Sir, – Your editorial "Bombing Syria" (September 24th) assumes that the UN doctrine of "responsibility to protect", or R2P, would entitle the US and its allies to take military action against Islamic State targets in Syria without UN Security Council backing.
The 2005 world summit at which the heads of state approved the terms of R2P, later agreed in UN Security Council resolution 1674, explicitly stated that member states are “prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the charter . . . on a case-by-case basis”.
In international law, R2P sets out a responsibility – to be exercised through the UN Security Council – and not a right. – Yours, etc,
Dr JOHN DOHERTY,
Operngasse,
Vienna.
Sir, – The Irish Times, for the first time as far as I am aware, raises the question of "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P) in relation to Syria – "then there's the UN doctrine of 'responsibility to protect', certainly arguable in relation to the genocidal threat to Kurds fleeing IS advances inside Syria near the border town of Kobani".
However do crimes by the Assad regime not also warrant mention of R2P? Roughly half the population of Syria has already been forced to flee their homes since the Syrian peaceful protests in Spring 2011 were crushed by the regime. Thousands have been killed, imprisoned and brutalised in Syrian “gulags”. Yet the regime, undeterred, continues its daily aerial bombardment, killing scores of civilians, including children.
There is “massive evidence of ... war crimes and crimes against humanity” indicating “responsibility at the highest level of government including the head of state”, according to Navi Pillay, former UNHCHR director last December.
In a strongly worded presentation at Dublin’s Institute of Europe on July 11th (the anniversary of Srebrenica), Dr Simon Adams, executive director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, moved by two particular images of Syria – one of the devastation in Homs, the other of a child who had frozen to death – stated that “there could hardly be a more damning indictment of the international community’s abject failure to uphold its responsibility to protect the people of Syria than those two images”.
It is “certainly arguable” that this failure and the failure to adequately support early on the moderate armed opposition forces were significant factors in the rise of Islamic State.
According to Dr Jonaj Schullofer-Wohl of the University of Virginia, “Higher levels of western military and financial support – if provided expeditiously – could have prevented radical Islamist groups from occupying a dominant position within the opposition”.
Your editorial seems more preoccupied, however, with the “somewhat dubious legality” of the anti-IS coalition entering Syria without Assad’s permission rather than the protection of those still left at the mercy of his brutal regime. – Yours, etc,
VALERIE HUGHES,
Cabra,
Dublin 7.