Libya, From Positive Precedent to Collective Frustration
Juan Garrigues, Research Fellow, CIDOB
Date of publication: 07/2011
Notes internacionals CIDOB, núm. 37
As the Security Council set about approving resolutions 1970 and 1973,
the French Ambassador to the UN proclaimed, “The world is changing for
the better.” His words reflected western diplomacy’s deep satisfaction
about the negotiations that had led, for the first time, to the
inclusion of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in a resolution that
would then give way to an international military intervention. The
international community was thus behaving without discernible divisions
or suspicions of hidden agendas. Two days later, the great powers and
the countries in the region would intervene together to halt what
appeared to be an imminent massacre in Benghazi. Everything seemed to
indicate that, after the rifts caused by Kosovo and Iraq, a positive
precedent for future international military interventions under the
principle of R2P was being set.
But the reality has been otherwise. Four months after the start of the
mission, with more than 15,000 dead and hundreds of thousands of
refugees and displaced persons, few appear satisfied with the uncertain
results of the military intervention in Libya. (...)
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