The current situation in cyclone-ravaged Burma, otherwise known as Myanmar, is especially grim. Some disaster experts expect the death toll to climb to over 100,000 people in the coming days and weeks. Moreover, if the aid situation on the ground doesn't improve soon, that mind-numbing figure could needlessly rise even further. "If the humanitarian aid does not get into the country on a larger scale, there's the risk of a second catastrophe," explains Elisabeth Byrs, the UN spokesperson for the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Burmese children line up to receive water from a local donor on the outskirts of Rangoon, Burma, on Wednesday.
Should Canada, and the rest of the international community, intervene forcefully in Burma to ensure that this desperately needed assistance gets through to the people who actually need it?
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has recently raised the question of whether robust humane intervention may be required to compel Burma's military junta to permit the timely distribution of foreign aid. Of course, both the Chinese and the Russians would make it exceedingly difficult for the UN to undertake such principled intervention -- especially if it necessitated the use of military force.
Back in 2005, Canada was the chief architect and proponent of the UN system embracing the radical notion of humane intervention for reasons of human security. To get a majority of member states to sign on, the Canadian government was prepared to have its concept morph into something known as the "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine (or R2P).
Essentially, countries around the world agreed to challenge the age-old nostrum that state sovereignty and territorial integrity were inviolable international legal tenets. If national governments were not prepared to protect the rights of their own citizens -- so the argument went -- then the task would fall to the community of nations to do it for them. Thus was born or codified the concept of R2P or humanitarian intervention.
Nonetheless, does the humanitarian crisis in Burma meet the criteria for R2P? Secondly, if this doctrine or norm is to mean anything, can we afford not to invoke it in this particular instance?
Thoughtful critics of humane intervention have always been worried about what precisely the triggering conditions for international military engagement would be. And they have been deeply concerned about the prospect of humanitarian considerations being used as pretext by the major powers to seek "regime change" in disreputable countries like Burma or Sudan.
Ramesh Thakur, a former member of the R2P Commission, has expressed similar concerns about the Burma case. For him, the main problem is obvious: "There would be no better way to damage R2P beyond repair in Asia and the developing world than to have humanitarian assistance delivered into Myanmar backed by Western soldiers fighting in the jungles of Southeast Asia again."
But Lloyd Axworthy, the president of the University of Winnipeg and Canada's former minister of foreign affairs, has no qualms about classifying Burma as a clear-cut case for applying R2P. "The commission's mandate was never meant to be exclusive to one kind of threat. Human security applies to situations like natural disasters, pandemics and civil conflict," he says.
It is true that R2P was modified so as to precipitate military intervention in cases of mass slaughter, ethnic cleansing, and major crimes against humanity. But does not the wilful obstruction of aid delivery to some one million Burmese by the military government rise to the level of a despicable crime against humanity? If not, then what would?
Still, there is a certain cynicism about which countries are selected for R2P-type interventions. For instance, why Burma and not the long-suffering people of Darfur? I can't think of a satisfactory answer to that question.
These legitimate criticisms and concerns, however, should not be an excuse for doing precious little for the Burmese people. And there is no reason to view the Burma case as establishing a particularly troublesome precedent for R2P. Indeed, the rights-abusing regime in Rangoon has long been singled out as an execrable member of the world community.
Yes, it is likely that lives would be lost in the course of such a humane intervention in Burma. But no one should be under the illusion that defending and protecting human rights around the globe would be cost-free. The time has surely come to put the critically important words of R2P into real action.
As Axworthy himself posits: "What is the moral distinction between closing the door of rescuing people from death by machete and closing the door of life-saving aid?" Good question.
Peter McKenna is an associate professor in the department of political studies at the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown.
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