with part of the terrorist phenomenon is linked to the role that education is playing in countries like Pakistan where people can’t afford to send their kids to the State system, which is pretty moribund, therefore they go off to religious schools which are welcoming, parents can’t afford to pay for anything else.