Not much has been made of the truly stunning events unfolding in Cote D’Ivoire over the past 48 hours. Laurent Gbagbo, the ex-president who lost last year’s vote but refuses to cede power, is on the verge of giving up the post in favor of Alassane Ouattara, the rightful victor.
Gbagbo has held his country hostage for nearly four months, as forces loyal to him had hunkered down in Abidjan, the commercial capital. But Outtara massed his own army, and in recent days made a strong push essentially pinning down Gbagbo’s forces in the city.
Everyone from the UN to the African Union to international NGOs and the ghost of Elizabeth Taylor acknowledges that Ouattara is president-elect, so there’s no question about taking sides, despite legitimate concern that Outtara’s forces could commit crimes against civilians. To that end, on March 30, the United Nations Security Council unanimously approved Resolution 1975, which among other things, authorizes UN and the French forces supporting them to use “all necessary means … to protect civilians under imminent threat of physical violence… including to prevent the use of heavy weapons.”
Last night and under this mandate, UN and French forces hit the presidential palace as well as other strategic military sites around Abidjan. The pressure has apparently brought Gbagbo to the verge of ceding power, despite somewhat conflicting reports.
In the process, we’ve learned two important things about the UN: First is that the United Nations is beginning to take its “responsibility to protect” (R2P) — an international norm adopted in 2009 that obliges the international community to act in the face of humanitarian crises — quite seriously. R2P grew out of the UN’s non-intervention in the Rawandan genocide of 1994; one of its principal pillars is that the international community is compelled to take timely action to protect civilians when a state is failing to protect its population. Cote D’Ivoire is just the second potential atrocity since R2P was established (Libya was the first) that the UN has had the opportunity to act. So far, it’s 2 for 2.
It’s remarkable that Resolution 1975 passed by the Security Council by a 15-0 margin, just weeks after a very similar Resolution 1973 passed by a comparatively difficult 10-0 vote (with five abstentions) authorizing the same “all necessary measures” to protect civilians in Libya. What compelled Russia, China, Brazil, Germany, and India to vote with the Ivoirian resolution while abstaining from the Libyan version just weeks earlier is somewhat of a mystery.
Most likely, the different vote tallies are due to a simple fact: no two situations are exactly alike and major international decisions aren’t made in a vacuum. Certainly Moscow and Beijing in particular didn’t wake up last week and decide they were liberal interventionists comfortable authorizing force to advance democracy. Perhaps the difference was in a certified election result in Cote D’Ivoire, while no election had taken place in Libya?
Second, the limited UN/French military operations in Cote D’Ivoire should underwrite the UN’s confidence that it can act with apparently effective results without more than American moral support. As any as one million Ivoirians may have be displaced by this conflict, and preventing needless harm to them is a testament to the international community’s potential as an effective arbiter.
