A debate organized by the Kenyan Private Sector Alliance (KEPSA) during the Kenya-India Business Forum in 2016
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At the United Nations World Summit in 2005, all UN member states explicitly embraced the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). The decision strongly influenced the global debate about how to prevent genocide, mass atrocities, war crimes and ethnic cleansing, and was welcomed in capitals around the world after the tragedies of Rwanda and Kosovo. While R2P matters, it largely focuses on state actors, even though the idea’s very emergence was only possible due to the tireless activism of civil society and a series of individuals such as Australia’s former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans and Francis Deng, a Sudanese diplomat. As Conor Seyle, Deputy Director of Research and Development at the One Earth Future Foundation (OEF), points out in a new book, the role of business in particular vis-à-vis R2P is not sufficiently analyzed, but potentially relevant to preventing mass atrocities and promoting R2P.
That argument is not entirely intuitive because the private sector is often seen as complicit in human rights abuses. Companies are often the main culprits for environmental degradation and large-scale government corruption, which often heighten political tensions and sometimes lead to conflict. Another problem is that terms like ‘the private sector’ are so broad that making general affirmations about their potential role to prevent mass atrocities inevitably fails to grasp a far more complex reality. The vast majority of businesses in the world are local and small-scale, and often have only a limited influence on politics (even though they are usually the ones that suffer most from conflict, being unable to relocate). Others, like transnational companies, have far more flexibility and power, even though mining companies in particular cannot chose where to operate and are thus often exposed to violent conflict. State-owned or partly state-owned companies like Sinopec or Petrobras face a very different incentive structure altogether, which is often tied to their government’s national interest. Another important distinction needs to be made between legally and illegally operating businesses, the latter of which often, but not always, thrives on political instability. Finally, one must keep in mind the role business associations, which often have close links to government, play.
Having said that, there is a fairly obvious case why businesses may be interested in avoiding mass atrocities, as large-scale violence usually has profoundly negative consequences for the economy (with the exception of very specific sectors such as arms producers). In fact, the economy of any country experiencing mass atrocities generally sees investor flight and often takes years to recover, as was the case with Kenya after post-election violence in 2007/08.
As Seyle writes about the aftermath of the crisis in Kenya,
Kenya Private Sector Alliance (KEPSA) members were interested in preventing a reoccurrence of violence for both personal and economic reasons, and as an umbrella association of private sector actors, KEPSA was able to take steps to prevent conflict as a collective force. KEPSA organized a coordinated messaging campaign to promote a sense of a unified Kenya and to drown out any messages supporting factionalism. In addition, KEPSA members participated directly in the politics of peace through legislative advocacy, supporting the country’s first public presidential debates, and through private diplomacy directed specifically at the presidential candidates encouraging them to support peace.
This illustrates several significant roles that private sector actors may be unusually well-suited to play in the prevention of RtoP crimes. To the extent that business leaders in a country are seen as primarily profit-motivated, this projects a sense of neutrality and detachment from the underlying political dynamics of the conflict. For similar reasons, public messaging campaigns and advocacy by private sector actors can add weight and legitimacy to an existing movement towards peace. In addition, because of the key role of telecommunications in organizing modern conflict, telecommunications companies can have a more direct role to play: in Kenya, telecom giant Safaricom deployed a series of filters designed to block text messages with messages of hate and the incitement of violence.
Assessing whether the private sector can play any role in preventing mass atrocities depends, naturally, on how far a situation has progressed towards the outbreak of violence. Certainly, not even powerful business associations will be able to maintain stability when perpetrators have begun to distribute machetes and started inciting violence on the radio, as happened in Rwanda in 1994. Rather, they may play a constructive role in preventive efforts, for example when divisive political leaders are planting the seeds of ethnic conflict.
Prevention matters
More research is necessary to gain a better understanding of the issue, and whether the case of Kenya is generalizable and applicable to other cases. Ideally through case studies, more clarity is needed regarding when and where businesses have contributed to preventing atrocities in the past and how these experiences can be replicated in other contexts.
Despite the incipient nature of this discussion, the debate about the private sector in promoting the Responsibility to Protect is to be welcomed for another reason. After all, R2P, which primarily focuses on prevention and regards outside interference as a rare last-resort measure, is all too often confused with the kind of intervention seen in Kosovo in 1999 or Libya in 2011. Resolution 1973, which authorised military action in Libya, marked the first time that the United Nations Security Council explicitly mandated the use of force against a functioning state to prevent imminent atrocity crimes. While that was significant, it was not representative of R2P, and the vast majority of times R2P is invoked by the UN Security Council, it occurs within the context of pillar I or II, and focuses on preventive efforts. Given that the private sector has little role to play once fighter jets are dispatched to prevent mass killings, asking what businesses can do to reduce the risk of mass atrocities and promote R2P will strengthen the understanding that the only way to successfully tackle this challenge is to think long-term, focusing primarily on prevention.
Read also:
Can France succeed in limiting the veto in cases of mass atrocities?
Brazil and R2P: A case of agency and norm entrepreneurship in the Global South
“Responsibility while Protecting”: Reforming R2P Implementation
The BRICS and the Future of R2P: Was Syria or Libya the Exception?
Photo credit: KEPSA
