CALD Secretariat participates in LI R2P Seminar, holds meetings in Brussels 

On 10 December 2015, they participated in the Liberal International (LI) Human Rights Committee’s (HRC) seminar in the European Parliament on the future of the Responsibility to Protect, 10 years after the adoption of the principle.  Coinciding with the International Human Rights Day and CALD’s 22^nd founding anniversary, the event brought together liberal parliamentarians, diplomats, civil society representatives and human rights practitioners to discuss the growing challenges and misconceptions attached to the principle’s implementation.

LI HRC Chairman and LI Vice-President on the Bureau, Markus Löning, in his opening remarks, warned that the R2P formula needs to be improved. “We need to identify where liberals can act. There are great challenges ahead of us and we need to improve the system of R2P in the face of growing failures on the part of the UN Security Council to evoke the principle in situations where there are mass atrocities against innocent civilians”, he said.

Two panel discussions were included in the whole day program.  The first panel focused on the recent cases of Ukraine and Syria and the implications of R2P’s application (or more correctly, non-application).  Angela Patnode with the International Coalition for R2P argued that there is in fact institutional evidence that R2P is thriving despite growing criticism while LI HRC member and ALDE Party Vice-President Ilhan Kyuchyuk MEP, warned that R2P has a problem of selectivity which goes beyond Syria and Ukraine. Khodr Habib, Member of Parliament (Future Movement, Lebanon) cautioned as to the need to agree on a sustainable long-term plan on resolving the crisis in Syria while former Minister of Defence for Ukraine, Anatolyi Grytsenko, reminded that Ukraine had reached a point of no return and while sanctions has helped strong leadership remains key.

The second panel looked more closely into the future of the principle and its various operational and conceptual hurdles. Explaining that conceptually, R2P is less contentious but the mobilisation of resources for prevention is difficult, the Ambassador of Georgia to the European Union, Her Excellency Natalie Sabanadze, said: “The logic of doing politics today is not conducive to prevention.” Jonas Claes from the United States Institute of Peace underlined that apart from a political tool, R2P is also a legal, tactical and moral tool. “One of the ways to strengthen R2P is to reflect on the right expectations. R2P does not equate military intervention as it is about preventive non-coercive actions”, he explained.  CALD’s Lito Arlegue chaired this panel, and he enriched the discussions by sharing his thoughts on the prospects of the R2P in the Asian context, especially given the goal of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to establish an ASEAN Community of caring societies.

Prior to their participation in the LI HRC’s seminar, Arlegue and Zamora also took the opportunity to meet with CALD’s Brussels-based partners, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) Group and ALDE Party.  The discussions with the ALDE Group focused on the preparations for the upcoming 7^th ALDE-CALD Summit which will take place in Brussels in June 2016.  The meeting with the ALDE Party, on the other hand, concentrated on the status of liberal political parties in Asia and Europe, as well as on operational best practices which both organizations can learn from.  The secretariat was also able to briefly meet with the European Liberal Forum (ELF) to discuss possible collaborative programs in the future.

“This set of meetings provided valuable knowledge-sharing and networking opportunities with our partners in the international liberal community”, said Arlegue.  “Through these meetings, we were able to update our fellow liberals on the state of liberalism and liberal political parties in Asia, and we were able to learn from their instructive experiences as well.  It is our hope that this interchange of information and experiences will be helpful in further strengthening liberalism and democracy in our respective parts of the world.”