The Seventh Annual Global Philanthropy Forum (www.philanthropyforum.org) on April 9-11, 2008, focused on "Human Security, Human Rights, and the Shared Responsibility to Protect: a Conversation between Elders and Emerging Leaders." Global Giving Matters presents this feature to highlight a few of the issues surrounding philanthropy and responsibility to protect.
In 2000, several years after the world had stood by as the genocide in Rwanda unfolded in slow motion, Kofi Annan, then Secretary-General of the United Nations challenged the UN General Assembly to reconcile the principle of state sovereignty with the moral imperative to intervene when states commit atrocities against their own people. In response, the Canadian government created the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), whose report, published a year later, established the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine (R2P). Here, finally, was moral, reasoned, and pragmatic framework for humanitarian intervention in defense of human rights. Broadly speaking, R2P established two new principles for international affairs: First, that the foremost obligation of sovereign states is to protect its people. Second, that whenever a population is suffering serious harm as a result of internal war, insurgency, repression, or state failure, and the state in question is unwilling or unable to act, then other sovereign states must assume the responsibility to protect. In 2005, R2P was unanimously adopted by UN member states.
The emergence of R2P owes a lot to international philanthropy. The Carnegie, MacArthur, Hewlett, Rockefeller and Simons Foundations provided financial support for the ICISS, underscoring the critical role philanthropy can play in establishing international norms. Through their ongoing support for civil society groups, the philanthropic community has helped expand the public lexicon and reframe the debate about how to deal with humanitarian interventions and human security issues.
While governments are usually better positioned to tackle the logistics of intervention, philanthropy can play a critical role in the prevention of atrocity crimes. In cases where politics, economic interests, or simple bureaucratic inertia stymie effective interventions, civil society groups -- funded by philanthropists -- can pressure governments to act.
Philanthropists have also supported academic institutions and think tanks, like Harvard University's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, which help lay the intellectual groundwork for human rights policy. Privately supported R2P advocates can shift the media spotlight and galvanize public opinion. And because private philanthropists can take risks and respond swiftly, they are ideally suited to help support sensitive activities like lobbying on behalf of victimized populations or monitoring in regions where it may be politically difficult for governments to act. Other items in the philanthropic toolbox include funding for advocacy, education, research and transitional justice.
Despite these early efforts, the philanthropic infrastructure to support an R2P is just now starting to emerge. The Philanthropy Workshop and Global Philanthropy Forum have offered donor education programs, while affinity groups like the International Human Rights Funders Group are introducing donors to the R2P concept. Recently, a handful of leading human rights groups -- Human Rights Watch, International Crisis Group, Oxfam, World Federalist Society and Genocide Intervention Network -- united to create the new Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. Housed at the Ralph Bunche Institute in the City University of New York, the new think tank is focused on operationalizing R2P. Given the nascent state of the R2P field, there are plenty of opportunities to for donors looking to have an impact.