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Sri Lanka Peace Chief responds to New York
Times
Blows whistle on Rama, Radhika & R2P
Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process
(SCOPP)
28th January 2008
The Editor
The New York Times
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10018
U.S.A
Dear Sir,
My attention has been drawn to a recent article by Warren Hoge which,
in talking about the R2P concept, asserts that:
"Next month, a research and advocacy center dedicated to moving
the principle of responsibility to protect into practice is being inaugurated
at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the Graduate
Center of the City University of New York. Similar offices are being
set up in Australia, Sri Lanka and Thailand."
As Secretary General of the Peace Secretariat, I was accordingly asked
by a concerned citizen 'what action you contemplate in this regard,
if the UN actually intends to establish such an office in our country.'
I pointed out that this was not a UN initiative. However, the article
is also in error in claiming that an office dedicated to moving the
principle into practice is being set up in Sri Lanka.
There was an attempt to make the International Centre for Ethnic Studies
in Colombo an Associated Centre of the New York Global Centre for the
Responsibility to Protect. This was an initiative (perhaps not entirely
unilateral, but certainly not official) of Dr. Rama Mani, the former
Executive Director of ICES-C. Earlier this month she was dismissed,
mainly for a lack of transparency and accountability with regard to
a financial crisis that has affected the office, and for a contentious
relationship with many senior researches at ICES-C.
It was only after her dismissal, and the surreptitious removal of material
from the office, that the ICES Chairman realized that ICES-C appeared
on the website of the Global Centre, with the objective indicated in
your article. Dr Mani had only officially referred to the matter previously
in a paragraph in her report on ICES activities in which she mentioned
that 'we have been requested to serve as a Southern affiliated centre'.
It was decided last week that ICES should be immediately disassociated
from involvement with the Global Centre. This was intimated to all members
of the Board on January 24th and, as if by magic, the following morning
the Global Centre had removed reference to ICES from its website.
I am concerned about this because I have been asked by the Ministry
of Constitutional Affairs and National Integration, with which ICES
has a Memorandum of Understanding, to assist in monitoring of a Project
for which ICES has secured funding from the World Bank. The Ministry
had no idea that ICES was contemplating an association with the Global
Centre, nor that it had led to action which misled Mr. Hoge amongst
others.
Meanwhile it transpires that Dr Mani, and her predecessor Radhika Coomaraswamy,
currently an Under Secretary General at the United Nations, are both
on the Advisory Board of the Global Centre, which is headed by Gareth
Evans. Last year Dr. Mani invited Dr. Evans to deliver a lecture in
Colombo to create what she termed much needed waves. She succeeded,
because the lecture was full of inaccuracies, which Dr. Evans was unable
to defend in discussion with me at this office, following which he alleged
that Sri Lanka was heading for a situation in which R2P should be invoked.
Though he suggested I send him further details as to what he had got
wrong, he has not as yet responded.
It is not the business of a research organization to create dissension
in a country, and the whole business suggests that Dr. Mani was involved
in an agenda that she did not share with her employers. More worryingly,
it would seem that Ms. Coomaraswamy, whilst an employee of the United
Nations, has also been furthering this agenda. Though she was required
to resign from Board positions in Sri Lanka when she took up the UN
appointment, she has continued to attempt to influence matters at ICES,
in particular with threatening and cajoling e-mails as to the reinstatement
of Dr. Mani. It seems that she also attended the Board meeting at which
Dr. Mani was appointed.
Though she had resigned by then, this was as a substitute for Bradman
Weerakoon, Secretary to the former Prime Minister, with whom Ms. Coomaraswamy
has sadly allowed herself to be associated. Ms. Coomaraswamy was responsible
for advancing Mr. Weerakoon into a position of authority at ICES and,
though she claims that this was purely for administrative purposes,
Mr. Weerakoon has countermanded the order of his Chairman and sent a
letter formally reinstating Dr Mani.
Since there is little doubt that there has been much financial mismanagement
- Ms. Coomaraswamy has confessed that she signed anything put in front
of her by the Financial Controller who she now says was not competent
- the excesses engaged in by her and Mr. Weerakoon to have Dr. Mani
reinstated suggest improprieties that need thorough investigation. Dr.
Mani complained to the Indian High Commission, and following a press
conference it was alleged in a website connected to the opposition that
a police raid had been prevented by the Indian High Commission contacting
the Inspector General of Police, and the Ministries of Defence and Foreign
Affairs. This is not true, and the Indian High Commission has assured
me that Dr. Mani is not an Indian citizen.
The episode seems designed to obfuscate where Dr. Mani's allegiances
lie. She is currently a French national, but it seems unlikely that
she serves French interests. Certainly she has not acted on behalf of
ICES, and the list of those with whom she shared her correspondence
with Gareth Evans suggests a very different perspective.
Similarly, there is no doubt that Ms. Coomaraswamy is not acting on
behalf of the United Nations, and the Secretary General may need to
investigate as to whether there has been a conflict of interests. While
she is certainly not acting in the interests of Sri Lanka, her continuing
association with the opposition may lead the UN to decide that she is
not fit to exercise her current responsibilities. She has suggested
that Dr. Mani needed protection from a leading opposition lawyer and
propagandist when questioned by the police, an action she has described
as performed by the 'strong arm of the state - the police, SCOPP' (ie,
this Secretariat).
Meanwhile there is evidence that, while claiming she encouraged Sri
Lankan staff at ICES to apply for the position of Executive Director,
she had in fact decided that they were not fit, and assiduously promoted
the cause of Dr. Mani.
What I had initially thought was simply a Valentine's Day gift to the
leader of the Sri Lankan opposition, the unveiling of ICES as a partner
of the Global Centre when it was launched on February 14th now seems
part of a deeper design. The undiplomatic intervention of the Canadian
High Commissioner, highlighted in a newspaper yesterday (www.nation.lk
- under news features), drawing in as it did other Heads of Mission
in Colombo, indicates that further investigation is required. Meanwhile
I would be grateful if you published this letter to explain the strange
circumstances under which your columnist and his readers were misled.
Yours sincerely
Prof Rajiva Wijesinha
Secretary General
Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process
DIPLOMATIC MEMO
Intervention, Hailed as a Concept, Is Shunned in Practice
By WARREN HOGE
Published: January 20, 2008
UNITED NATIONS - Three years after the United Nations adopted a groundbreaking
resolution to help it intervene to stop genocide, even longtime supporters
of the rule acknowledge that it has not helped the organization end
the violence in Darfur.
The General Assembly resolution, approved in 2005, held nations responsible
for shielding their citizens from mass atrocities and established the
right of international forces to step in if nations did not fulfill
this new "responsibility to protect."
"It was the high-water mark when the General Assembly endorsed
the concept; it was an incredible leap forward from the whole crippling
debate over whether humanitarian intervention wasn't just a Trojan horse
for neo-imperialism," said John Prendergast, co-chairman of the
Enough Project, a Washington-based group dedicated to preventing genocide.
"When it happened in 2005," he said, "you believed that
potentially things could be different. But in the daily slugfest of
international policy making, it hasn't survived the first test: Darfur."
The United Nations has tried to take the lead in Darfur, the crisis-ridden
region in western Sudan. But it has been stymied by the failure of major
member states to fulfill promises to support action and by the intransigence
of the Sudanese government.
Sudan begrudgingly agreed last year to permit United Nations peacekeepers
into Darfur but only as part of a joint mission with the African Union,
whose own 7,000-member force had proved inadequate.
Since then, the government has thrown up so many bureaucratic and operational
roadblocks that the force that took over on Jan. 1 is only a third of
its planned strength of 26,000, and Sudanese authorities are still blocking
United Nations' efforts to include specialized non-African troops considered
essential to making the mission effective.
In addition, countries with advanced militaries have not come forward
to answer United Nations appeals for the sophisticated aviation and
logistics assistance that the force needs.
Darfur, in short, has shown that there is a great difference between
gaining acceptance for a working theory and making the theory work.
The 2005 resolution was meant to break the impasse between those who
believe the outside world has the power to intercede in countries where
mass atrocities are occurring and those who believe that the sovereignty
of the state, a concept created in the 17th century and recognized in
the United Nations Charter, precludes any outside intervention.
The phrasing of the resolution sought to square the two long-antagonistic
positions by saying that the world could step in, but only after the
state had shown unwillingness to act itself.
The longstanding debate over when countries should intervene took on
urgency after the United Nations and its principal member states on
the Security Council did nothing to stop the 1994 genocide in Rwanda,
where Hutu extremists slaughtered 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu. Despite
desperate calls for reinforcements from the United Nations commander,
Gen. Roméo Dallaire of Canada, the Security Council cut the number
of peacekeepers to 450 from 2,500.
Donald Steinberg, the New York director of the International Crisis
Group, remembers his despair that year when, as President Clinton's
special assistant for Africa, he was unable to marshal international
support for taking action to stop the killing.
Among the available options, he recalled, were jamming the radio station
broadcasting tribal hate messages, reinforcing United Nations peacekeeping
forces or immediately declaring the situation to be genocide.
"But each time some of us pushed for these steps," he said,
"others would ask, 'Where's the legal basis for these actions,
where's the public outcry, the 'Hallelujah' chorus of support? Where's
the evidence to show that these actions will end the killings?' "
With the world facing in Darfur a situation that many have identified
as genocide, the advocates of international intervention should, in
theory, have answered those questions.
First, there is Security Council approval for the largest peacekeeping
force in history, which, at full strength, should have the capacity
to halt the killing.
Second, there is a vocal, organized and worldwide campaign backing
intervention.
As for the legal basis, there is the 2005 General Assembly resolution
embodying the concept of a state's "responsibility to protect,"
which has become so much a part of the United Nations vocabulary of
resolving conflict that it even has its own abbreviation, R2P.
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has put so much faith in it that he uncharacteristically
upbraided an under secretary general at a high-level policy committee
meeting in October who disputed the high priority being placed on the
concept of intervention.
"The S.G. said he utterly disagreed and felt that this was fundamental
to the future of the U.N. and that after elevating the principle so
high, we had the obligation to put it into effect," said a participant
in the meeting who witnessed the exchange and agreed to talk about it
in exchange for anonymity.
Mr. Ban has upgraded and broadened the post of special adviser for
the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities and created a new assistant
secretary general position specifically on the responsibility to protect.
But many of the developing-world countries that supported the resolution
three years ago have backed off out of suspicion that they could become
targets of intervention.
"There has been a tremendous amount of buyer's remorse,"
Mr. Steinberg said.
Samantha Power, a professor at the Kennedy School of Government at
Harvard, said, "We have more than 150 countries on the books saying
they believe this responsibility exists, but what advocates have begun
to understand is that governments will never exercise this responsibility
naturally or eagerly, they will only exercise it if they feel they are
going to pay a price for not exercising it."
At the same time, advocates of intervention say the resolution has
already shown at least some value.
"I think it's the best tool we've come up with for educating;
it just remains to be seen if it will be as good at converting theory
to action," said Mr. Prendergast, of the Enough Project.
Mr. Steinberg said, "It's a way of telling people that sovereignty
is not an excuse to facilitate mass killings in your own country, and
people get that."
Ruth W. Messinger, president of the American Jewish World Service and
a co-founder of the Save Darfur Coalition, said, "I think it's
a critically important phrase, and I don't say that lightly."
Next month, a research and advocacy center dedicated to moving the
principle of responsibility to protect into practice is being inaugurated
at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the Graduate
Center of the City University of New York. Similar offices are being
set up in Australia, Sri Lanka and Thailand.
Recalling passage of the declaration in 2005, Mr. Steinberg said, "We
decided then that this was the most the market would bear, but we haven't
gotten what we need out of it, and unless we can apply it to a situation
like Darfur, then the promise will be lost."
Web Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/world/africa/20nations.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
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