Mick Hartley

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs (no, I’d never heard of them either) have published the results of a study on people’s attitudes to UN intervention (via Coalition for Darfur):

Publics around the world say the United Nations has the responsibility to protect people from genocide and other severe human rights abuses even if this means acting against the will of their own government, according to a multinational study.

Large numbers are open to UN intervention in Darfur, where Arab militias linked to the Sudanese government are accused of massacring the civilian population. But many seem to be uninformed about the situation in Western Sudan and declined to answer.

Support for action to halt genocide is consistent with the final document endorsed by the 2005 United Nations World Summit, which recognized that the world body has a “responsibility to protect” vulnerable populations from “genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity” should national authorities fail to do so.

“There seems to be a world-wide consensus that the UN Security Council has a responsibility to act to protect populations against genocide,” said Steven Kull, editor of WorldPublicOpinion.org. “It also seems that, to the extent that people are aware of the situation in Darfur, most believe that the United Nations has the right, if not the responsibility to intervene there.”…

Respondents in 12 countries were asked whether the UN Security council has the “responsibility to authorize the use of military force to protect people from severe human rights violations, such as genocide, even against the will” of the government committing such abuses. The most common response in all 12 countries polled on this question is that the UN Security Council has a responsibility to authorize the use of military force in such cases.

The Chinese public shows the highest level of support for the idea that the United Nations has a responsibility to intervene (76%), followed by the United States (74%), the Palestinian territories (69%) and Israel (64%). The lowest levels of support are in Ukraine (40%), Thailand (44%), Russia (48%), and Argentina (48%). But the proportions in these four countries that say the UN Security Council does not have such a responsibility ranged between only 16 to 31 percent.

I imagine a poll taken in an Arab or Muslim country would give substantially different results. And this is ironic:

Support for UN action is highest in France where 84 percent say the Security Council has either the “responsibility” to authorize intervention in Darfur (55%) or the “right” (29%) to do so.

It is, of course, one thing to agree with the sentiments: quite another to actually do something, especially when the body bags start coming home.