R4N - Responsibility For Neglect

The flowering of democracy through the regions of North Africa and the Middle East didn’t quite work out as planned. Those exhilarating days of fascination witnessing old orders get swept away by citizens in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen have led to more languished days of … what? New constitutions? Accountable government? A regional political renaissance? We will have to be patient and see.In a Western world where we desire our history in immediate sizeable chunks the wait for complicated results in these troubled areas of the globe has become frustrating. And so we do what we always do: turn away in pursuit of more excitable fare. It all seems pretty stable over there anyway, right? Democracy will prevail, don’t you think?This country’s part in the entire unfolding drama was a mixture of cheering from the sidelines and a bit of travel agency planning to get some Canadians home. Perhaps there was more, but none of us in Parliament ever caught wind of it, despite our asking.And then along came Libya and the stakes just got infinitely higher. As long as the other countries appeared to be winding their way toward some kind of better outcome, losing our interest didn’t appear to be causing any real harm. But as we avert our eyes from Moammar Gadhafi’s land, where a government is turning on its own people, leaving nothing but carnage, something is nagging our collective conscience. Played out in prime time, the death and destruction, while meriting strong words of denunciation from our PM, have elicited little else. A tree was in the process of falling and nobody was really listening.Romeo Dallaire is a troubled man these days, fulminating over why Canada has remained so in the background on the Libyan file. He had hoped for better. Following the travesties of Rwanda, he had worked with the international community to develop a doctrine that would permit states, through UN approval, to interfere in the dealings of those nations who had done specifically what Gadhafi is practicing at present – turning the levers and weapons of power against his own citizens. For the concept to become legitimized it had to be passed at the United Nations, which it subsequently was.Called the “Responsibility to Protect,” it reversed generations of diplomacy, which had maintained that only state-versus-state aggression was worthy of armed intervention. R2P, as it was nicknamed, lent international credibility to the rigors of taking on the likes of Gadhafi. Except we haven’t - not us, not the U.S., the European or African Union, or anyone else. David Cameron, PM of Britain, is the international community’s lone holdout against the kind the global state of inertia regarding Libya. Dallaire and Bob Rae held a press conference last week urging action, all to no response.It was easy to imagine R2P during the early days of Libya’s turmoil, likely because we were comforted by the fact we wouldn’t have to use it. But now with those opposing Gadhfi pleading for the international community to establish no-fly zones to hold back the might of the Libyan armed forces an eerie silence has descended over Western capitals. The cries of “never again” that emerged from the Rwandan crisis now appear farther away than ever. The larger thrust of democracy running throughout the Middle East and northern Africa could have provided an effective and inspiring backdrop for the West to bring protection to a struggling people pleading for its assistance. Obama’s answer has been that he won’t even help in establishing a no-fly zone, while from the Canadian Prime Minister … well, he seems not to have heard the Libyan cry. Yesterday's serious decision by the Arab League to request that the UN help is establishing no-fly zones was welcomed by our foreign affairs minister but no commitment was made. Meanwhile the loss in life piles up.As the world economy continues to struggle and many right-wing governments like Stephen Harper’s prefer to concentrate on domestic politics than on getting R2P right, the world is slowly moving away from an era where more liberal administrations sought to make the defense of human rights a vital part of diplomatic architecture. The struggling opponents of Gadhafi in Libya had likely hoped we meant it when we celebrated the passing of R2P at the UN not that many years ago. They are now waking up to the reality that countries like Canada won’t be coming anytime soon and the sound of the madman’s jets and armies in the distance, witnessed by the entire Western world in real-time, will confirm for them that while the world was actually witnessing their mass trauma it had neither the moral strength nor humanitarian compassion to even protect the innocents. Japanese citizens are about to witness our tremendous capacity to assist following their devastating earthquake, but the people of Libya? Sorry, it’s complicated.