Bellamy (2008) wrote a chapter about the responsibility to protect principle in the book “Security Studies” edited by Paul D. Williams. The UN adopted the R2P principle in 2005, aimed to prevent deadly conflict as one of the fundamental goals of the UN. According to correspondence from Evans G. & Thakur, R. (2013), in response to Pape’s article in the previous issue of the same journal, defend the R2P concept as an important measure in grave situations (International Security, 37, 4, pp. 194 – 214). The authors are both members on the ICISS and co-authors of the 2001 report ‘The Responsibility to Protect‘. They presented 5 objections to Pape’s article, or 5 strengths of the evolved notion of the R2P. These are: 1. The core sustaining idea is the responsibility to protect (as opposed to the right to intervene). 2. R2P is not about unilateral interventionism, but about the protection gap between complicity, paralysis and illegality. The idea is that nonintervention is portrayed as compliance with the mass atrocities. 3. Interventions should be primarily motivated by humanitarian concerns. 4. R2P, as endorsed by world leaders at the UN in 2005, limits military interventions in case of 4 crimes of (i) genocide, (ii) war crimes, (iii) ethnic cleansing and (iv) crimes against humanity. 5. R2P is not a new legal obligation on states to intervene in other countries. Introducing notion they have included in their correspondence is Brazil’s conceptual idea of “Responsibility while Protecting”, or RwP. Pape is [...]
The permanent officials form the EU Civil Service and are divided in two categories – administrators (AD) and assistants (AST). Malta boasts of 8 Administrators and 4 Assistants. This information was given after a question by Lisbon of Treaty opponent Martin Ehrenhauser, an Austrian Independent MEP.
There were two reports presented in the EP last Thursday 18th April 2013 from rapporteurs from the committee of Foreign Affairs. The first report about the impact of the economic and financial crisis on human rights in third countries by Latvian PPE MEP Vaidere, on her own initiative was adopted by a single vote in parliament. She sits on the committee for foreign affairs. The underlying point in this resolution was that the financial and economic crisis has had a negative impact on developing and least developed countries, mainly reflected in shrinking demand for their exports, high levels of indebtedness, the risk of reduced foreign direct investment (FDI) inflow and declining Official Development Assistance (ODA), also affecting human rights since fewer resources are available to ensure social and economic rights, and more people are being driven into poverty [link]. She quoted the World Bank with the statistic that even in the event of a rapid recovery, some additional 71 million people in the world will remain in extreme poverty by 2020 as a result of the economic crisis. Most of the resolution was relatively generic and somewhat bland. It simply reiterated the European values and principles with regards to human rights laid down in other key documents. For example it is a well known fact that social tensions lead to increasing discrimination and xenophobia in society. She also argues in favour of the FTT, which Malta and Britain are adamantly against. Interesting bits were the point [...]
The Cypriot parliament rejected the €10 billion EU bailout plan, for it came with strings attached. The point of contention was 5.8 billion euros from bank deposits from oridnary Cypriot folk. Even the Russians are having difficulty supporting Cyprus. Sometimes we forget about the Cyprus problem and how this tiny island in the Mediterranean is still divided in two. We might even remember Kofi Annan’s efforts to end this intractable conflict and how the Greek Cypriots voted No in the referendum to introduce the Annan plan. “The process of negotiation is not a football match. It is not a question of keeping score of goals and own goals, of winners and losers. Rather, we have tried to accommodate the expressed concerns of both sides, so as to create a win-win situation.” – Kofi Annan Is the end of this conflict worth 5.8 billion euros? Food for thought
After the previous short spells at blogging I am giving it another go. This time through a slighter more sophisticated medium, i.e. my own website. It appears all the other bloggers who want to be taken seriously have adopted this method, including Franco Debono (sic!). After all, having been sending letters to the ToM consistently it is only natural that I should take up blogging again. As the days will roll by, the website should keep undergo aesthetic changes until I should find the best look. Other than that, I plan to include pages dedicated to my academic endeavors, one for conflict resolution and the other to the Common Foreign and Security Policy. The hope is that I can keep up the website and upload important documents in both areas of studies.