http://www.slate.com/id/2167083/

Kofi Annan tried to push the ‘responsibility to protect’ as a norm of international law. This responsibility would be incumbent on all states and, in effect, would mandate the international community to come to the aid of people who are either being deliberately harmed by their own government, contrary to international law, or who are being harmed by non-state actors in situations where their own governments are either unwilling or unable to come to their assistance.

For me, the philosophical underpinnings of this are as follows. Sovereignty rests with the people. In a country with a democratic, or representative, government the ‘State’, as a legal entity, has the right to exercise this sovereignty on the people’s behalf. Where the relationship between government and governed breaks down, it forfeits the right to the protection that ‘nationhood’ gives it (i.e. the right for its domestic affairs not to be interfered in).

I think we’re on more or less the same page here; the idea of nationhood and sovereignty as an absolutist concept is irreconcilable with a respect for human dignity. Too often, the veil of state sovereignty simply acts as a cloak for government-sponsored gangsterism.

That may sound a little odd since often people talk about human rights – which may attach a responsibility more to our humanness (or base). Still, I do think there’s something to be said about the idea that the only reason why we accept national borders and the sheer idea of nationhood is that on some level we feel it’s a better way to live than simply tribal warfare or animalistic anarchy.

I’ll try one last time to articulate this and then I’ll give it a rest as I am tired and simply doing my best to put this down. The idea of being a citizen allows us access to infrastructure and resources, such as hospitals and schools, that we otherwise would be forbidden to us. If a state, instead of attempting to provide these basic tenents of civilisation instead wishes to practice genocide against its own people, then does it not forfeit its right to sovereignty? At that point, does not the call for humanity ring louder than the respect for nationhood? I realise that this is not always a clear case, and it also requires one to have more respect for one’s own nationhood, paradoxically, and that even this may hold a bitter taste in the mouth of some who do not consider themselves necessarily patriotic.

And yet, I don’t feel that this debate is even happening, let alone knowing where people stand on the issue. I’ll leave it at that, and hope that it’ll start a discussion which will better elucidate some of these ideas (if indeed they are worth pursuing).