Zenit: Interview With UN Permanent Observer Archbishop Migliore

Pope's New Name for Sovereignty

Interview With UN Permanent Observer Archbishop Migliore

Q: How is the "responsibility to protect," mentioned by the Holy Father, a new principle for the international community? How would this differ from the international community's response to oppressive governments in the past?

Archbishop Migliore: He stated that the moral basis for a government’s claim to authority, to sovereignty, is its responsibility for, its willingness to, and effectiveness in protecting its populations from any kind of violation of human rights. While borrowing this expression from the Outcome Document adopted by Heads of State and Government in 2005, Pope Benedict outlined a broader concept: Responsibility to protect covers not only the so-called humanitarian -- military -- interventions, rather, it could be used as the new name for sovereignty, which is not only a right, but above all a responsibility to protect and promote the populations in their daily lives.

I'll have to read the Holy Father's address to the UN more carefully. I did find this on a quick search of the text:

This is all the more necessary at a time when we experience the obvious paradox of a multilateral consensus that continues to be in crisis because it is still subordinated to the decisions of a few, whereas the world’s problems call for interventions in the form of collective action by the international community.

Military humanitarian interventions are ok if they are just and deemed necessary by the international community?

It's the question of sovereignty and whether it is possible for an international body to be vested with a superior authority over all nations and states.

Recognition of the unity of the human family, and attention to the innate dignity of every man and woman, today find renewed emphasis in the principle of the responsibility to protect. This has only recently been defined, but it was already present implicitly at the origins of the United Nations, and is now increasingly characteristic of its activity. Every State has the primary duty to protect its own population from grave and sustained violations of human rights, as well as from the consequences of humanitarian crises, whether natural or man-made. If States are unable to guarantee such protection, the international community must intervene with the juridical means provided in the United Nations Charter and in other international instruments. The action of the international community and its institutions, provided that it respects the principles undergirding the international order, should never be interpreted as an unwarranted imposition or a limitation of sovereignty. On the contrary, it is indifference or failure to intervene that do the real damage. What is needed is a deeper search for ways of pre-empting and managing conflicts by exploring every possible diplomatic avenue, and giving attention and encouragement to even the faintest sign of dialogue or desire for reconciliation.

The principle of "responsibility to protect" was considered by the ancient "ius gentium" as the foundation of every action taken by those in government with regard to the governed: at the time when the concept of national sovereign States was first developing, the Dominican Friar Francisco de Vitoria, rightly considered as a precursor of the idea of the United Nations, described this responsibility as an aspect of natural reason shared by all nations, and the result of an international order whose task it was to regulate relations between peoples. Now, as then, this principle has to invoke the idea of the person as image of the Creator, the desire for the absolute and the essence of freedom. The founding of the United Nations, as we know, coincided with the profound upheavals that humanity experienced when reference to the meaning of transcendence and natural reason was abandoned, and in consequence, freedom and human dignity were grossly violated. When this happens, it threatens the objective foundations of the values inspiring and governing the international order and it undermines the cogent and inviolable principles formulated and consolidated by the United Nations. When faced with new and insistent challenges, it is a mistake to fall back on a pragmatic approach, limited to determining "common ground", minimal in content and weak in its effect.

If a government is non-functional, and the people cannot create a new government, then the burden falls upon the international community, having concern for the common good of which all peoples have a part, to create the stability and conditions that will enable an effective government to be created?

What confidence can we have though that the majority of governments are moral and just so that we can trust the decisions they make through the United Nations? There is an international order, and there is a shared responsibility among all states to safeguard it, but should this authority be delegated in part to the United Nations? If some sort of conflict arises between a resolution of the United Nations and the agreements or treaties which two or more states enter in order to resolve some issue, independently of the U.N., does the resolution of the United Nations carry greater moral weight and therefore override those agreements or treaties? Now, perhaps this sort of conflict will never occur, if the U.N. Charter precludes it from happening by respecting those agreements. Unfortunately I don't have time to read through the U.N. Charter, or the familiarity with international law to answer this question.

Experience shows that legality often prevails over justice when the insistence upon rights makes them appear as the exclusive result of legislative enactments or normative decisions taken by the various agencies of those in power. When presented purely in terms of legality, rights risk becoming weak propositions divorced from the ethical and rational dimension which is their foundation and their goal. The Universal Declaration, rather, has reinforced the conviction that respect for human rights is principally rooted in unchanging justice, on which the binding force of international proclamations is also based. This aspect is often overlooked when the attempt is made to deprive rights of their true function in the name of a narrowly utilitarian perspective. Since rights and the resulting duties follow naturally from human interaction, it is easy to forget that they are the fruit of a commonly held sense of justice built primarily upon solidarity among the members of society, and hence valid at all times and for all peoples.

An insistence upon the grounding of rights in justice and the natural law. But what sort of rights? Subjective passive rights are more readily acceptable than subjective active rights, but are we bound to accept even all of the subjective passive rights enumerated by the Holy See, such as the right to health care? Is the right to health care derived from commutative justice or from legal justice? Is health care a common good? Or is it a derived common good if it is subsidized by the state treasury? And suppose it cannot be subsidized by the state treasury without incurring debt, or dependence upon an unjust political economy, what then? Does the right still exist? If not, then is it a right?


From Zenit:
UN Secretary-General's Greeting to Pope [2008-04-18]
"In So Many Ways, Our Mission Unites Us With Yours"
Benedict XVI's Address to United Nations [2008-04-18]
"Human Rights ... Must Be Respected As an Expression of Justice"
Papal Address to UN Staff [2008-04-18]
"I Would Like to Express My Personal Appreciation"