CHAPTER 5: THE CREATION OF THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT DOCTRINE (R2P)
5.4 Responsibility to Protect Doctrine and Moral Humanitarian Military Intervention
5.4.1 Responsibility to Protect Cases, Ivory Coast, Libya and Syria
5.4.1.1 Ivory Coast
Ivory Coast became an R2P subject in the aftermath of the refusal to step down by then incumbent, Laurent Gbagbo after a presidential run-off between him and his former Prime Minister, Alassane Quattara on 28 November 2010 (United Nations Operation in Cote d’Ivoire (UNOCI); undated, www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/unoci/elections.shtml). There were contradictory results that were released with the Commission Electorale Indépendante (CEI), Ivory Coast’s national electoral body announcing that Quattara had won by54.1% of the votes against 45.9% polled in favour of Gbagbo (Bekoe, 2011: 1), while on the other hand the Constitutional Council which controls the regularity of the operations of the elections counter announced that the CEI had lost the mandate to announce the elections results because they were already contested and the CEI had failed to announce the results in the stipulated period. The president of the Constitutional Council Paul Yao N’Dre announced his results 51.45% to 48.55% in favour of Gbagbo on 3 December 2010 (Bekoe, 2011: 1). However, the international
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community recognized Quattara as the dully elected leader of Ivory Coast (UNOCI, undated, www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/unoci/elections.shtml).
War broke out between the supporters of the two contestants, leading to the intervention by the international community. Arguably, Ivory Coast presented a case in which most of the recommendations by the ICISS for R2P were utilized until the use of force became necessary. Firstly, diplomatic efforts with the threat and use of sanctions were used to move Gbagbo to relinquish power. The International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect (ICR2P) (undated) states that “the African Union (AU) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) responded with efforts to resolve the crisis through mediation and diplomatic pressure.”
The AU sent former South African President and former Kenyan Prime Minister, Thabo Mbeki and Raila Odinga, respectively, to hold talks with Gbagbo and Quattara on 28 January 2011. ECOWAS appointed former Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, as its regional envoy to Ivory Coast. The continental body’s Peace and Security Council established a High Level Panel which on 4 March issued a communique that recommended a unity government and a respectable exit for Gbagbo. However, Gbagbo refused the offer (ICR2P, undated).
Gbagbo’s refusal to step down led to the escalation of the conflict and the UNSC went on to pass resolutions 1962 (2010) and 1975 (2011), which recognized Quattara as the legitimate president of Ivory Coast and extended the mandate of UNOCI, which had been stationed in Ivory Coast since 2004 for peacekeeping, and the French forces in Ivory Coast to use all necessary means to protect civilians and stop the use of heavy weaponry in civilian populated areas. The intervention by UNOCI and French forces strengthened the power of the forces that supported Quattara. In April 2011 the forces loyal to Quattara defeated Gbagbo’s forces, stormed the presidential palace and arrested Gbagbo (on 11 April 2011) who was later handed over to the ICC for trial (Fischer et .al, 2013: 20).
However, the international intervention into Ivory Coast did not go without criticism. Former South African President, Thabo Mbeki, argued that the UN and the international community failed to understand the roots of the Ivorian crisis and pushed for the elections at the wrong time under wrong conditions (Mbeki, 2011). Ivory Coast plunged into a civil war in 2002 which divided the country into two parts, the North which was under the rebel Forces Nouvelles (New Forces) which supported Alassane Quattara, and the South that was under the control of the army that backed Laurent Gbagbo (De Waal, 2012).
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Mbeki (2011) stated that, “The objective reality is that the Ivorian presidential elections should not have been held when they were held. It was perfectly foreseeable that they would further entrench the very conflict it was suggested they would end.” The composition of the electoral constitutional bodies could not solve the problem. The head of the CEI which declared Quattara the winner was Quattara’s supporter while the head of the Constitutional Council, which declared Gbagbo the winner was a supporter of Gbagbo (De Waal, 2012). The problem was complicated by giving the UN mission in Ivory Coast the authority to certify election results (De Waal, 2012). By giving the mission such an important internal mandate, the international community had already usurped the power of the Ivorian constitutional bodies to deal with their internal issues. It is therefore not surprising that the final results of the CEI, Constitutional Council and the UN mission were different, though the CEI and the UN declared Quattara the winner.
The use of force by a mission that was initially mandated to be a peacekeeping mission was also seen as damaging the neutral stand of the UN (Small, 2014: 187). Authorizing a peacekeeping mission to take a side in an internal crisis could be seen as a mission for regime change which has no legitimate stand under R2P (Bellamy and Williams; 2011, 835-836). Small (2014: 187) quotes John Murphy who argued that:
The use of force by UN peacekeepers and French troops blurred the lines between human protection and regime change and raised questions about the role of the UN in overriding Cote d’Ivoire’s Constitutional Council … and about the place of neutrality and impartiality in UN peacekeeping.
The intervention by France, the erstwhile colonial master also helped to strengthen the voice of dissent.
The intervention could be seen as a hegemonic intervention that sought to remove a leader who had fallen out of favour with Paris and instill on the thrown Quattara, who could be viewed as new darling of France (Bovcon, 2009: 8). It can also be argued that having been faced by a declining support at home at the eve of an election, the French president, Nicholas Sarkozy, took the mission in order to boost his support if the public could view him as reaffirming the international influence of France in world issues (Willsher, 2011)www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/11/sarkozy-ivory-coast-vote-winner. From this argument, the French intervention in Ivory Coast is not seen as a morally driven intervention to support the will of the Ivorian nation but a calculated move to boost political support at home, hence personal interest of Sarkozy and his political party.
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