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Could a United Nations Code of Conduct Help Curb Atrocities? A Response to Bolarinwa Adediran

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 March 2019

Edward C. Luck
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Abstract

In an article titled “Reforming the Security Council through a Code of Conduct: A Sisyphean Task?” (Ethics & International Affairs 32, no. 4, pp. 463–82), Bolarinwa Adediran argues that efforts to establish a code of conduct at the UN Security Council amount to energy misspent—for reasons both of practicability and effectiveness. While it is true that the proposed codes of conduct do not offer any shortcuts or magic answers to the dilemmas surrounding efforts to prevent atrocity crimes and protect populations, I disagree with the assessment that these initiatives will ultimately prove to be “unhelpful.” I examine the initiatives on three levels of analysis: (1) their effect on political and normative movement toward giving increased attention to human security considerations, (2) their effect on Security Council decision-making, and (3) their effect on atrocity prevention and protection on the ground. The proposed codes have both downside risks and upside potential on all three levels, but it is on the first level that my assessment most sharply diverges from that of Adediran.

Keywords

United NationsSecurity Councilcode of conductatrocity crimesatrocity preventionResponsibility to Protect
Type
Response
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , Spring 2019 , pp. 79 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2019 

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References

NOTES

1 The pioneering work was performed by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 2001)Google Scholar.

2 See Adediran, Bolarinwa, “Reforming the Security Council through a Code of Conduct: A Sisyphean Task?” Ethics & International Affairs 32, no. 4 (2018), pp. 463–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 For a discussion of the evolution of policy and doctrine on human security and RtoP, see Bellamy, Alex J. and Luck, Edward C., The Responsibility to Protect: From Promise to Practice (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 2018), pp. 6–36Google Scholar.

4 A recent example, when atrocity crimes were very much on the agenda, was the July 2018 Council vote on sanctions for South Sudan. There were no negative votes or vetoes, but Côte d'Ivoire was the swing vote in a 9–0–6 decision allowing an arms embargo and targeted sanctions to proceed. See Resolution S/2428 (2018) of July 13, 2018 and the explanation of votes in UN document S/PV.8310.

5 According to the Global Centre on the Responsibility to Protect, the Council has referred to RtoP in seventy-seven resolutions as of November 15, 2018.

6 Chesterman, Simon, “Relations with the UN Secretary-General,” in von Einsiedel, Sebastian, Malone, David M., and Ugarte, Bruno Stagno, eds., The UN Security Council in the Twenty-First Century (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2016), p. 453Google Scholar. Also see United Nations Security Council, “Letter Dated 30 December 2008 from the Permanent Representative of South Africa to the United Nations Addressed to the President of the Security Council,” UN document S/2008/836, p. 13.

7 Adediran, “Reforming the Security Council through a Code of Conduct,” p. 480.

8 Adediran cites his article, “Implementing R2P: Towards a Regional Solution,” Global Responsibility to Protect 9, no. 4 (2017), pp. 459–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Two of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's early reports on RtoP, which I prepared, stressed the value of exploring regional and subregional options whenever possible. See United Nations, Reports of the Secretary-General, Implementing the Responsibility to Protect, UN document A/63/677, January 12, 2009, and The Role of Regional and Subregional Arrangements in Implementing the Responsibility to Protect, UN document A/65/877-S/2011/393, June 28, 2011.

9 Luck, Edward C. and Luck, Dana Zaret, “The Individual Responsibility to Protect,” in Rosenberg, Sheri P., Galis, Tibi, and Zucker, Alex, eds., Reconstructing Atrocity Prevention (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 207–48Google Scholar.

10 Bellamy and Luck, The Responsibility to Protect, pp. 164–80.

11 Kuperman, Alan J., “The Moral Hazard of Humanitarian Intervention: Lessons from the Balkans,” International Studies Quarterly 52, no. 1 (2008), pp. 49–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 In Libya, the Council's timely decision to authorize the use of air power to protect populations was undermined in practice when those carrying out the mission decided to reinterpret the mandate to include regime change.

13 Adediran, “Reforming the Security Council through a Code of Conduct,” p. 480.